Morranne was by the door, looking left and right as they kept watch. They didn't seem to relax easily. I went over to them, leaves crunching with every step, and leaned up against the wall.

"You can take a break if you like. I'll keep lookout." They looked at me like I had two heads, and for an instant I wondered what it was I'd said. Then my palm whacked my forehead as I remembered they didn't speak Standard. Their eyes widened as they made a quiet nishishi sound-they were laughing.

I grinned back and put my hands up. "Sorry, Morranne. I forgot." Hopefully they got the gist. Maybe so, because they came over and leaned against the wall next to me. From my right came exclamations of scholarly delight as our historians finally got to the far wall.

Morranne waited there silent for a few seconds, eyes down and ears flicking. Then they muttered something, half-turned away.

"What was that?" I asked, raising a hand to my ear in pantomime.

"Pengyi," they repeated, voice a breathy whisper. I wondered if they had some kind of injury or were just very shy. "Morranne...family. Pengyi...I."

"Ah...okay." I smiled as I understood. They were introducing theirself. Maybe my nerd-wrangling earlier was paying off. I pointed at them. "Pengyi?" A nod. Alright. I pointed at myself. "Ellery. Nice to meet you."

"Eh-la-ry?" they asked. "Szarukey...no?"

What followed were some very crappy attempts to describe a nickname through hand signals, but Morranne-no, Pengyi-picked up my meaning quickly. "Ellery," they said happily, pointing at me. "Nayast'umehta yutu." I nodded eagerly back, unable to stop a giggle. It sounded like a religious mantra when they said it.

What followed was a pleasant-if slow and strange-conversation. I learned that Pengyi lived here alone and had for years. The pretty, striped furniture on their gun was indeed a laminate, made of a couple special woods and gold snapper varnish. They taught me a little bit of their language: Fauy for 'yes' and iyt for 'no', czuha for 'person' and nerit'yem for 'gun'-though they laughed even harder at my pronunciation than I had at theirs.

We also laughed at all the burrs still stuck in my dad's ponytail, and I got across that I thought it was funny how Northmarch didn't wear a shirt in a place full of thorny brambles. Pengyi got all shifty, ears angled down sideways, and signalled they were glad he didn't. Ah, a lot of things made sense now. They eagerly tried out my saw on a couple of stunted trees, saying "Magne kenosz, Ellery!" at how easily it cut. We traded a bit of food, too-I recieved some berries that tasted like sweetened caff, and gave away some of the sour green hard candies I liked. I didn't even realized Dad had packed them for me until I went looking. I didn't deserve that man.

After a bit of pointing at my saw's shitty sling and miming confusion, I also got them to show me their machete's sheath. I'd been impressed how quick they were able to get the big chopper in and out of action. It was more like a bracket than a true scabbard, made of thin slabs of wood and springy wire. The wire held the blade in securely, but let it go as soon as you gave the handle a yank-fast and thought free. Maybe Tanje could source me something similar.

After a little while we went up to the front of the atrium. Sawada and Northmarch were still hard at work. Dad was taking pictures, laser refraction readings, imaging the triptych through all kinds of radiation filters. Northmarch seemed to be looking hard at it through his blindfold, deep in thought. I wasn't sure how anything this old was going to help his people, but his mind obviously turned in different ways.

"You guys having fun?" I asked. Northmarch jumped, shocked out of his reverie. Dad just muttered "Worth it. This was so worth it."

"Fun, Sharkie?" said Northmarch, a catlike smile on his face. "This is more than fun. We have, as you say, hit the jackpot. The kingpot, even. This kind of thing..." He waved a hand around, at a loss for words. "No one living has seen it, except perhaps in an Admin datavault. The architecture, the materials, the style of embellishment, all of it points to this place being almost old as Lastdusk. This is an archaeological coup, my friend. These early depictions of the Kings-"

"Yeah, I was gonna ask why they looked like that."

