'Mercy--' he mumbled, '--what have I let myself in for this time?'
He cast a glance behind Benito. 'Maria--you've got some stake in this too--'
Benito didn't look around, but heard Maria flop down in a chair behind him.
'I think it's no bad idea,' she said. 'Let them stay here. Lots of comings and goings--maybe not all by doors-- confuse the hell out of any watchers.'
Aldanto looked over at Benito again, and Benito had the peculiar feeling of seeing someone quite near his own age looking at him out of those adult eyes for one brief flash.
'Hey, the attics ain't so bad,' he gave a token protest. 'I lived there two years. You get some heat from the house and if you keep quiet you don't get found out and have to move too often. Better than the marshes by a long way.'
Aldanto shook his head. 'I'd rather you were where I could see you.'
Benito shrugged. 'Well, if you let us stay, we stay. But we've got jobs. We'll kick in.'
'You'd better.' That was Maria, behind him.
Caesare shook his head again. Sighed. 'Well then, Benito Valdosta, I think we may have a bargain even if my bones tell me it may well be a partnership made in Hell.'
Benito just grinned 'Hey, not for you, m'lord. But for people acting unfriendly-like? Against a team like the three of us, you, me, and Maria, m'lord Caesare? They haven't a chance!'
* * *
Harrow had panicked at first, when he'd seen who was picking the boys up--he'd broken out of the knot of fighting loco he'd tipped into the water and struggled vainly to get to the gondola before it could carry the boys off. The treacherous bottom had betrayed him. By the time he'd hauled himself out of the washout the two boys were aboard the gondola and being sculled away, back into the shadowed bowels of the city.
Then recollection came to him, and he edged past the brawl back into depths of the swamp, comforted by this new evidence of the Goddess's intervention. Aldanto was former Montagnard; a man with an assassin's knowledge, a snake's cunning, an eel's ways, a duelist's defenses. If the Montagnards were after the boys, what better protection could they have than that of the man who knew most about the ways the Visconti operated, from firsthand experience?
But the Goddess had charged him with watching over them--and Aldanto was only one man; he couldn't be everywhere at once, and he couldn't spend all his time awake. So. That meant Harrow should return to the city--
* * *
Luciano was pleased with his convert's plans. Secretly. The man responded well to manipulation. It was necessary to rant at Harrow about the folly of them until he was hoarse--but Harrow simply held his peace until Luciano ran out of words and then repeated his intentions.
'I'm going back in,' he said simply. 'The Goddess put it on me, the job's not done till She says so. She said to watch the boys, so I'm watching the boys.'
Luciano sighed, 'Can't argue with Her, or you,' he said glumly, concealing his triumph. 'But you got any notion where you're going?'
Harrow nodded, slowly. 'Know where Aldanto lives; know lots of watchin' holes around Castello--'
'You just go to the boy's friends if you run into trouble, hear me? Claudia--that's th' main one. Singer--'
'--works out of Barducci's tavern, lives second floor. You told me that already.' Harrow did not add what he was thinking--that he probably could teach this Strega more than a few things about covert work. He had little respect for female agents; most of them were damned little use out of bed. He was itching to get out and get moving--Luciano had given him some other drug that cleared his mind and fired his feeling of purpose to a near- obsession, and every moment spent dallying only made the urge to get into place stronger.
'All right, get moving,' Luciano growled. 'I can see you've no more interest nor purpose out here.'
Harrow did not wait to hear anything more.
Chapter 40 ==========
