I wince as the medic cleans my wounds with a rag soaked in alcohol. He smirks, like it’s a ridiculous thing for a necromancer to feel pain. I wish I had the strength to muster some retort, or slap him around or something. Regrettably, the blood loss has left me too faint for either. I doubt I’d be able to even stand up right now.

  I close my eyes tight, trying my best to ignore my blaring headache. I need to focus on the dead man’s poem. What in Hades does any of it mean? A turtle’s tomb, a man bedding a lion… none of it makes any sense. Except for one line, the second one: a plot to slay a sister-loving King. That was an obvious reference to King Ptolemy.

  Three years ago, the King divorced and exiled his first wife, only to marry his older sister, Arsinoe II. Their marriage was a little over a year ago now, and it’s safe to say the decision has created some controversy among the nobility. Ironically, it’s somewhat endeared a lot of the local populace to him. It’s what the old Pharaohs used to do, apparently—marry within the family to consolidate bloodlines. Still, the nobility in Egypt is all Greek now, and we tend to frown upon things like incest.

  My neck stings something fierce, and I wince again.

  “Couldn’t you apply that a little more delicately?” I bark at the medic.

  “Oh, forgive me,” the old man chuckles. “I wasn’t aware you required such a delicate hand. I promise to be less rough.”

  Gods, if I had the strength to show this bastard how rough I could be. But I’m losing focus. I think back to the King. Is there a plot to kill the King? Was Herodotus trying to warn me about it? But then again, that didn’t quite make sense, either. Despite being an advisor, he seemed to not be fond of the King. There were rumors circulating in court in the weeks leading up to his death that he had spoken quite critically of Ptolemy’s rule, and of course, his incestuous marriage. His skull even called me a Philadelphian after it bit me. In fact, it only became so enraged in the first place upon Theodosios barging in and speaking the King’s name. So what in the world did that mean?

  “Ow!”

  The medic ignores me, and continues to tighten the bandage around my neck. I wriggle free from his grasp, somehow mustering the strength to stand.

  “I wasn’t done,” The medic says annoyedly.

  “You can finish while I inspect the body,” I tell him. “I don’t have any more time to waste.”

  In truth, I’m just hoping he leaves me alone. In my mind, I know that he’s saving my life, and that my injuries from the attack still require his attention. But I can’t really care about that right now. His poking and prodding and bandage-tightening keeps interrupting my trains of thought, and that’s something I can’t afford. It’s bad enough with Philon gone—he’s always someone I can bounce ideas off of. And my head still hurts.

  “You should rest,” the medic scolds me as he finishes dressing my wounds.

  “Absolutely not,” I reply. “Every hour I waste is another hour a killer roams free.”

  “Suit yourself,” the medic shrugs. “But you’ll pass out in an hour or so if you don’t. And lots of fluids.”

  “Yes, yes,” I say absent-mindedly, shooing him away like a buzzing gnat. He leaves, finally. I whisper a prayer that he never becomes a suspect in all this, only so I never have to speak to him again.

  I begin my inspection of the body. Normally, I’d inspect the body before the interrogation, but I wanted to hear from the corpse first this time. It sounds foolish in hindsight, but I thought it would have been more helpful. Also, the longer you wait after someone dies to speak to them, the less coherent they are. Herodotus’ body was found two hours ago now, but he could have died anytime in the past few days. His body seemed in good shape overall—his skin hadn’t decayed until his skull ripped itself from the body and assaulted me. That was another question that needed answering—I’ve never seen a body accelerate its own decomposition like that. This case got stranger and stranger the more I thought about it. Not a good sign for whatever’s to come.

  Thunder booms outside the lighthouse. I look out the window. A torrent of rain cascades down onto the windowpane, sounding like the beat of a thousand little drums. The storm’s bad. It was already raining heavily when Philon and I got here, but in the hour or so since my arrival, it’s gotten much worse. Lightning flashes, and out of the corner of my eye I see something outside. There’s a man out there, in the sea. He looks like he’s in a river boat, but that would be impossible in these waters during calm weather, let alone in a storm. It’s dark, and I can’t make out any of his features—I can barely see him. I rub my eyes, and look again, but he’s gone. Where did he go? I scan the surface of the water, and see nothing. I’m probably seeing things. Still, an uneasy anxiety creeps into my gut. This is a strange night, and if I was a betting man, I’d say things were bound to only get stranger.

  I try my best to shake it off, and return to the body. A wave of exhaustion suddenly hits me. I’m way too tired to do an autopsy right now. I strain my eyes to keep them open, and rub my temples to dull the pain. I need to sleep, but that’s not even remotely a possibility. I slap my cheeks to stay awake, and run my hands over the body, trying to feel anything out of the ordinary. So far, nothing. There’s no clear wound or trauma that can point to a cause of death. Nothing can ever be easy for me. I lower my head until it’s almost touching the body, scanning every pore just to be sure. He stinks to high Olympus. The body’s wet—did the guards drag it out of the sea? If so, how did they find it in the first place? I make a mental note to ask them later.

