Beautiful Sacrifice

The jade jaguar pendant she had found and he had kept was on a bookshelf, on top of a tilting pile of scholarly archaeology bulletins. Automatically she looked at every artifact in sight, searching.
    Hunter watched her.
    After a moment she shook her head. “Not at first glance. Excellent, wonderful, fascinating—but not what we’re looking for.”
    Hunter nodded and centered his attention on Philip, who was still fumbling with the dial of an old-fashioned safe. Vault, really. It was at least seven feet high and five wide. Unlike the rest of the room, the lock looked well cared for, oiled, clean. Bookcases flanked the vault door on either side from floor to ceiling.
    Just when Hunter thought he’d have to try his hand at drilling out the safe’s locking mechanism, Philip managed to get the combination right. When the door swung open, Hunterwas glad that he hadn’t had to wear out steel drill bits and himself on the safe. It was at least four inches thick, way beyond what would be necessary to protect against burglary or fire.
    Cool, dry air wafted out of the safe, reminding Hunter of the temple.
    “No burning candles,” Lina said, telling him that she was thinking the same thing he was.
    Not surprisingly, Philip ignored his daughter. Whatever emotion had driven his outburst had been spent. Now he was a leaky balloon, deflating a breath at a time.
    She gave him a worried glance but made no move to intervene as he pointed a shaky finger at a small, climate-controlled glass museum box at the back of the vault.
    “There. It was there. Now it’s gone,” Philip said.
    Hunter walked forward to look at the box. He could have checked for fingerprints, but he didn’t have the right equipment—or temperament—right now.
    A glance had told Lina that more than an empty climate-controlled box filled the vault. The walls were a mosaic of shelves and niches and cases. Boxes had been stacked waist-high, leaving very little floor space to move around. She realized that, unbelievably, the reason the jade pendant and other superb artifacts had been left in the study was that Philip had run out of room in the vault.
    She turned and went to her father, who was leaning against the vault door. His hand hung limply on the handle. His expression was glazed.
    “What was in the box?” Lina asked bluntly.
    He shook his head as if her words were cold water instead of breath. “I…” His voice died. He swallowed. “A codex. Kawa’il’s, I believe.”
    “How long have you had it?”
    He looked confused, irritated. “Years, but what does it matter now? It’s gone!”
    “Years,” she said, her expression a fluid mix of disbelief, anger, and disappointment. “You hid it for years.”
    “I had to study it,” Philip said. “Without me, it’s just drawings on paper. I found it! Once I’ve finished translating it, I’ll publish and take my place with the foremost names in archaeology. But it’s hard, so hard…”
    “What is?” Hunter asked.
    “Translation, of course,” Philip snapped. “The glyphs are very intricate, very idiosyncratic, hard to understand. Almost cryptic.”
    “You never were very good at translation,” Lina said, her voice neutral. “Yet you never asked me to help. Even Mercurio noticed it.”
    “You were on her side,” Philip said. “She’s the one who ruined me with her greed for artifacts and money. Trust you? You must think I’m as stupid as Mercurio did.”
    “What are you talking about?” Lina asked.
    “You. Your mother.”
    “Philip, I was eight years old when you and Celia separated. What on earth makes you believe I was on anyone’s side?”
    “You’re a woman. Selfish. Like her. Just when you were finally old enough to become useful to me, you were mooning after Mercurio. Nobody cares what I want. But I outsmarted all of you.” Philip grinned without humor, more of a grimace. “I found the codex.”
    “A work whose meaning you could barely decipher, much less truly appreciate,” Lina said. “So you hid it for years and picked away at something that was as far beyond your reach as the back side of the moon.”
    “I made progress,” Philip said defensively. “Glyphs aren’tas impossible as people like you make them out to be. They just require more intelligence than most people have. Especially these glyphs. History as allegory, just like the Popol Vuh, worse than the Chilam Balam . All but useless to a real archaeologist.”
    Hunter looked at Lina.
    “I