Page 78 of Empire of Shadows

They might have learnedso much.

Rage rose up in her like a wave, inextricably entwined with a terrible sense of helplessness.

“How often is it like this?” Ellie demanded.

“Most of the time,” Bates flatly replied. “And if it’s not, that doesn’t last. I never know what I’m going to find when I make it back to a site—how much will have been defaced or carried off.”

“But that’s awful!” she burst out. “Surely someone must find a way to stop it!”

“Like who?” he retorted. “You think the guys at the top care about a bunch of bones? And I don’t know that it’d be much better if they did. The only people who do excavations around here are rich types with the connections to pull government strings, and they’re all just looking to add to their collections. Maybe if you’re lucky, some of the stuff ends up in a museum somewhere on the other side of the world.”

Bates’s words were tight, sharp, and laced through with frustration.

“Museums are places of public learning,” Ellie returned automatically, a bit shocked by the intensity of his response.

“Think Cedric Barrow is ever going to see one?” he pushed back. “Or Ximena and Diego Linares?” He gave a cold shrug. “Who knows? Maybe some of the stuff from right here will turn up in one of your museums. From what I’ve seen, they’re not too particular about how the artifacts they show off in their fancy cases got there.”

“You’re angry,” Ellie noted a bit numbly.

“Yeah—I guess maybe I am!” Bates’s tone rose to nearly a yell. “I guess maybe it’s occurred to me that if the museums weren’t so happy to buy whatever trinkets turned up on offer without asking the right questions about where they came from, there wouldn’t be so much of a market for looted antiquities. And maybe I wouldn’t have to keep stumbling across places likethis!”

He waved a hand sharply over the destruction that lay before them, and then caught himself, dropping his arm back to his side. He sat down on the floor at the edge of the sprawl of debris.

“Sorry,” he said tiredly. “I’m making an ass of myself.”

Ellie knelt down beside him.

“No,” she said quietly. “You aren’t.”

He let his head fall back against the wall.

“I just… think it might be my fault,” he confessed.

“Yourfault?” Ellie echoed with shock.

He turned his head and met her gaze with a look as devastated as the broken pots at her feet.

“I make the maps,” he helplessly replied.

Something inside Ellie’s chest twisted tightly.

She looked out across the terrible destruction of the cavern. The discovery should have been a moment out of a dream—Ellie’s first, real glimpse of the ancient past. She could have learned from what she held in her hands rather than just her endless piles of books.

Instead, all she could feel was loss.

“I stopped adding new sites to my surveys two years ago.” Bates closed his eyes as he rested his head against the stones. “I record whatever I can on my own and file the notes back at the Rio Nuevo. I’m the colony surveyor and I’mlyingabout what’s out there. And the worst part is, I’m not even sure it matters.EverythingI do makes it easier for other people to get out into unexplored areas like this one… and everything I find still has a nasty habit of ending up like this.”

Ellie had no idea what to say. There was nothing shecouldsay—nothing that would put the broken bones back together again.

“Thanks,” he said after a little while.

“But I haven’t done anything,” Ellie admitted awkwardly.

“You listened,” he replied.

He pushed back to his feet and held out his hand.

“We should go back,” he said.

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