Pickle had posted copies of two photos, both slightly overexposed, with the rounded corners of old-fashioned photo paper, and grainy, low-resolution textures. The first showed the artefact itself, a half circle of black material, about the size of a coffee coaster, with three metal prongs sticking out from one edge, which ranged from half an inch to an inch in length. A white find slip next to it gave it the find number from the dig, which was #152, and had ‘ELECTRICAL CONNECTOR?’ written next to it in marker pen. It had been found amidst the shards of an earthenware pot, along with a few other items of similar shape and size. However, most of the other connectors were oblong in shape and had two pins, noticeably different from the missing artefact, which was flat and circular in shape, and had three prongs.

Eret had theorised that Find #152 must once have had immense value, and had been buried with a bunch of similar looking items in order to disguise it. However, there was no indication as to what it was. It looked like it connected to something … but what?

The next photo was of four young people, with hairstyles that were twenty-years out of date, standing in a row and smiling at the camera with their arms around each other.

There was one woman. She had her hair in a multitude of plaits and wore a blue headband with a green and orange leaf print. The other three were men, all with pale Keretu skin and medium-brown hair. One wore his hair slick with gel, and sported a suit in an exaggerated cut that would have been fashionable at the time, with white piping sewn down the side seams. The second man had hair that stuck up awkwardly, as if he had slept in it. His suit was too big for him, and would have been fashionable maybe fifty years previously. The third wore sunglasses, disguising his eyes, and an ordinary checked shirt with jeans.

The photo was too low resolution and too out of focus to see their facial features clearly. Pickle had included a copy of the back of the photo, on which four people with different handwriting had each scrawled a name in black marker: Kala, Leofryn, Bead and Horn. In the centre of the names was a date from twenty years ago, surrounded by a love heart.

Kala was clearly the woman, while Leofryn, Bead and Horn were the men, but it was impossible to tell which was which.

There was an excavation report attached. It was full of archaeologist jargon which Linua didn’t know, but after some searching she worked out that the dig site had been a First Intermediate period stone circle. Not the kind you usually found in Keng Boh Kids adventures, which were the site of strange druidic rituals, or long-lost arcane secrets, but a simple calendar system for tracking the precession of the sun.

Apparently, it was important to know things like what day midsummer or midwinter were on if you were a farmer whose civilisation had recently lost access to things like orbital satellites and atomic clocks. The earthenware jar had been buried equidistant between two of the standing stones, as if hidden in a spot that would be easy to find again.

The excavation report didn’t mention Find #152 individually, just noted it as a collection of electronic connectors, either for the transmission of power or information or both. Without any associated Old Empire devices it was impossible to tell what they had been designed to connect to.

Why anyone would take the trouble to bury old electrical connectors wasn’t clear. The report speculated that they held special significance to the First Intermediate farmers, as items representing a lost age, and had been buried in a ritual ceremony of remembrance.

And why was the artefact missing? Had it truly been stolen? Why would anyone steal something so comparatively dull and ordinary? Or was Eret correct that it was valuable in some way?

Maybe, like the string map the Astronomy Club had come across last year, the device wasn’t an electrical connector. Maybe it was something else. Maybe someone had seen it and realised what it really was, and stolen it because of that.

Who could have noticed it? The most likely possibly culprits were the ones who had dug it up.

Linua looked at the excavation report. The dig had been funded by the University of Herkow, and led by a Professor Relta. A note by Pickle indicated that Professor Relta had retired and subsequently died of a heart attack in the intervening years. The four friends in the photo had been archaeology students who had assisted with the dig. They were young, maybe around twenty, so they would be about forty now.

Pickle, Linua saw, was already on it. He had messaged at one o’clock in the morning—when did that kid ever go to sleep?—that he would give them an update tomorrow. In the meantime, he said, he’d posted a picture of Find #152 on an archaeological forum to see if anyone could tell them what it was.

Linua started a new conversation, and asked if it was possible to get a bicycle for one hundred shekels. She would check for the answers tomorrow night.

Linua came down for breakfast in her third cut up shirt and the same pair of pyjama bottoms, which were damp and clammy after being handwashed in the bathroom sink. She didn’t want to risk giving the leggings to Helged to wash and dry properly in case she didn’t get them back. Linua also was getting fed up of wearing flip flops by now. Would it be possible to buy new shoes as well as a bike with her one hundred shekels? Her musings were interrupted by Grandmother, who wanted yet another conversation, because the last one had gone so amazingly well.

“I am aware,” said Grandmother, “that a few things were said last night that weren’t intended.”

Linua had meant everything she’d said, but she could see it wouldn’t do any good to say so at this point.

“I am willing to overlook your recent behaviour. I thought we might come to an agreement as to your new outfits.”

There were packets of sewing patterns spread out on the coffee table in front of Grandmother. Linua looked at them with growing horror.