"As much as most religions would have you believe their doctrine comes straight from the mouth of heaven, the fact is it often changes. Modifications are made to suit political pressures, changing social sensibilities, or simply as things are forgotten and incorrectly remembered. Look here." He pointed to King Nydd, rail-thin and crying amidst a raucous feast. "Nowadays Nydd is fat and happy, an icon of happiness and debauchery. Makes sense, looks friendly. Good marketing." He scoffed. I guess I'd find advertising pretty fucking dumb if I'd grown up hunting rats in the pitch dark. "But older texts, some of them at least, they call Nydd 'the Mourning King" or 'he who abstains.' Funny, yes?" He was on a roll now, enjoying himself. If the teachers on the public educhannels had been this excited I might have paid more attention. "Ved and Rik are simpler-people relate better to other people than to the abstract, so the arborist and the smith were given faces in later depictions. And the Warlord, Craeddyth Reix? He-or she, records have never been clear-has always been called Ironstride, but in some old texts is found the epithet 'Hearteater' as well. So this icon here-"

"Ah!" Pengyi's surprised exclamation cut him off, even as quiet as it was. They pointed just below where Northmarch had been, at a spot under the bestial engraving of Ironstride. Their finger rested on Ironstride's taphios, a smallish triangle of gray iron.

"Zheim?" Northmarch asked.

"Ch'ere slanisk!" Pengyi jabbed a finger at a small hollow spot at the taphios's center. Its edges were slightly wavy, as if they'd gotten close to melting. "Fahande czernt gau. Huwend ka vem'yr."

"Something's...gone?" I guessed. "Taken?"

Northmarch raised an eyebrow. "A quick study, are you not? Yes. Morranne says there was something set here in the taphios, a piece of black metal. The Administrators must have taken it." He asked Pengyi another question, and they scratched their chin and answered. "They say it looked like black steel, but made their fingers numb when they touched it. Even through gloves. Have you ever heard of such a thing?"

"Can't say I have." Dad had come over, pulled away from his work by our conversation. "You think that's why Admin was here? Maybe it was some kind of relic..."

"I can think of no better reason, but also no worse one." Northmarch shrugged, smiling. "The movements of the elite are not for we peons to understand."

"Hey, I don't care what you do in the dark, but nobody's peeing on anybody as long as I'm around." I wiggled my eyebrows at him and he visibly wilted while Dad tried not to laugh. It was something a nine-year-old might find funny, but in this case that just made it better. We made Northy try explaining it to Pengyi, too. They remained confused, though the fact that I was behind him trying to mime it out while busting up laughing probably didn't help.

My dad and Northmarch soon got back to cataloging the triptych. I sat down on a chunk of masonry and ate a lunch of pork jerky and processed cheese. Pengyi did this odd thing where they'd join me for a minute or two, gnaw on a wad of pemmican (they stuck it up under their scarf to eat) then hop up and make a few more rounds of the church. Might have been paranoia, might have been restlessness; when I asked the answer seemed to be a mix of both.

After I ate I had another look around. Unable to strain any meaning out of Dad and Northy's running commentary, I headed out back. As I'd thought, this part of the building had been pulverized by the growth of the great tree. Up close its bark gleamed like a mirror, reminding me of the thin, shiny plastic that Cinnamon Breakfast Squares shipped in. Man, I loved those things. They had no flashy marketing, no pretenses of being anything but the next best thing to raw arpaste, but they always reminded me of being a kid and waking up early to help Sawada fix stuff before the store opened. I couldn't believe that was a whole eight years ago. Maybe it was true what Dad said, and time passed faster the older you got.

I kicked though drifts of dry sickle-leaves and twists of fallen bark. One of the great beams had fallen here, its thickness waist-high. Up close it had a slight gold tinge, more like nickel than chrome. Runes no taller than my thumb crowded its surface, cast or cut or otherwise formed into it. I kept moving, walking away from the tree. At this end was the truncated corner of a room, all that remained of the church's back section. A huge slab of white-glass ceiling had fallen into it, tilted against the wall like the roof of a lean-to. Exactly like that, in fact. It was thick enough that it might have protected anything under it.

While Northmarch and Dad had me outclassed in the archaeological department, if there was one thing I could do it was move heavy shit from one place to another. This big piece of shiny stone had sat here for who knew how many years, surviving earthquakes, upheavals, catastrophes and evil plants-and now it stood face to face with me. Tipping this thing over was my freakin' destiny.

