Keep clear of the Strega, too. That meant Valentina and Claudia and Barducci's tavern--again, unless Caesare ordered differently.
Going back meant more than facing Caesare--it meant figuring a way to pay the damn bills with no money. Rent was paid until the end of the month--but that was only one week away. Borrow? From whom? Maria didn't have any to spare. Not Caesare--
Marco gnawed his lip, and thought and thought himself into a circle. No choice. Has to be Caesare. Or beg an advance from Ventuccio. Have to eat humble pie twice. Charity. Hell.
Sometimes it seemed as if it would be a lot easier to find one of the marsh bandits and taunt them into killing him; God knew it wouldn't take much. But he hadn't fought and fought and fought to stay alive this long just to take the easy way out.
Last possibility--that Caesare would tell him to stay. That Caesare would trust to the Jesolo marshes to kill him, rather than killing him outright. Well, wasn't staying what Marco had figured on doing in the first place?
All right, if Caesare told him to stay in the marshes--well, Marco would stay. At least this time he'd arrived equipped to do a little better than just survive. Not much, but a little. So long as he could keep clear of the bandits, he'd manage. And he and Benito could go back to the old routine--at least he'd be near enough to keep in touch.
Now--the Montagnards--have I screwed up there too?
* * *
Benito waded through mud and freezing water; over his ankles mostly, sometimes up to his knees. His legs were numb, his teeth were chattering so hard he couldn't stop them, and his nose was running. He kept looking over his shoulder, feeling like he was being watched, but seeing nothing but the waving weeds that stood higher than his head. There was a path here, of a sort, and he was doing his best to follow it. If he hadn't been so determined to find his brother, he'd have turned tail and run for home a long time ago.
Rafael de Tomaso had told him the whole messy story, and had admitted that he had advised Marco to go and hide out for a week or two until the thing could blow over. Benito had gotten a flash of inspiration right then, and hadn't waited to hear more--he'd lit off over the roofs again--
It had taken him half an hour to reach the apartment in Cannaregio--
To discover Marco's belongings stripped, right down to the books. The fact that it was only Marco's things ruled out thieves. Stuff gone, plus hiding, added up to "marshes" to Benito.
So he put on every shred of shirt and cotte he had, and two pairs of pants, and made for the roofs again.
He had to get down to the roadways by the time he reached Castello. By then he had gotten the notion that it might just be a good idea to let Maria and Caesare know where Marco had gone, and to let them know he was headed out after him.
Damn fool Rafael, he'd cursed, more than once. Damn marshes almost killed Marco before this--hell, it could do it now! Damn fool city-dweller, thinks living in the Jesolo in wintertime, in the middle of the Aqua alta, is like living in the city--
So he'd looked around for a boatman, knowing that boat-folk stuck together, knowing that what he told one would be halfway across town by midmorning.
"Hey!" he'd yelled at the first head that poked out of a small pirogue's cabin to peer at him, bleary-eyed, in the dawnlight. "Hey--you know Maria Garavelli?"
"Might," said the bargee; old, of dubious gender.
"Look, you find her, you tell her Marco's headed out into the Jesolo marshes and Benito's gone after him." Then he added, shrewdly, "There's money in it."
The whole canaler had popped out of the hidey then, and the creature was jerking at his tie-rope as Benito continued his run down to the sandbars off the eastern point of Castello and the "path" Marco had told him about. He hoped he was right about the tide. You could only get across there at dead-low.
Marco had talked so casually about walking in among the islands and out into the Jesolo. Benito was finding out now that it was anything but easy. For one thing, he could hardly tell where he was going, what with the reeds being so high. For another, it was hard to follow this so-called "path." It was prone to having deep washouts where least expected. He was wet to his collar, and mired to his waist, and it was a good thing that wool clothing stayed warm when wet, or he'd have been frozen into an icicle by now. The swamp was eerily silent, the only sounds being the splashing and sucking noises of his own passage and the murmur of a breeze in the reeds. It was damned cold. And it smelled to high heaven. Worst of all, Benito wasn't entirely certain that he wasn't lost.
"Marco?" he called, hoping that he was close enough to the area Marco had described Chiano and Sophia living in. He hoped that his brother would be the one to hear him. One heard horrible stories about the marsh-folk. "Marco?"
* * *
Harrow crouched in the cover of the reeds and rushes on the little muck-and-reed hummock Luciano Marina had led him to, watching the boy. Or rather, what he could see of the boy, which from this angle was only the top of his head. So far, this business of guarding Lorendana's kids had been absurdly easy. He'd stayed under cover most of yesterday, watching the boy work on his hideout until he seemed finished, then watching the hideout after the boy crawled into it to sleep. Then Luciano Marina had come to bring him some food and told him to get some sleep. He'd gone back to his hiding place near Luciano's raft. When dawn arrived, so had Luciano Marina. The Strega had given him something to chew on--"keeps the cold away," he'd said--and sent him back to his watching-place.
So far all that the boy had done was to make a pocket-sized fire and boil a pot of water for drinking. Other than that, he'd sat on the island for the past hour or more, hidden in the reeds, not moving. Harrow chewed the bitter-tasting, woody stuff Luciano Marina had given him. It made his head buzz pleasantly, and did, indeed, keep the cold away. He wondered what the kid was up to. Meditating? Neither Luciano Marina nor the vision of Lorendana had said anything about the boy being mystical. But it was a possibility, given the Goddess's interest in him.
Well, whatever, it was certainly proving to be a lot easier than he'd thought it was going to be--
He was too well trained to jump at the sudden sound of a shout, echoing across the marsh. It was the voice of a boy calling out a name, echoing out of the depths of the swamp.
"Marco?" It was so distorted he couldn't really tell what direction it was coming from. "Marco?"
Someone was looking for young Valdosta! He focused his attention on the boy just in time to see him slide off the islet and into the reeds, fast as a lizard and nearly as silently. Harrow saw the weeds shake once--and the boy was gone.
* * *
Saints!
That was Benito's voice, echoing among the islets. If Marco could hear him, it was damn sure others could. For all of his younger brother's savvy about the streets and canals of Venice, Benito had no real understanding of the dangers which lurked in the marshes.
Marco slid off the islet, skidding on sharp-edged, rustling grass, slipping on icy mud patches. He splashed down onto the path, ignoring the knifelike cold of the water, and then began moving as quickly and quietly as he could. He wove through the reeds, hoping he'd get to his brother before anyone else did. But he must get there without getting ambushed himself. Marco made scarcely more noise than a snake, keeping his feet under the icy water to avoid splashing, slipping between the clumps of dry, rattling rushes rather than forcing his way through them. Benito's one hope was that at this time of year, most of the really bad locos were deeper into the marsh than this.