'If there's one lira missin'--'
Benito pouted, hurt. 'C'mon, Maria, Ventuccio trusts me with cash!'
'I ain't as stupid as Ventuccio,' Maria replied, but with no real force. 'Here.'
She pulled a flat packet out of her skirts, a packet that chinked and was surprisingly heavy. Benito raised a surprised eyebrow. Silver at the least--maybe gold. Something had gone amiss if Giaccomo had sent Maria out to make a pickup of this much coin in broad daylight.
He slipped the package inside his own shirt. 'Keep heading up the canal,' he suggested. 'If it's you they're looking for, an' lookin' for you to head for Giaccomo's, that ought to throw 'em off the scent.'
She snorted, and pushed off from the bank. 'Tell me m'own job, landsman,' she replied scornfully. 'Just you tend to what I give you.'
'Si, milady,' Benito executed a mocking little bow, then danced back along the ledge to the first water-stair up to a walkway.
Behind him he heard Maria swear half-heartedly at him, and grinned.
* * *
Julio Destre had been trailing that canaler Maria for hours--just as the Dandelos had paid him to do. Then he saw her duck under the bridge--and a moment later, saw that bridge-brat Benito do the same.
He snickered to himself. Keeping tabs on the brat after he dropped out of the bridge-gangs and into 'respectability' had been well worth his while, after all.
'Jewel' Destre had graduated from bridge-brat to street bravo in the two years since he and Benito had last tangled. He sported a cheap rapier (that he used like a club) and silk scarves and a constant sneer. There were dozens like Jewel on the walkways of Venice, and 'work' enough to keep all of them in grappa and scarves, if you weren't too particular about who you worked for. Jewel certainly wasn't. The Casa Dandelo might derive its money from slave-trading but their ducats spent like anyone else's.
No one had ever beaten Jewel at anything--no one but bridge-brat Benito, that is. Benito had gotten to Jewel's girl, gotten her off the walkways and out of the gang, into the purview of his mentor Claudia.
Which wasn't what the brat had intended, but before you could say 'surprise' Lola had gotten installed in an acting-group and acquired a very wealthy patron. And had no further need or desire for Jewel and his gang.
It still rankled. Jewel had never forgiven Benito for the way the little bastard had humiliated him. So this looked like a chance to pay Benito back and turn a little profit by way of a couple of Dandelo bonuses.
He watched Benito moving in the shadows under the bridge. He squinted, but couldn't make out anything more than a brief exchange with someone in the gondola--just a meeting of a pair of shadows within the shadows. Then Benito squirted out again and scrambled up the water-stairs and on over towards Cannaregio.
So. Maria had transferred whatever it was she'd picked up to the boy's hands--likely because of the Schiopettieri stirring on the water.
He grinned viciously with absolute satisfaction, and headed up the walkway on the brat's backtrail. In a few more moments, he'd have whatever it was Maria had been carrying, and he'd have the boy as well to sell to the Dandelos. Without balls. He was a good age for a trainee eunuch.
* * *
Harrow spotted the swarthy bullyboy trailing Benito with almost no effort whatsoever. The scar-faced low-life was so clumsy in his attempts to shadow the boy that Harrow snorted in contempt. This inept street brawler wouldn't have lasted five minutes as a Montagnard agent.
Once Harrow saw that the boy was on the Calle del Arco, Harrow had a fairly good notion where he was bound: Giaccomo's. That boat-woman must have passed something on to him.
The bravo evidently had a shrewd notion where Benito was going as well, since he increased his pace a trifle. It looked to Harrow like he was planning on ambushing the boy down in one of the sotoportego that Benito would use as a shortcut on his way to Giaccomo's. Harrow gave up trying to be inconspicuous--there wasn't anyone much in this decaying part of town anyway--and hastened his own steps.
He was almost too late. He hesitated a moment at the shadows next to the Gallina bridge, his eyes momentarily unable to adjust to the darkness of the sotoportego after the dazzle of sun in the piazza. Then he heard Benito shout in anger and defiance--and a second time, in pain.
He saw a bulkier shadow in the darkness of the overbuilt alley ahead of him, and that was all his trained body