So I went over and started pulling on it. After a few experimental yanks-to quote my old buddy Dragan on cyborg chicks, she was heavier than she looked-I set my feet and heaved it away from the wall. My wounds ached a little, but without any more stress than that it reached its tipping point. I stepped out of the way and it hit the ground with a crash so loud even I jumped-and I'd known it was coming. If the multilingual curses coming from inside were any indication, I'd startled the others as well.

"What in hell are you doing back here, my girl?" My dad came out through a gap in the wall, rubbing his forehead. "I just adjusted the lenses on my lascamera with my face." Northmarch and Pengyi followed him, the former faintly frowning and the latter trying to look in every direction at once, gun at low ready.

"Sorry, sorry. I should have warned you. It's just, that slab there was up against the wall, and I thought maybe there'd be something under it. Oh! Look, there was."

The removal of the slab revealed more splinters of furniture, some dust that might once have been clothes, and a square of glass like a dark-gray mirror. Iridescent patterns showed in the finish, looking like runes or knotwork. It was about six inches square and was protected by a clear plastic box. I suspected it might be important, because Dad and Northy were staring at it the way I might stare at Kitty LaGrade if she passed me on the street naked.

"What is that th-"

"Rem's bent fuckin' backbone..." husked Sawada. I didn't think he'd even heard me. "Is that what I think it is?"

"Must be. Has to be," Northmarch whispered. All of a sudden he looked at my dad, grinning. "By the Voice in the Dark, it's a codex."

"Yes!" My dad leapt into a bona-fide jig. "Yes! Yes!" I snorted, and Pengyi was bent double with wheezy laughter.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

"A codex," I said to Northmarch. "It's a book?"

"Most likely. It's some kind of recorded information." He kept staring at it while Dad danced. "Figuring out how to read it will be difficult-formats were far from standardized at the time-but if we can, Sharkie?" He finally ripped his eyes off the codex and looked at me. "It will be the next best thing to time travel."

"Or it might just be a centuries-old grocery list!" He'd stopped dancing, but Dad sounded excited about even that prospect.

"So, it's like a datastick?" I asked.

"Oh, in the same way a VTOL is like my kei truck," said Dad. "There's only been a few of these decoded, but they've all had an absolutely ridiculous amount of storage on 'em. One of 'em had a bunch of ancient plays on it, in ultra-res full holo, in about a thousand different languages-and that barely took up a percent of the space! There's no tellin' what on this puppy."

I nodded appreciatively, then noticed the confused look on Pengyi's face. "Um...Old...talking?" I fumbled out in their language. Northmarch noticed me struggling and gave them an explanation too fast for me to pick up. Pengyi gave him a nod and me a very, very, careful pat on the shoulder. "Than'kiu," they whispered. I hadn't actually helped, but whatever.

Northy watched this with almost paternal pride while Sawada gave the codex a closer inspection. "I am impressed very much, Sharkie. We will have you speaking ofen'dha like a natural, soon."

So that's what it was called. I hadn't even thought to ask. I turned to Northmarch. "Do all tornagena speak that?"

"Most in the city do, or at least a close enough dialect. Out in the Glasslands they speak a much older version, which is not mutually intelligible."

He grinned at the way my eyebrows tried to crawl up my forehead at that last part. "You've been into the Glasslands? And there's people fucking living out there?"

"Living and fucking, yes." I barked out laughter, caught off guard. "They are almost as foreign to me as I am to you, I think."

"But how? There's no food, no power, no goddamn light...you're not talking about rock raiders, are you?" These were the bandits that often tried to steal things and people from the quarries. Probably no one from the city proper would have heard of them, but Admin's propaganda was always claiming that the one thing keeping everyone in the city off of a cannibal's spit was them and their military.

He shook his head. "They give the city a wide berth, kill any raider that gets within a day's walk of their territory. But they live, yes. Humans are many things, Sharkie, but most of all they are desperate to live, as tenacious as roaches and lichen when survival is on the line. History proves this." He spread his hands out wide in supplication. "More than this though, I cannot say. As you might imagine, they are a rather secretive and insular group, and I am sworn to silence."

I just shook my head back. "You get around, don't you?"

"I suppose. When I do visit home they call me the Everywhere Man, after an old children's story." He rubbed his chin. "It sounds much stupider in your language, I think."

