Sabo took her to the cargo hold, in the very deepest part of the ship. The majority of the weight they carried there consisted of massive stones, but there were also old books and glass items. Everything was dusty, and the whole place had the scent of earth about it.
Koala sat at a desk in the corner of the room, an open book before her. She was grunting and groaning over it, but sat up straight when she noticed Robin, and shot a look at Sabo and Hack.
“Ugh! No, Sabo! And Hack, too! I told you not to tell Robin about this,” Koala cried out.
“But you know this is beyond your understanding, Koala,” Sabo responded.
“You could stand to ask her for help. Robin’s here on this ship because she understands and sympathizes with us. She’s on our side,” Hack chimed in.
But Koala was resolute. She puffed out her cheeks and groused, “Then there’s no point! I have to figure this out myself. Also, this is my personal project. It’s not an official task that people are counting on me to do.”
“But you want to figure it out, don’t you?” Sabo asked, pulling out a stone slate from the piles of books to show to Robin. It was etched with a great number of strange symbols, which could have been either art or writing, spaced in even intervals.
“So you’re deciphering the ancient writing,” Robin deduced.
Koala nodded and looked away awkwardly. “I know that it’s an impossible task. It’s not like I’m an expert or anything.”
“Would I be correct in guessing that all of the cargo in this hold was extracted from some kind of ruin or another?” Robin asked, glancing around the room.
“We found this stuff in a crumbling ruin in a conflict zone. We thought it could very easily wind up being destroyed if the fighting went on. So we took custody of the site, and arranged to send these relics to a university that was willing to take them,” Sabo explained.
“And we’re including the texts we had at Baltigo in the batch. Better that they be used for scholarly research than remain in the Revolutionary Army’s hands,” added Hack.
“According to local legend, it was the palace ruins of the Eucaly civilization,” Koala said. “We should be arriving at the port tomorrow midday; that’s where the research institute is. In other words, I have until then to figure this out.”
Robin nodded at these explanations and ran a finger along the stone piled up in the cargo hold. The surface was coated with a fine layer of gray dust.
“I’m sorry, Robin,” Koala stammered, casting a look upward. “I know archaeologists don’t look kindly on removing articles from dig sites. Not everyone in the organization was in favor of taking them out of the ground. But—”
“No,” Robin said firmly, cutting her off. “The worst thing that could have happened would have been for the ruins to be destroyed by those who don’t understand their value, and for historical treasures to be lost forever. Your decision guaranteed that these irreplaceable relics would escape the fires of war. Plus…”
She was looking down at the notes on the desk. They were jammed tight with Koala’s handwriting, which Robin had grown very familiar with over the past two years. She had copied down the ancient writing, and it was clear from the nature of the scribbles that she had been trying every method she could think of to decipher it.
“As an archaeologist, I find it very heartening that you’re so eager to hear the voices of history,” she finished, beaming. Her smile caused Koala to grin ear to ear and laugh sheepishly. Even Sabo and Hack found their expressions softening into smiles.
“Do you know anything about the Eucaly civilization, Robin?” Hack asked.
Robin shook her head. “I’m afraid that I’m mainly familiar with the name,” she said.
It was a small city-state that had existed a few centuries ago, she recalled. The city-state had formed as the result of friction between two major nations surrounding it, and had managed to maintain independence despite several attempted invasions, until it was ultimately absorbed by a neighboring country and vanished. Or so it was said—nothing certain was known about it. Now the former region of the Eucaly was a conflict zone, meaning that research couldn’t be conducted on its historical sites. Knowledge of it was surely fading, even among archaeologists.
“There’s one thing I can say for certain, however,” Robin remarked. “This isn’t a stone slate, but fired clay.”
“What? Really?” Koala said, looking at the slab with wide eyes.
Over time, writing carved into soft clay would dry out and fade away. Information that needed to be stored for a long time would’ve been carved into stone, so she had assumed this material was stone. It was certainly as hard as rock.
“You said that it was excavated from the site of a palace. I think there was likely a fire at the castle. The clay slabs would have been baked in the heat until they turned to ceramic, and they remained intact in the ground until today.”
She traced the surface of the tablet with her long finger. It was wonderfully preserved, a result of being stored underground and not exposed to the air.
“In any case, without any clues it’s going to be difficult to crack this one.”
“That’s what I was thinking,” Koala agreed, gloomily. She picked up her notes from the desk. “At first I pored through all of the texts, looking for anything that seemed similar. You never know; maybe it could help, right? But I didn’t find anything, so I tried the next best method.”
“You tried examining each distinct figure, trying to guess its meaning from the shape.”
“Right. That didn’t work at all. The only one I’m sure about is this one.”
Koala pointed at a single character right around the center of the tablet: