The field lab smelled of peat and preservative. Outside, a gray Scottish morning pressed against the windows of the converted barn, rain just beginning to streak the glass. Inside, Margaret and Alasdair bent over the printouts that had just arrived from the University of Aberdeen.
The figurines sat in their conservation trays, gleaming dully under the lab lights. Seven silver animals—boar, hound, salmon, eagle, serpent, bull, and the enigmatic Pictish beast—each perhaps four or five centimeters long. David had spent hours examining them, photographing the symbols incised across their bodies like tattoos. Crescents and V-rods, double discs and Z-rods, the geometric vocabulary he'd been studying since graduate school. Seeing it here, in silver that had been buried for fifteen centuries, made the symbols feel less like a code to crack and more like a language someone had actually spoken.
Now Alasdair looked up from the printouts, his expression caught between excitement and disbelief.
"Iridium," he said. "Trace amounts in every figurine. But here's the thing—each one shows two distinct signatures."
He spread the printouts across the workbench. Seven columns, each split into paired values.
"There's a common baseline in all seven—identical ratios, like they all came from the same source. But layered on top of that, each figurine has a second signature that's completely unique. The boar's secondary marker is different from the hound's is different …