"Least you're not nicknamed after a corporate mascot." He raised an eyebrow and I explained. Pengyi listened too, though I doubt they caught much of it. That big old crate Sawada'd found me sleeping in as a kid had been for an AirShark shop compressor he'd just bought. It had a huge cartoon shark stenciled on it, which was apparently some kind of extinct fish that used to eat other fish. I had no idea what fish had to do with air compressors, but after Dad mentioned the story to some of his buddies, they'd started calling me Little Shark, then Little Sharkie, and then I'd hit a growth spurt and been upgraded to plain old Sharkie. Stupid way to get a nickname, but I was used to it by now.

"Hey, Northy. Can you read this?" said my dad from the ground. He was shining a light through the codex's case, backlighting the small runes etched into its door. Northmarch squatted down to look.

"Hmm...this transitional script is always difficult. I am not sure about the title, I do not recognize the runes used, but the subtitle is something like...Oh. Oh, my. 'Being a True Accounting of the Arm War's End and the Fall of the Martyrs, as Witnessed by their most Trusted Steward, Linus Pseudocarradinus Okoroyeke Takamori Oguma-Maeda Publius Vedemedisov of Novy Geoal.' It is a memoir!"

"Name like that probably takes up half the space on the fucking thing," I muttered. "And why's he writing about furniture?"

Northmarch squinted at me like he thought I was mocking him, but my dad quickly jumped in. "'Arm War,' not 'armoire.' Old name for the Lastwar-and no, I don't know why it's called that."

"Ah. Makes a little more sense now." On impulse, I checked my slab and blanched when I saw the time. "You guys maybe want to wrap things up, though?"

My dad checked his own slab and had a similar reaction. "Shit! Yeah. We can get moving real soon." He looked to Northmarch as the latter got to his feet. "Maybe we finish scanning the last panel, then bounce?"

"This will work, yes." He went inside, followed by Pengyi, while my dad reverently installed the codex in a padded metal case that he'd brought along. I looked around, deciding that as distressing as getting here had been, it had been worth it just to see my dad so excited-and to keep him safe. This church was admittedly cool as well. I could appreciate it just for its great age and weirdness, even if I didn't have the full context like Dad and Northy did. I wanted a souvenir.

Some of the white-glowing bell-flowers were growing a few steps away, filling the gaps between the great tree's roots. I thought about plucking one as the samurai had-but if I did, it would just lose its glow and die. It would be prettier here. Instead I grabbed a small chunk of the white-glassy stone that had broken off the big slab when I tipped it. I held it up in front of my light and was shocked to see ghostly runes suspended in it, folded in by a manufacturing process I couldn't begin to imagine. I snapped a few pics of the temple, the tree, and the cave outside with my slab, too. I wasn't usually one for taking loads of pictures of everything-if you'd actually been there, what good was a photo?-but Dezi might get a kick out of them.

I found Pengyi ranging about out front, and on a whim decided to get a picture with them. I thought it might be hard to explain, but it turned out they had a slab, too-they just left it in their hidey-hole to keep it safe. I propped my slab up on a heaved-up paving stone, set the timer and ran over in front of it just before it went off. The shot wasn't the best-I was a little blurred, and Pengyi was just standing there awkwardly holding their gun, but they seemed to like it. After some hand-waving and an exchange of very broken language I realized they wanted me to send it to them.

I let them put their number into my phone and shot it over to them. "Nice!" I said, raising a hand for a high-five.

"Magne shan!" they agreed, raising their hand too and waving. Ah. High-fives must not be a thing in the dark.

I got across that they could call me or send a message if they ever wanted to talk, receiving an enthusiastic nod back. There was still one other thing, though.

"I go...see you...other time?" I got across in toddler-level ofen'dha.

Their eyes went wide, and I understood the reply as "Would like, but dangerous!"

So it was. And the park wasn't exactly my favorite place. "You go to me? In light?" I asked tentatively.

Those slit-pupiled eyes, green as a cat's, got even wider then turned away. Shit. I'd gone too far. But then, without looking, they tipped their hand back and forth. A maybe if I'd ever seen one.

"If good... for you...only." I added, making my tone as accommodating as I could to make up for my shit vocabulary.

