Grandpapa had said. And her favorite tutor, as a girl.
Kat shook her head. 'He hasn't been around since I was about fourteen.'
'He is still around.' The woman spoke very firmly, more to herself than Kat. 'I can feel him. I just can't pin him to a place.'
Kat shrugged, and looked at the desk. She must have lost a strand of hair there--not something you wanted to leave with the Strega. She twitched it off the table and into a pocket while the hooded woman's attention was still distracted.
'Haven't seen him for years,' she repeated.
The woman appeared to notice her again. 'You may leave,' she said imperiously.
* * *
Outside, with the wind from the storm ripping and yowling between the buildings and the first heavy drops beginning to splat onto the water, Kat shook herself. The money would help. But the hole that the Casa Montescue was in meant that they'd have to continue with this. She flicked the bowline loose and began sculling.
As she came out onto the Grand Canal, she realized that she should have left earlier. Ahead the rain was coming down like a solid dark wall, obliterating all light. The water in the Grand Canal was already chopped into endless dancing myriad-peaked waves. Water slopped over the gunwales as Kat struggled to turn back into the relative shelter of the smaller canal she'd emerged from. There was no going home until this was over. She might as well find somewhere to try to keep dry. Even here angry gusts were rattling and shaking at hastily slammed shutters. This was no time to be outside, never mind in a boat. The nearby church of San Zan Degola was small and poor, but it would be open.
She moored the gondola to a post, hitched up her skirts, and ran for the shelter. The storm wouldn't last.
Chapter 14 ==========
Rain. The watcher in the reed bank noticed it without caring too much about it. His name was Harrow, and he was, by nature, a predator. When intent on a target he was not distracted by discomfort. The slim, willowy figure out there in the lightning-torn darkness wasn't his prey, but Harrow stalked him anyway from long habit. This marshland was not Harrow's environment, and the only way he'd learn it was to practice, to hone his inborn skills.
Besides, if it wasn't prey, it could possibly be someone hunting Harrow. Or Fortunato Bespi, as they would still think of him. They had tried to kill Harrow. Burn him, drown him. Somehow news could have leaked out of the swamp that he wasn't dead. Bespi had given his all to the Visconti, for the Montagnard cause. He'd always found peace in obeying orders, pleasure in hunting down his human prey. In repayment, Francesco Aleri had done this to him, and Harrow did not doubt for a moment that the orders had come from the Duke of Milan himself.
Hatred, forge-hot, seared at his gut for a moment. With an effort that was difficult because it came newly to him, Harrow tried to drive it under.
No. That was not the way. The marsh-wizard who had saved him and taught him his true name claimed he should turn his hatred to good cause instead. Harrow, who had cut down lives with no more compunction than most people had killed mosquitoes, had listened to his talk with intense concentration. And had listened to the visions with an even greater one.
Strangely so, perhaps, given his history. But . . . Harrow believed in reasons. He believed that he had a purpose in life; believed it with a fanatical intensity. As Bespi he'd always assumed that purpose was to serve the Montagnard cause, yet they had been the ones to order his death. And what disturbed Harrow the most was that there had been no reason for it. None good enough, at any rate.
Harrow, as much as Fortunato Bespi, wanted reasons. And so, as lightning lit the sky with white tracery, he watched as the trudging figure came closer. Not much more than a boy he was, Harrow could see now. He could warn him easily that there was a prowling loco on the trail ahead--a bad one, by the pitiful local standards. But Harrow was a hunter and hunted man himself, as well as a man who believed in reasons. So he simply waited, silent and invisible in the recesses of the marsh, as the boy passed by him in the storm. Then, followed. Stalking from habit, partly; and, partly, hoping he might find some logic in a reasonless world.
* * *
Marco could hardly feel his feet, they were so numb and cold. Still, it wasn't winter. Then he'd have had to worry about losing his toes, instead of just feeling like he'd lost them.
He was halfway out to Chiano's territory, and he was already regretting the decision he'd made, with the kind of remote regret of one who didn't have any real choice. The pack on his back was large, and heavy; the goods he had to trade with old Sophia for her herbs were bulky. Blankets didn't compact well, no more did clothing.
The cold was climbing up his legs, and his breeches were misery to wear: wet and clinging and clammy, and liberally beslimed with mud and unidentifiable swamp-muck. He'd forgotten how much the marsh mud stank; it was far worse than the canals. The reeds rustled, but otherwise there wasn't much sound but for the wind whistling and the water lapping against what few bits of solid stuff poked above the surface of the lagoon.