“Helged went into the attic yesterday and got these out of the sewing case. I thought perhaps you might find a suitable outfit here. I can then take you to the dressmaker as soon as I can fit an appointment in, and show her the patterns we want to use.”

“Um,” Linua said.

She leaned forward and rifled through them. They had line drawings on the front of each packet, depicting incredibly slender young women all lounging about in office wear. They wore pencil skirts and tweed jackets—tweed, oh Nimras! Another packet showed a model in loose trousers with pleats gathered around the waist that flared out over the hips and then tapered to the ankles, a style that had been fashionable twenty years ago. It made the model look like a pear. The last packet depicted a woman wearing a mustard yellow dress with no waistline.

“Um. Grandmother, how old are these patterns?”

“That doesn’t matter,” Grandmother said regally. “These are all classic patterns that work in any decade. They never go out of fashion.”

Linua didn’t know what to say. She wasn’t sure what she was supposed to do. Grandmother was being sort of nice and at least trying to be reasonable but still getting it wrong. And she was waiting for a response.

“Can I think about it?” Linua asked weakly.

Grandmother was disappointed.

“I’m trying to meet you half-way, Linua, the least you could do is make an effort.” When Linua still didn’t say anything, Grandmother went on. “Take a little bit of time to think about it, but you can’t wander around looking like that forever.” She raked disapproving eyes over the torn shirt and tights. “We’ll come back to this. However, there is something else. I will be arranging a tutor for you in the evenings. Unfortunately Mdm Patoni isn’t available, but I will be looking for another suitable candidate.”

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

Linua stared at her, aghast. Not go back to the Astronomy Club?

“What about the Observatory?”

“You’ve had a lot of exposure to the practical side of things at the Observatory, but for now we need to focus more on the theoretical.”

Ugh. More study? And no Astronomy Club! Or Alnan! The only two things she had to look forward to.

“All I do is work,” Linua said, trying not to sound whiny. “I never get to have friends!”

“This is a crucial time for you Linua, and I can’t have you distracted by frivolities.”

“I don’t want a tutor. Why do I have to study in the evenings?” She would have to put her foot down and refuse to do any more work unless Grandmother let her go back to the Observatory at least two or three times a week.

“You must focus Linua,” Grandmother said. “We can’t have you distracted. I really don’t understand what has suddenly got into you. You didn’t use to be like this!”

Linua tried a different tack.

“Can’t I study something else? Something that’s not related to astronomy?”

Grandmother looked aghast, as if Linua had just suggested she wanted to become a hairdresser or a waitress.

“Certainly not, whatever gave you that idea? We can’t waste a single moment. It’s imperative that you prepare for your degree.”

It was the wrong time to bring up archaeology, Linua realised, because it would get confused with the clothing issue. If she said that she wanted two things, Grandmother could dangle one as bait in order to force her to do the other. She didn’t want the battle to become I will buy you nice clothes if you continue to work towards studying astronomy at university. It would be three years before she was old enough to go to university. That was plenty of time to work on Grandmother and change her mind about that.

The clothing issue needed to be sorted as a priority. That was the battle Linu had to focus on now. The second battle would be rejoining the Astronomy Club. She would have to leave the archaeology thing until last.

“I’d better go now,” she said. “Or I’ll be late for wushu training.”

At wushu training, it was as if everyone was pretending that Linua hadn’t been sent out of the dojo early the previous day. But Linua was seeing the wushu sessions, and Wai Bu in particular, differently now.

For the first time she was suddenly aware of how Wai Bing’s hold over his trainees would look from the outside. She had heard Eret and Anith talk back to and argue with their parents in a way that would be completely unacceptable for a Yi child. For them, parental orders were something to be negotiated, not obeyed as if they were the rule of law. To Eret and Anith, Wai Bing would look like a tyrannical monster.

He was a tyrannical monster. Why couldn’t he ever give praise or encouragement? Would that really be so hard?

It wasn’t as if never giving praise or encouragement was a Yi thing, or even a Shang thing. Linua had heard plenty of her Yi aunties and uncles react with delight at the progress of their children, telling them that how proud they were, or gloating over their achievements to other members of the Yi family whose children hadn’t done as well. Yi parents seemed to regard talking about their children’s progress with each other as a competitive sport.

There was no-one to give Linua praise or encouragement on her wushu training, because her parents were gone. Most of the time Linua tried not to think about them at all, but occasionally, at times like this, she could help feeling their loss acutely.

No-one was on her side, not even Grandmother.

No-one would care if she did it well, not even Wai Bing. He only cared about what he wanted, which was to make sure at least one of the cousins learn how to cultivate Qi. After the conversation with Sayo Hui yesterday, Linua was no longer remotely interested in that.

It was an enormously liberating realisation, as if a heavy weight she didn’t even know she had been carrying had been lifted from her.

