"Oh, my God!" Claudia shouted. "There's a corpse in there."
Nino carefully moved her aside.
"Let me see."
He covered his nose before he looked inside, just in case he felt the urge to vomit. Narrowing his eyes, he inclined his head carefully without being entirely sure of what he was going to do once he observed the macabre contents.
"Wait a minute," he said, "this isn't a corpse. It's a piece of leather.
"Oh, thank God," Claudia gasped and moved back close to the box. "I thought I would die from fright... or being disgusted. What do I know! It looked so revolting to me."
Nino stretched out his hand to take hold of the leather.
"Wait, hold on a second. Shouldn't you put gloves on before you try to touch it?"
"You're absolutely right. We shouldn't contaminate the discoveries," he declared.
"I'll bring some gloves from the kitchen."
Once his hands were covered, he very carefully gripped the leather to take it out of the box. It was folded over to form a perfect square, as if whoever had saved it was trying to send a message.
"Is there anything else?" asked Claudia.
"A stone."
"What did you say?"
"That there's only a stone. Nothing else," Nino repeated.
"How weird!"
It was odd, this unusual thing that revealed nothing remarkable at first glance. It was the size of a pear and weighed a little less than half a kilo, something unusual enough given its size. At first glance it gave the impression of having two parts. The wider one was rounded and had several cuts in the upper part. The slimmer one strongly resembled the edge of a dagger, except that instead of a two-sided blade, it had an octagonal tip that stuck out in a very striking way.
"It looks like a spike," observed Claudia.
"Now that you mention it... it could be one."
"I'm also not that sure it's made of stone," she said, holding the piece in her hand. “It may be some type of saline formation."
"A crystal?" Nino asked as he ran his hand along the surface.
“Possibly, but I wouldn't know enough to say what kind."
They put the crystal aside to focus their attention on the piece of leather. The first thing they noticed was that it was well preserved despite all the years spent inside the box.
"Unfold it...but carefully," suggested Claudia.
First, they stretched out one part that resembled a page of a book.
"I think this is some kind of map and from what I can tell, they folded it like this."
The full contents were revealed after they finished opening the other seven parts. The one thing that worried them somewhat was the stitching along the edges formed by the piece of leather.
"Have you checked out the edge of the map?" Nino asked.
"That seemed strange to me, too," she answered, rubbing the upper corner of the map.
"Oh, my God!”
"Don't tell me, don't say it out loud," groaned Claudia, jumping up and down and covering her mouth.
"But it is human skin. I find that fascinating."
"I think it's gross."
"Naturally, but you must admit that you don't come across a map with these features very frequently," Nino declared, proudly showing off his scientific side.
"Of course I recognize that, but it doesn't make it any less revolting."
"Well, try and imagine that's it's cowhide."
"I can't do that."
"Then go away."
"The hell I will," said Claudia, shooting him a murderous glare.
"It disgusts you, you don't want to see it and you don't want to go away. Let's see if you can clear that up."
"What's clear is that you don't have the slightest idea of how to treat a woman."
Having said that, Claudia took hold of the skin and swiftly but surely unfolded the entire map and spread it across the table.
"Let's see what it tells us," she remarked with a disgusted look on her face.
"I like you that way... when you're decisive."
The humanoid figure occupied nearly the entire surface of the table. They immediately deduced that the darkened marks had been burned on to the messenger’s skin when he was still alive. The outlines had lost their definition in many sections, a fact that told them they were dealing with a young man when the skin was burned.
"At least the injuries didn't become infected," said Claudia with a certain amount of relief.
"I don't want to imagine the pain this individual suffered. He must have either been a fanatic or someone with no sense at all."
"Maybe both.”
"That's for sure," Nino concluded. "But what was so important that he would let them torture him this way?"
"Check the line that goes around the different markings."
An irregular circle went across a major portion of the map. A varied assortment of symbols like Xs, squares, triangles, lines and arrows appeared within it.
"I think I know what this is," Nico declared. "Give me a second."
He headed off to his room and brought back a laptop covered with weird stickers. Once he put it down next to the map, he began to type non-stop in the Images section of Google.
"There you go," he said a few second later with great satisfaction. "The ancient walls of the city of Syracuse. You can see it, the design is very similar."
"That's true. Then what we have here must be a map of the city. Now I get it. The lines are streets, probably the major ones, while the arrows are the routes to follow. The squares must be buildings, maybe not all of them, but the most significant ones, so that whoever the people were who read the map could pinpoint their location without any problems."
"The only things we still have to figure out are the Xs and triangles," Nino added.
The two of them remained lost in thought. They observed the map from every possible angle so they wouldn't miss a detail or overlook the legend related to it. They ran their hands over the surface and searched for a hidden layer. They investigated material on the Internet about similar objects. But all to no avail. Until...
"Remember those war maps we studied at the university?" Claudia remarked. "The combat units appeared as triangles in a lot of them."
"Of course! Why didn't I think of that before? That means the Xs must be guard posts, although there's a chance it might be the other way around."
"That's doesn't really matter that much. What's important is that now we know what the map is about.
"It's a war map," Nino indicated.
"More like an assault plan. Don't you see? The plan is to capture the church that marble block mentions."
"The Church of the Dead."
"Exactly!" exclaimed Claudia.
"Get yourself ready so we can go to Syracuse."
"Now?"
"Yes, right now," Nino declared excitedly, giving Claudia the knowing look that passes between co-conspirators.