Beautiful Sacrifice

your discrimination and finesse.”
    Smiling, Crutchfeldt drew Lina into the larger room at the end of the hall. “Your mother is a woman of rare archaeological understanding and political expertise.”
    Lina made a sound that said she was there.
    Hunter watched from beneath hooded eyes. He wanted to hug her, to tell her she was doing a great job, but that wasn’t in the rules of the game they were playing.
    Carefully Lina didn’t look at Hunter. Being civil to the odious Simon Crutchfeldt was like jamming splinters into her flesh. All that kept her from screaming at her smug host was the memory of bullets powdering concrete near her feet and the cruel intimacy of a man’s blood welling up between her fingers.
    “You’ve barely looked at the headdress, my dear,” Crutchfeldt said. “It’s one of my most recent acquisitions from your mother.”
    “I’m still…overwhelmed by the blackware,” Lina managed.
    Dutifully she looked where her host was pointing. Her breath came in hard and stayed there, aching, until she thought she would explode.
    The artifact was extraordinary. The wood, clay, and what were probably woven fastenings looked far too new to be as old as her gut said they were. The colorful feathers were frayed and brittle, possibly as old as what they decorated. The band of glyphs that would have wrapped around a priest’s skull were in the style of other finds from Reyes Balam lands.
    What Lina could see of the glyphs told of power and prestige, nobility and the jaguar, god-smoke and knowledge. All that was missing was the distinct glyph signifying Kawa’il.
    “Celia sold this to you?” Lina asked neutrally.
    “She knew it would require a particularly discriminating buyer,” Crutchfeldt said.
    His tone said that “discriminating” was another word for “unquestioning.”
    Silently Hunter wondered why Crutchfeldt was baiting Lina. Perhaps it was simply because he could. Perhaps he had a more sinister purpose.
    Servants moved behind them at the far end of the hallway, cleaning house and calling in soft Spanish to one another about church and children, faithless men and the need for more money.
    Hunter hoped no one was armed, but assumed some of the faithless men under discussion worked as guards for their host. As much money as was on display here required guarding. And weapons.
    “You haven’t seen this before?” Crutchfeldt asked Lina blandly, referring to the headdress. “Celia assured me it was from Reyes Balam land.”
    “I don’t spend much time on the digs there anymore,” Lina replied. “The glyphs are correct for artifacts we’ve found in the past.”
    “You’re certain.”
    “As I’m sure you know,” Lina said, her smile all teeth, “glyphs are as much individual art as shared cultural meaning. Rather like Chinese calligraphy, in fact. Uniformity wasn’t prized. Elegance and originality were.”
    Crutchfeldt tried to say something.
    Lina didn’t let him.
    “Each artist,” she said, “took commonly understood symbols and raised them to new levels of communication and beauty. Meaning becomes transformed according to the position of a glyph or the choosing of one glyph instead of others that had similar denotations but different connotations. A noble could be subtly mocked by his glyph artisan, yet the skill in execution was itself a compliment to the noble’s ego.”
    Hunter wanted to high-five Lina. Crutchfeldt looked like a cat being stroked just right. Praise the artifact, praise the discriminating owner.
    Crutchfeldt had an unusual appetite for appreciation.
    “I admit I don’t really understand glyphs except at an aesthetic level,” he said, but his confidence belied his words. “The style on that mask is particularly pleasing to me. Celia assures me it is the hallmark of Reyes Balam goods.”
    Hunter tried not to think about how prime it would feel to introduce Crutchfeldt’s smug face to the marble floor.
    “The surviving priest-kings were blessed with the cream of the surviving artisans,” Lina said. It was her classroom voice, confidently neutral in the face of a student with an agenda.
    “And the Reyes Balam family has been blessed with an industrious archaeologist and a politically astute businesswoman,” Crutchfeldt said.
    Still digging for something, Hunter thought, disgusted. But he wasn’t worried about Lina. If she hadn’t lost her temper yet, he doubted she would.
    Lina managed a nod that might be misunderstood as gracious. “Celia