He lowered his eyes to meet Harrow’s. “She has you in Her plan, Harrow; She’s had you there from the start of the world. She weaves the threads of destiny on her loom! Marco Valdosta is right here, Harrow; in the swamp. He’s hiding out, an’ he’s scared. He damn-well needs protecting; he’s a good child and this here is a bad place. But he’s nervous and he’s touchy; he won’t let nobody near him, except them as he knows, like me and Sophia. You want to watch over him, fine. That’s the Goddess’s will. But if you show yourself, he’ll run, I can promise that. If he even guesses you’re there, he’ll run. You want to keep him from running further and right into more trouble, you stay right out of sight.”
As Harrow nodded understanding, Luciano rose and stepped off the islet into the knee-deep murky water of the swamp. Harrow followed, showing no more discomfort than Luciano.
“Come on, then—I’ll show you where to keep watch on him without him knowing you’re there.”
* * *
Marco’s hands ached with the cold as he worked without really thinking about what he was doing. He was trying to hold his mind in a kind of numb limbo, as numb as the rest of him was getting. He was doing his best to avoid thinking, to just exist. The cold and the damp were making his nose run and the slap of water and the hushing of wind in the reeds and the little sounds he was making were punctuated by his sniffles.
His raft and hideout had been where he’d left them—and as he’d expected—they’d been stripped. The hidey was still in surprisingly good shape, all things considered. Marco was grateful. He hadn’t had much other good luck lately.
Even with the water level in the swamp at high water, it had been cruel, hard work to pole the raft out of his old territory and into Gianni’s.
Gianni had ruled one of the best territories in the marsh. There was an unobstructed view of the city across the water and a nice stock of food plants as well as two really good fishing holes and a couple of solid islets. Marco’s arms and back were screaming with pain before he got his home to its new location and, if he hadn’t been working, he’d have been three-quarters frozen. As it was he was soaked to the skin and glad of the change of dry clothes in his pack. He had moored the raft up against the islet. With the camouflaging hideout over it, it would look like an extension of the island.
The sun was a dim, gray disk above the horizon when he’d gotten set up properly. Despite the cold, he’d been sweating with exertion; even his feet were almost warm. He’d been up since before dawn and by now it seemed as if it should be nearly nightfall, not barely morning.
From the islet he gathered rushes and sedge to weatherproof the hideout against the winter rains and winds. Then it was nothing but drudge-work. Crouch over the framework and interlace the vegetation into it. Grass, then sedge, then reeds, then grass again until it was an untidy but relatively windproof mound. With only his hands moving, evening coming on and the wind chilling him, he’d lost all the heat he’d gained by the time he was ready to thread new tall reeds into the top of the bushy hammock to renew its disguise. It was well towards full darkness when he’d finished to his satisfaction.
He was exhausted and cold all the way through, still soaked to the skin and more than ready for the sleep he’d lost last night. But he hadn’t forgotten his old lessons. He made more trips to the center of the islet for old dry grasses, stuffing the cavity beneath the hideout with them. He crawled under the basketlike hideout and stripped, putting his soggy clothing between the “mattress” of dry grasses and his bottom blanket, to dry while he slept. Then he curled up into his grass-and-blanket nest to shiver himself to almost-warmth, then sleep the sleep of the utterly exhausted. It was a far cry from the cozy bed he’d left in Aldanto’s apartment. If he hadn’t been so cold and tired, he might have cried himself to sleep.