Teri McLaren - Song of Time

Still unable to see who had spoken to him, Cheyne dusted his hands off, picked up his pack, and walked closer to the chair. Before the nearest Neffian could repeat his master's question, or warn the young man with his eyes, Cheyne pushed back the curtain a little farther and received a sharp whack on the hand from the occupant's riding crop.

"Don't touch that, you renegade slave! I asked you a question. Who are you, and how dare you block the way of my runners? or place your unworthy hand upon my carriage! Do you not perceive who I am? Speak my words, Doulos," he ordered the Neffian, who began to repeat it all again, hysterics included.

Cheyne stood back, patiently listening and rubbing his smarting fingers, but thinking only about what he had seen of the people in the sedan. The woman was veiled, but the man was gaunt, black haired, green eyed, ashen skinned, and sported a thin mustache, twisted into a sneer. Though this was Cheyne's first actual contact with the Fascini, he had no trouble recognizing all the marks of Sumifa's leisure-loving, sickness-ridden upper crust.

But who was the woman? She wore no purple and no matron's veil. He knew that, on rare occasions, Fascini took wives from the richest families of the Mercanto, or from unprovable, if questionable, nobility in distant cities, but [avin had said that if you weren't bom into the caste, you could never really belong, and the Fascini liked it that way. Fewer people, more wealth. Especially since the western caravans had stopped. Goods were ever more expensive and harder to come by. Of course, that also meant greater profit. For some.

The patient Neffian had finished and stood waiting for Cheyne to answer.

"I'm not a slave. I'm from the… east," Cheyne answered cautiously, remembering the problem out at the site. "I didn't see your chair in time. But your runners nearly ran me over."

"Oh, for Nin's sake, address the right-hand man, you fool. You can never talk directly to me. The east. The east. Where they have no culture, no appreciation for time-honored traditions. Where your persons of rank freely mingle with commoners, where slaves whose ancestors lived in actual caves deign to talk to royalty. Really, you foreign people should not be let inside Sumifan gates until you know how to behave. You have humiliated me. Do you know I could have you flayed in the Four Most Awful Fashions for what you just did? As it is, I am in far better humor than usual. I will have you buried alive, instead," said the Fascini, his voice rising with impatience.

While the Neffian took a deep breath and began to repeat his master's words again, Cheyne shook his head, perplexed as to which was his most grievous sin: being in the way to be run over, or telling the Fascini about it. He settled on the latter, but none too surely. The Neffian shrugged his shoulders, a look of concern replacing his careful blankness. Cheyne decided at that point that the Fascini was serious about the burying alive part. Cheyne was about to leap the guard rail and try to disappear into the Barca when he heard his reprieve.

"Maceo, he could not have known he spoke to the royal heir of Sumifa. You have just been announced as king this afternoon. He has done nothing to warrant death." A small voice, raw with strain, pleaded with the Fascini.

Maceo shot the curtain across its rod, leaving Cheyne straining to hear the fervent conversation within. The Neffian stared ahead again, unblinking until he and the others simultaneously lifted the chair, as if they had heard an order Cheyne could not. But Maceo had the last word.

"Nameless idiot! Unknown fool! Today the woman saves your worthless life. When I am installed as king, if you dare to tread these streets, you shall pay for this insult," the Fascini shouted as the chair swerved onto the thoroughfare, a red ribbon falling from the woman's side of the chair.

The next set of gates loomed just before him and Cheyne slowly walked toward them, soon losing sight of the sedan as the Neffians rounded a curve in the highway, then turned off abruptly, heading, strangely, Cheyne thought, toward the worst part of the Barca.

Despite the crowd that had gathered to witness his very public dressing down, all Cheyne could think of was the weeping woman.

Cheyne bent and picked up the red ribbon before a passing wagon ground it into the cobbles. It smelled of rich myrrh and bergamot, dark, strong scents both. He put it in his pack and passed through the gates, wondering what the face behind the veil looked like.

"I told you, I don't know, it could be Elclesian or Trufi ganzite. Or it could even come all the way from the Chimes, though I've never seen any of that fabled stone." The shopkeeper sneered, tired of guessing. "Looks like any other old totem except for that last mark and the odd cut. Where did you say this came from?" The slouching clockmaker set the totem on his cluttered counter and waited for Cheyne to answer.

"Thanks. Thanks very much for your trouble. It was an outside chance anyway; I know this sort of thing isn't really your business."

True enough. Cheyne had tried the clockmaker's shop just because it was there. It was the last place he had time for, and it had turned out to be by far the most distasteful.

Cheyne had wandered around the Mercanto for three hours, searching every antique stall and every art dealer's store he could find, and each time he had received a puzzled look or a shrug of the shoulders. As for the elf, his questions had provoked only laughter and the repeated response that no elves had been seen in Sumifa since before the Wandering. Worse, no one seemed to know anything about the last glyph on the totem, or even care, for that matter. Which made it very odd that the disheveled clockmaker continued to stare at Cheyne, his droopy face still lifted in expectation of an answer to his question as two greenbottle flies chased each other above his head.

Cheyne nodded his good-bye, returned the totem to his pack, and made for the door. The sun had moved over the westernmost part of the wall, marking it time for him to get back to the site. Javin would be mad enough already.

"Ah, perhaps I know of someone else who could help you with your dilemma," the clockmaker wheedled. Cheyne stopped at the door and turned around. "Her name is Riolla Hifrata. She is a worthy woman, well schooled in the antiquities. Here is her address."

The shopkeeper fumbled at the sleeve of his grease-spotted caftan and withdrew a small, dirty scrap of parchment with an even dirtier hand. His face unreadable, he slid the gilt-edged fragment toward Cheyne. One of his clocks began to click and bang in the back room, then every other one in the shop chimed in. Thanking the man, Cheyne grabbed the parchment and left the din, his ears ringing.

It seemed that the streets had emptied somewhat while Cheyne had been in the shop. Only one shabbily dressed vagrant hunched in the shade of a market stall, a nearly empty bottle in hand and humming to himself, completely unremarkable except for a truly enormous nose protruding from under the folds of his hood. Cheyne marvelled, keeping his amazement to a polite smile as he passed the man.

He read the card as he walked toward the Inner Ring Gate, wondering if he really had time to make this visit and then deciding that if favin were mad already, Cheyne might as well make their confrontation worth his while. And after all, he hadn't run into any real trouble from the incident out at the site. In fact, aside from Prince Maceo, no one had given him more than a second glance.

The western wall cast a longer shadow than Cheyne would have liked, but the lure of the card was impossible to deny. Since his search for the elf had proved futile, this could be the one chance he had at finding out what the glyph meant. The Fascini might already be demanding that Javin close the dig, and if they had to leave, Cheyne knew he would never get back here again. He hurried through the vacant streets and quickly came to the address written on the small square of vellum.