“Ah.” Andreas leaned in. “Can I hold it?”
Dusty slid the pieces back together before handing it to him, and Andreas stepped back a few paces before drawing the sword out fully, angling it to catch the light. Skye caught a glimpse of an intricate pattern stenciled into the silver.
“It is a saber,” Andreas said as Adam approached him for a closer look. “I think perhaps it is Ottoman.”
“Valuable?” Dusty asked.
“Maybe one thousand euros, maybe a lot more.” He shrugged. “You will have to find an expert to examine it, somebody who specializes in these kinds of things.”
“And this was just buried here, in your garden?” Adam marveled. “Hear that, Vic? Maybe we should take Andreas’s advice and get him to dig that plunge pool after all. Who knows what we might unearth.”
Skye smiled wryly. What was it with Andreas and his obsession with plunge pools?
“Is that rust all around the top, do you reckon?” Joy asked.
Dusty licked a finger and rubbed at the stain.
“Not clay or soil,” she said. “Whatever it is, it isn’t budging.”
“You probably shouldn’t lick it,” Mia advised.
Andreas scraped at the same patch with his thumbnail.
“It could be rust,” he allowed, “or perhaps blood.”
“Blood?” Victoria exclaimed, scurrying sideways as Dusty spat onto the ground.
“Told you not to lick it,” Mia drawled.
“You really think it could be blood?” Skye asked Andreas, and he nodded, his deep-set eyes serious.
“Consider what it is,” he said, “and why somebody would choose to bury it.”
They all fell silent at that.
Skye looked again at the saber.
An antique blade buried underground, a bundle of letters sealed behind stone. Six houses abandoned since the war, with nothing and nobody to tell them why. There were secrets here. Secrets that someone had gone to great lengths to hide.
A prickle ran up the back of Skye’s neck.
The past, it seemed, had begun to reawaken.
Sixteen
It was Joy’s suggestion that they decamp to her house for an impromptu party of sorts. She was “bloody proud” of the grill she’d built out back and wanted an excuse to use it.
“You fellas go and get some chicken for souvlaki,” she told Andreas and Adam. “Me and the girls will throw together some salad, not that there’s room to throw much of anything in my kitchen.”
Mia followed Skye, Victoria, and Joy next door, while Louisa and Dusty stayed behind to wash off the day’s dirt.
“How did you get out of the excavating?” Joy asked Mia, who threw her a mischievous grin.
“I promised I’d muck in after walking Bruno, but once we’d got all the way down to the beach, neither of us felt much like moving again, did we, Brunes?”
The dog, who had dutifully accompanied his mistress across to Joy’s and was now splayed out on her kitchen floor, wagged his tail by way of reply.
“He’s a regular little shadow of yours, isn’t he?” Victoriaobserved, tossing her hair over one shoulder. The galley kitchen was so narrow that the tip of her ponytail hit Skye in the eye. “Adam thinks we should adopt one, but I don’t know.”