  Still nothing. I sigh, and turn over the body. Poor Herodotus had buttocks like meager slabs of sandstone, and the thighs and arms of a baby lamb. He’s fortunate to not have been born in Sparta. Still, despite his atrophied figure, there’s still nothing—wait a second. What the hell is that?

  I blink my eyes to make sure I’m not dreaming. Nope, still there. There’s a hole in the back of Herodotus’ neck, about the size of a large coin. The vertebra that would normally be there is gone. No blood or other fluids leaking out of it either—just a hollow, black hole in his neck. That’s weird. That’s really weird.

  “Dragon,” The magistrate Theodosius calls to me, sauntering into the room. Interrupting me must be his favorite pastime.

  “It’s Drakon,” I correct him, letting my irritation show.

  “Whatever. Need I remind you that the King himself has assigned me to—”

  “The King himself has assigned me to determine the nature of this murder,” I snap. “And every time you barge in here and disturb me, that is interrupted. So please. Leave me to my work.”

  “Nevertheless, I cannot do my work if you do not let me observe you.”

  I can feel the anger rising in my chest. I want to say something else, but I know he’ll just keep pestering me until I relent. If he is Herodotus’ killer, he’s doing an awful job of making himself scarce. Maybe he doesn’t have anything to do with it. But then why did the body react so much to his presence? Only one way to find out.

  “Fine,” I concede. I produce a scalpel from my bag, and hand it out to him. “Here.”

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  “W-what?”

  “I’m conducting an autopsy. I need help cutting open the cadaver. Come, I’ll show you how.”

  “But that’s not my job.”

  “Nor is it mine. Yet, if you take a look around you, you’ll notice my wonderful assistant Philon is currently away. In fact, he is away in order to tend to the skull which you so conveniently angered with your first little outburst. Really, I ought to thank you. My doctor says I’ve just got too much blood in my neck right now, and that mauling you caused really helped straighten my levels out.”

  Theodosios remained frozen, his eyes wide in fright.

  “If you want to be in this room,” I tell him. “You will participate. I will put up with your presence only if you are not a hindrance to the investigation. So make yourself useful, or you can leave.”

  “I… I’m squeamish,” he whined. “I can’t stand the sight of blood.”

  “So was I,” I tell him. A little white lie, for my own amusement. “And there’s only one way out of it.”

  I hold the scalpel out to him. He stares at it for a moment. Then, to my surprise, he takes it.

  “Alright,” he said. “Let it be known that Theodosios of Alexandria is no coward. Show me how.”

  Color me impressed. Still, we’ll see how long his resolve lasts. I take a moment, weighing whether it’s actually worth it or not to go through with all this. A novice like Theodosios was likely to ruin my autopsy, especially if he became hysteric. On the other hand, I had already committed to this, and there was no doubt in my mind that any outcome of this would be absolutely hilarious. Hm….

  Ah, well. I’m incorrigible, at the end of the day.

  “Make an initial incision here,” I instruct him, pointing to the top of the sternum. “There’s a bone here, so there’ll be a little resistance. You need to push past it until you feel it give, but no more than that. Then work your way down.”

  “Okay,” Theodosios said, his voice trembling. He took the scalpel with both hands (textbook rookie move), and plunged it into Herodotus’ chest. I had to keep myself from laughing—he did the damn thing with his eyes closed. I grab his arms, stopping him before he does too much damage to the internal organs.

  “Alright, alright,” I tell him. This was a bad idea—I’m having too much fun watching this simpleton flounder. I need to stay focused on the matter at hand. But his eyes are still closed tight, like a child trying to shut out a pretend monster. I swallow a laugh.

  “Here, look,” I tell him. “It’s not so bad. Just take a look. It’s just a little blood—all of us have some.”

  I watch Theodosios open his eyes. This is the moment I was waiting for—a high-pitched shriek as he sees it, or maybe he’ll even faint. Why am I looking forward to this? Gods, maybe there is something wrong with me. But, to my surprise, he doesn’t do any of those things. Instead a look forms on his face that I was not expecting at all—confusion.

  “There isn’t any,” he said.

  “What?”

  “There isn’t any blood,” he repeated. “Isn’t he supposed to be bleeding?”

  I follow his gaze, looking at the incision. He’s right—there isn’t a drop of blood. I take the scalpel from him, lifting up a bit of the skin. It isn’t even coagulated—it’s just gone. There’s nothing underneath the skin.

  I take a moment to try and think about what could possibly explain it. I think Theodosios asks another question, but I don’t even hear what it was. I stand, taking the scalpel and continuing the incision. This is no time to play with the magistrate—I had almost forgotten how unusual this case is, how fascinating every development had been so far. I slice the cadaver, down to the pelvis, up to either shoulder, to open the chest and abdomen completely. It’s the same all the way through—not a single drop of blood. I take a pair of forceps from my bag, using them to pry open the flaps of skin to look at the inside.

