Isle of Shadows by Tracy Higley

Author:Tracy Higley [Higley, Tracy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2021-02-28T16:00:00+00:00

22

Tessa scrambled to her feet but did not touch the body. Her breath came in short gasps. What was a body doing here? Could it have caused the water to fail? No, that was preposterous.

Nikos set the lamp in the mud and kneeled. He felt the man’s neck with his hands.

“What are you doing?”

“I am seeing if his heart still beats.”

“He is dead, Nikos.”

He sat back and picked up the lamp. “Who is he?”

“I have never seen him before. He is Greek, I think.”

Nikos leaned over the man’s body. A thin line of blood traced a path from his mouth to his ear. He half-turned him and waved the lamp behind. “Here.” He brought the lamp to the man’s head. “He was struck with something.”

Tessa took a deep breath, then coughed, covering her mouth with the back of her hand. “Murdered, then?”

He laid the body on its back again. “Whoever he was, he got in the way of something.”

Tessa pointed to the far-right channel at the foot of the splitting basin. “He got in the way of that.”

Water lapped at the mouth of the channel but could do little more than trickle around the edges of a man-made blockage. Piled rocks covered the opening and debris plugged whatever crevices existed, completely diverting the water.

Tessa looked across the body at Nikos and nodded. There was some satisfaction in having solved part of the mystery. “Spiro sent someone to tell the Jews the water would fail. Then he blocked the aqueduct so that it would. And murdered this man in the process.”

“And when the Jews went to the southeast district to get water, the people there were already incited by the guard’s murder to believe that the Jews meant them harm.”

Tessa waved a hand at the channel, then the body. “All of this to discredit Glaucus?”

Nikos stood. “It seems extreme. But perhaps there is more to his plan than we yet see.”

Tessa sighed. “More importantly, we have no proof it is Spiro who is behind all of this.”

“There is one person who may have spoken to Spiro.”

Tessa lifted her eyebrows and waited.

“The man who says he saw a Jew murder the guard.”

It was a logical point. “We must go to the southeast district.”

Nikos retrieved the lamp from mud and deposited it in a crevice in the rock wall. He crossed to the edge of the basin, placed one hand in the mud at the side of the stone wall, then swung his body over and splashed into the water.

Tessa jumped back from the splash. “What are you doing?”

“Clearing the channel.” He looked up at her in confusion. “What did you expect?”

By the gods. Did he have to fix everything he saw?

“We don’t have time for this! We need to find that witness, then return to Glaucus’s house before someone discovers that he—and I—are not there!”

Nikos waded to the mouth of the channel, his arms held above the chest-high water. “How long do you think it will take for the magistrates to send someone to repair the water problem?”

“I do not know! It is not our concern.

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