Shadow of Colossus by T. L. Higley

Author:T. L. Higley
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: B&H Publishing Group
Published: 2009-10-30T00:00:00+00:00

TWENTY

Tessa scrambled to her feet, trying not to touch the body. Nikos set the lamp into the mud and kneeled beside it. He felt the man's neck with his hands.

“What are you doing?”

“I am seeing if his heart still beats.”

“He's dead, Nikos.”

A moment later he sat back and picked up the lamp again. “Who is he?”

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

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

Tessa inhaled, 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 the man-made blockage. Rocks had been piled in the opening, and debris plugged whatever crevices existed between the rocks. The water had been completely diverted.

Tessa looked across the body at Nikos, feeling some satisfaction in having solved part of the mystery.

“Spiro sent someone to tell the Jews that the water would fail. Then he blocked the aqueduct so that it would,” she said. “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.”

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

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

Tessa waited.

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

“We must go to the southeast district and find him.”

Nikos retrieved the lamp from the 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?” she yelled.

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

By the gods. Do you have to fix everything you see?

“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! But it's not our concern.”

Nikos glanced her way, his eyes saying more than he seemed willing to speak.

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