  I don’t even know how to describe what I saw. I actually gasped, and dropped my equipment. The metal forceps clattered loudly on the floor, and I took a step back trying to make sense of it. Curious, Theodosios took a glance, and that was all he could stand—he covered his mouth with his hand, fleeing the room so he could retch into a bucket or something. I couldn’t even enjoy that—I just stood there, paralyzed in confusion, and, to be honest, a little fear. In all my years as a necromancer, throughout hundreds of murder investigations, I have never in my life seen anything like this. And I’m terrified.

  There was nothing inside Herodotus’ body. And I mean nothing. Sure, his bones were there, aside from his skull, which I realize now was foolish to remove. But everything else was gone. No blood, no internal organs. No muscles even, like they had all been melted down into a liquid and sucked out of him with a straw. But that didn’t make any sense. Of course, any cadaver missing their blood and organs would already raise alarms, but what was more unusual to me was that the body appeared completely normal from the outside. If the muscles were really gone, I would have noticed it immediately. You can’t just remove someone’s muscles and expect them to look the same—he would look like a shriveled old prune, a curtain of skin draped over a hard, boney carapace. But the body didn’t look like any of that. It was a completely normal looking corpse until I opened it up.

  I pace back and forth in the room, my mind swimming with questions. So there’s no sign as to what actually killed Herodotus, except for a coin-sized hole in the back of his damn neck. Oh, and his body’s been robbed of its blood, muscles, and organs. Now I know why Herodotus was in such a foul mood when I awakened him. Typically, as a rule of thumb, dead bodies aren’t incredibly fond of missing all of their fucking internal organs.

  I take a deep breath to calm myself. My first logical thought process leads me to think the culprit must be Egyptian. After all, removing the organs was a vitally important part of the mummification of Pharaohs. But Herodotus wasn’t a Pharaoh—he was just an advisor to the king, and Greek, to boot. Why would an Egyptian mummify him? It’s an incredibly important and sacred rite to them. Even then, the mummification process didn’t look like this—not at all. You had to cut open the body to remove the organs, and there were no marks of incision anywhere on his body before I cut it up. That’s what’s killing me—the outside of the cadaver is completely intact, unbothered, unscathed. Except for that hole. What in the world is up with that hole?

  My migraine returns. It’s bad enough that I have to grab the windowsill to keep standing. I need to sleep. Not happening, though. Still, it’s hard enough to process any of this, and harder in my current state. I close my eyes tight, trying to push through it. I return to the matter of the hole. It’s the only distinguishing mark on his body. That doesn’t necessarily make it the cause of death—Herodotus could have been poisoned, for example. Of course, I’ll never know whether he was poisoned or not, given that he’s conveniently missing all of his organs. Is that why they did it? It can’t be. There are far easier ways of destroying murder evidence. If they had the time and resources to extract the man’s blood, organs, and muscles, they could have done any number of things to destroy the body itself. But they didn’t. The body was beautifully intact, somehow looking just like any other dead body despite missing its muscles. How did they do that? And why?

  A thought occurs to me. If the body looked normal before I sliced it open, it should look the same if I put it back. So I do. I return the flaps of skin to their natural positions, and look at the body. No dice. Whatever it was that made the body keep its form, it was gone now. It looked exactly how it should with no muscles—like a skeleton with a flesh-covered sheet over it. So what helped keep it intact in the first place? Maybe the body was pumped with air? But no—it would have escaped through the hole in the neck. Speaking of the hole, that must be how all the organs and muscles were extracted. There was no other hole or cut in the body, after all, so all of them must have been removed through there. But the hole was far too small—even if you found some way to reduce some of the organs and muscles to a liquid form, the sheer volume of many of them would give you trouble. It doesn’t make sense. None of this makes any sense.

  A knock on the door.

  “Enter,” I say.

  It’s the lightkeeper. He's Egyptian, and I finally learned his name—Djehuti.

  “Sir,” he says, bowing. “I have gathered everyone in the lighthouse, and told them they won’t be allowed to leave until you’ve concluded your investigation. Not that they’d be able to anyway—the storm is far too harsh right now. Leaving the Pharos for any reason would be incredibly dangerous.”

  “So it seems,” I say. “Thank you. Is that all?”

  “No, sir. Some of them have asked to meet you. They were rather indignant at my urging that they remain here, and are looking for an explanation.”

  I sigh. I don’t really have time to indulge random civilians, but then again, one of them could be the murderer. Or they could lead me to the murderer. Or, at the very least, they would help me distract myself from these unanswerable questions about the body.

  I take another look at it. There’s no easy way to say it—I’m not going to find any of the answers just sitting here and continuing to inspect it. Even if I really want to. And I really, really want to.

  “Fine,” I tell Djehuti. “Lead the way.”

  He nods, and leads me out of the observation room. As I leave, my eyes still linger on the body, like it could rear up and attack me at any minute. Hell, with all that’s happened so far, it probably could.