The Nineteenth Name

Malta, 1676. Plague has emptied a tenth of the island, and seventeen-year-old Nico Grech takes work as scribe to a disgraced anatomist inside the harbour quarantine station — not for the wage, but to learn who signed the decree that named his dead brother as the man who brought the pestilence ashore. Then the record-keeper is found poisoned behind a bolted door, a numeral painted beside it in red ochre, and the gates are sealed for forty days. Someone inside is counting.