Dream-skip again; stumbling around in water and mud up to his waist, lost in the dark and crying--that was how the marsh-dwellers had found him. And beat him up, and robbed him of everything but his breeches and the paper he kept clutched in one hand. He lay in shallow mud and water; freezing, dazed, hurting and crying. . . .
* * *
He woke crying--but silently, silently. He'd learned since then never to make a noise. He wiped the tears from his face with the tail of his hair, and listened. Nothing. And it was getting on towards sunset, judging by the red that filtered through the basket and the go-to-bed sounds the marshbirds were making.
Oh, God--he was supposed to meet his younger brother Benito at dawn. He had to warn him that They were on the hunt again. Benito could be in as much danger as Marco. But first he had to find Chiano and Sophia.
They would probably be out on their usual squat--the bit of dry sand bar off the end of the Lido. It had formed during the last really big storm, and likely the next one would take it away again, but for now it provided a good spot for clams and driftwood.
Old Sophia and Chiano. As unlikely a couple as ever decorated the face of the lagoon--Sophia maybe forty and looking four hundred, Chiano ten years older and looking thirty. She had been a bargee's wife, until a fifteen-hundred-ton roccaforte with a following wind behind it ran down their small barge and sent her man and kids to the bottom. Chiano claimed to be everything from a stranded Sicilian seaman to the Prince of Damascus.
She was the closest thing to a chirurgeon and healer the marshes boasted, and so was inviolate from most of the mayhem that raged among the marsh-dwellers. He proclaimed himself to be the One True Prophet of the Great Mother herself. He was treated with superstitious care, although Marco was sure that if Chiano hadn't lived with Sophia the marsh-dwellers would have burned him out.
The two of them had found Marco, in pain and half delirious--and for some reason known only to themselves picked him up and carted him back to Sophia's hovel, and nursed him back to a semblance of health. They'd taught him how to survive, during that vague six-month period during which shock had kept him pliant enough to adapt. He'd paid them back for their care by sharing the scroungings that Benito gave him and writing down Chiano's "prophecies." Chiano induced visions with fly agaric and was obviously then in no condition to record his prophecies himself. Why he wasn't dead twenty times over--well . . .
It was a mystery, like where Chiano came from in the first place, or got the paper, or what he did with the pages after Marco filled them with the "holy words" in his careful, clear hand. Chiano kept him safe too. Chiano wasn't big, but the fear that he really might be a witch helped Chiano keep the swamp-dwellers, who wanted a boy, at bay. The swamp gangs wanted runaway boys as their slaves; Big Gianni wanted them for--other things. All of them were crazy, mostly from chewing blue lotos, and no telling what they would do to someone who got between them and what they wanted. But Chiano stood by him until Marco was big enough to fight back and canny enough to hide from what he could not fight.
* * *
Chiano and Sophia were where he expected to find them. They had lit a small fire of driftwood and were grilling fish spitted on reeds over it. They looked like images out of hell; red lit, weather-and-age-twisted faces, avidly watching their cooking dinner.
Marco didn't make much noise, but they heard him anyway. "That you boy?" Chiano called into the dark.
"Si. Chiano, I got trouble."
"Boy, the world got trouble," replied Chiano easily. "Neveryoumind. What's the matter this time? Big Gianni? One of the gangs?"
"Wish it was just that! Somebody jumped me, out at the wharf--a man dressed all in dark clothes, with his face covered, and waiting like he knew I was coming. He had a knife. I think They've found me."
"Damn! That be trouble and more'n ye need!" Sophia coughed. "You got any notion who They be?"
"No more than I ever did. Could be anybody: slave-takers, Schiopettieri, even . . ."
"Milanese," Chiano growled.
"Damn it all, no! Not Milanese; never Milanese. Milanese would be trying to help me, not kill me!"
"I'll believe that when I believe . . ." Sophia hushed Chiano before he could say any more.
"Fine," Marco said, "But whose mama was a Montagnard agent, huh? Who saw Duke Visconti's agents coming and going? So who should know?" It was an old argument.
"And whose mama was probably killed by the order of the Duke Visconti she served, hmm? Marco, leave it, boy. I know more politics than you do. Still, I notice you may have thought Strega. But you didn't say it. You off to give Benito a warning?"
"Got to. He's in danger too."
"Boy--" This was another old argument.
Sophia chimed in forcefully. "No buts! Ye're young; this ain't no life for th' young. We'll be all right."
"She's got the right of it, boy." There was a suspicion of mist in Chiano's slightly crazed eyes. "The Words of the Goddess are complete now, thanks to you. You go--"
Chiano claimed the Words were complete about once a month.
"Look, I'll be back, same as always. Benito won't have any safe place for me, and I won't put danger on those as is keeping him."
For the first time in this weekly litany Chiano looked unaccountably solemn. "Somehow--I don't think so--not this time. Well, time's wasting, boy, be off--or They might find Benito before you do."
Sophia's face twisted comically then, as she glanced between Marco and their dinner; she plainly felt obliged to offer him some, and just as plainly didn't really want to have to share the little they had.
"You eaten?" she asked reluctantly.
Marco's stomach churned. The fear and its aftermath made the very thought of food revolting.
"Grazie; but no. I'm fine."
She smiled, relieved. "Off wi'ye, then, ye'd best hurry."
Marco went, finding the way back to his raft, and poling it out into the black, open water of the lagoon. In the distance were the lights of Venice. But the tide was out. He would have to pole the channels. At least coming back he would be able to run with the turn of the tide at dawn.
* * *
Lots of lights in the city tonight--lots of noise. Marco blessed it all, for it covered his approach. Then remembered--and shame on himself for not remembering before--that it was Solstice Feast. What night of the Feast it was, he couldn't remember; his only calendars were the moon and stars these days, and the seasons. By the noise, probably well into the festival. But that meant Benito would be delayed by the crowds on the bridges and walkways. That might prove a blessing; it gave him a chance to check all around their meeting place under the wharf for more of Them.
He poled all over beneath the wharf, between the maze of pilings, keeping all his senses alert for anything out of the norm. There wasn't anyone lying in ambush that he could find, not by eye nor ear nor scent, so he made the raft fast and climbed up into their meeting place among the crossbeams out near the end of the wharf.
The first time they'd met here--after Marco had slipped into the town with his heart pounding like an overworked drum, and passed Theodoro a note to give to Benito--they hadn't said much. Benito had just wrapped his arms around his brother like he'd never let go, and cried his eyes sore and his voice hoarse. Marco had wanted to cry too--but hadn't dared; Benito would have been shattered. That was the way the first few meetings had gone.