Unexpectedly, they started hitching out wheezy laughter. "What?" I said, still speaking ofen'dha. "What?"

"Huil'yw is...'only'," they choked out in Standard. "You say Hawil'yw. Is...um...man you are fuck!" They paused to laugh more, and I felt myself grinning despite not getting it. "You say me, 'do you like it!'" Pengyi half-collapsed against the temple wall, still going nishishishi with tears streaming from their eyes.

Well. Maybe it was funnier in ofen'dha.

Sawada and Northmarch joined us as Pengyi recovered themselves. Northmarch raised an eyebrow, but said nothing.

"Got everything?" I asked.

"Got enough. We won't know if we need anything else 'til we get through what we have already." Dad hitched his pack up and nodded. "You good to go?"

"Yup." I turned to Pengyi. "Ch'uigh?"

"Good," they answered, their Standard clipped.

I squeezed my eyes shut at the prospect of doing all we'd done to get here again, but it wasn't going to get done just standing here. We went back over to the ledge, Sawada looking back wistfully, and climbed up the dangling cord. My dad went last. I almost started pulling the cord up as a joke, but he looked nervous enough down there by himself that I hadn't the heart for it. I hauled him up, took one last picture for Dezi, and then in was back through the tunnel.

Northmarch and Dad stopped briefly to get a few readings off the red chunk of metal, but otherwise we made good time. Pengyi led us true and in most spots, even this fuckshow of a forest hadn't had time to grow back over our trail. We encountered no more big kitties. In fact, the worst thing we ran into was a mushroom whose spores produced a similar effect on the human body as the last inch or so of a vodka bottle. The ensuing staggering resulted in contact with some stuff that was either really sticky moss or an actual spiderweb, but that was just an annoyance. Tasted awful, though.

I expected Pengyi to leave us when we got back to the office clearing, but after a glance up at the red tree's boughs they stuck with us. The only other occurrence of note was a few minutes later, near the edge of the forest. I was wrestling to put the saw through a mass of slowly undulating thorny vines-Kings, did I hate the feel of them writhing against my skin-when I heard a buzzing that didn't usually come out of the tool in my hands. I let off the trigger, thinking it had overheated or something, but the noise continued. I looked around, questioning, but Northmarch spoke before I could ask.

"Flies. They have found the, ah, warning I left on our way in. I would recommend against going to see."

Yuck. There was a part of me that wanted to see what the hell he'd done to the guy, but it if my mind were a carce yard it would be getting the shit kicked out of it by the part that thought I'd sleep far better not knowing. I glanced over at Dad, and while he'd paled slightly he said nothing. Pengyi seemed unbothered, though maybe they just hadn't understood.

From there it was less than half an hour or so back to civilization. We stopped on the forest's brink, lifelight dappling the ground through the thin canopy.

Northmarch said something to Pengyi in quick but formal ofen'dha. "You have my deepest thanks, Morranne," he finished in Standard.

"Mine as well," added my dad with a courtly bow.

Pengyi barely suppressed a laugh as they bowed back. "Welcome. Very." Northmarch got the same. Finally they turned to me.

"Lots of thanks," I managed in their language. "I alive from you. No, because you."

"It was my honor." Were they smiling under that scarf? They said something too fast to understand, then repeated it slower for me. "Maybe I go see you. Send message, Ellery!" seemed to be the gist.

"Fauy!" I said back happily. They nodded eagerly, bowed to us all once more, then disappeared into the trees fast and silent as a shadow. They'd really been slowing it down for us. Must have been a pain.

The three of us finally, finally stepped out from under the trees and stomped back up to the gravel lot. Miracle of miracles, the truck was still present and upright. My dad shucked off his pack and slumped hard against the side of the bed.

"That was incredible, but Bard kill me if I'm not glad it's over. I need a nap."

Northmarch nodded, looking down at his scratch-and sap-covered torso. "I need a bath."

I dropped my pack and stretched. "I need a fucking drink."

They looked at me for a second, then nodded in unison. "I got a handle of Novy Pskova at the shop," said Dad. "Let's go."

Better and better. A Prix Noire pit crew couldn't have thrown the wheels back on that truck as fast as I did. We peeled out of there with the wheels spitting gravel, leaving the park far, far behind.