She didn’t have to care what Wai Bing thought.

Wai Bing might be an insensitive clod in matters of psychology, but his interpersonal skills were inversely proportional to his understanding of wushu forms. He could tell immediately that Linua wasn’t trying, even after he had stood over her and shouted at her for ten minutes.

He didn’t send her out of the dojo, this time, which was almost disappointing, but he made her sit at the side and watch the others for the rest of the session, as if she were five years old and needed to be put on the naughty step.

Without the Astronomy Club, or her time with Alnan at the Observatory to look forward to, it was amazing how the day dragged. Eret and Anith had agreed to pass a message to Alnan to explain that Linua wasn’t going to be at the Observatory this week.

After Linua finished her supper, Grandmother took her into the library and provided her with a practice Astronomy exam paper to complete. It was at that point that Linua realised how much she had relied on her time with Alnan to relax and unwind. Of course, they worked hard cleaning, but it was work that was simple, productive and satisfying. The prospect of a whole evening of doing practice exams made her heart sink right to her toes.

“I thought we would set a metric for your current progress so that we can work on which areas to improve next,” Grandmother explained. As usual, she was supremely unaware of the thoughts going through Linua’s head.

Linua spent the next three hours racking her brains over the paper. It occurred to her more than once that she could just throw down her pencil and scream that she refused to do another stroke of work, and that she deserved a night off. But she didn’t want to upset the fragile balance of peace that she had right now with Grandmother. She needed to hold that strategy in reserve, until after she had won the clothing war.

She fell into bed exhausted. When her alarm went off at two in the morning it continued for nearly a minute before it woke her up, and it had roused Grandmother too. Linua had to pretend that she had accidentally set it for the wrong time, and then had to wait half an hour before she could be sure that Grandmother had gone back to sleep and it was safe to sneak down to the library and use the computer.

There had been quite a few new posts on the bulletin board since yesterday.

Pickle disclosed that he hadn’t had any useful replies to his post with the picture of the missing artefact, beyond a few that told him it was probably an electrical connector of some kind. Any non-standard electrical connector wasn’t that useful unless you had a matching artefact for it, which they didn’t.

Anith had posted unhelpfully that maybe the artefact had just been mislaid, and that this wasn’t actually some dramatically mysterious theft which needed to be investigated.

Solly, meanwhile, had posted an offer.

Solly: i could sell you my old bike for 100 shekels

Eret: If it’s the one I think it is then it’s not even worth 50 you cheating clod! Also Linua, I have a better idea than you buying Solly’s bike. And I need to bring you some stuff that Anith has for you. Where can we meet? Did you say your house is near Sangipeng?

He meant the village down the road, where Linua had caught the bus.

And then Pickle came in with his revelation.

Pickle: ive found two of the students ! bead is in herkow ! he has a business down by the docks called beads boats . and horn is still an archaeologist and lives in shinboa but i dont have any contact details yet .

Eret: Wow, nice work. Linua, can you get away tomorrow evening? If we meet in Sangipeng we can go and check Bead’s Boats out together. Can you be in the village for 6pm? Is there a good place we can meet, like a bus stop or a café or something?

Anith: Eret! We agreed that you wouldn’t do anything stupid or dangerous.

Eret: Just talking to some old guy who has a boat business can’t possibly be dangerous.

Solly: i want to come

Eret: Solly I don’t have room for you.

What did that mean? Was Eret going to bring his own bicycle? Was he expecting Linua to balance on the back of it all the way to the Herkow docks?

And how was she going to get out of the house, be absent all evening, and sneak back in without Grandmother and Helged ever realising? She’d already done it yesterday and got caught.

She just couldn’t miss out on the mystery. The prospect of staying at home while the others went out and investigated without her was too much to bear.

Maybe she could pretend to be sick. But if that was the case Helged would be fussing over her and making her hot chicken broth all evening. Linua needed to pretend to be sick enough to hide in her room for a whole evening, but not so sick that she needed lots of care and attention.

She bit her lip. That would not be easy.

She wrote: I can probably be at the bus stop in the village for 6pm, but I might not be able to get away. I will post a message here if I can’t. If there are any problems you can try calling the house, but Grandmother will probably answer the phone! We really need radios to communicate with each other! Pickle is that possible?

Pickle had doled out radios to the group last year, when they were co-ordinating to get Eret back from the treasure hunter who had kidnapped him. The radios had been massive things, the size of a brick, with hugely long antennas, which they’d needed in order to communicate over a potentially large range, as they hadn’t known where in the city Eret was being held. The radios hadn’t been practical or wieldy, and Pickle had collected them in afterwards, as they were expensive pieces of equipment and owned by the Radio Club. But maybe Pickle would be able to come up with something better.

Can we have smaller ones than last time? What is the range on a radio?

She added the telephone number for the house to the message.