“Milord?” Marco called into the darkness of the partially flooded foundations of the building, wondering if the man could hear him—or if he was even there. He turned away for a moment to look out uneasily over the canal behind him—
“I’m no milord, boy,” came a harsh whisper from right beside him.
Marco jumped and nearly fell backwards in the canal. A long arm snaked out of the darkness and steadied him.
“M-m-milord, I—” Marco stuttered.
“I told you, boy,” the ragged, battered stranger said, a little less harshly, as he emerged from the darkness of the foundation cavern, “I’m no milord. Call me Harrow. Why have you come here?”
“I—came to thank you. Also to warn you. Aldanto says: ‘Don’t cross his path or bring him trouble.’ Um . . . and I came to bring you a few things I thought maybe you could use. Food and some warm stuff. It’s not a lot and it’s not good. But it is something.”
The stranger looked puzzled. “Why?” Then he nodded. “Thank you, Marco Valdosta.”
Marco nearly fell backwards out of the entry hole again.
“How—” he started
“You look just like your mother. Now go, Marco. And be careful not to come here again. It is not safe.” And without another word he turned and walked back into the darkness with Marco’s gift.
* * *
Harrow waded back into the blackness, knowing his way even in the pitch-dark, the stale water slimy around his ankles. After a short while, he felt and heard dry gravel crunching under his feet. Harrow struck tinder and lit the tiny fire of dry debris. By the flickering light he carefully surveyed the place that was now his home.
He’d lived in worse. By some freak or other, the back end of the ruined bottom story was still above water level and relatively dry, a kind of rubble-floored cave. You had to get at the dry part by wading through ankle-deep, stagnant water, but it wasn’t bad, certainly not as bad as the swamp.
Mind you, it was no palace, either. Water condensed on the walls and ceilings above the sunken area, dripping down constantly, so that the air always smelled damp. And with stale canal water coming in with every tide, it often smelled of more than damp. But there were feral cats down here, which kept the place free of vermin. Harrow had always admired cats. And he held them almost sacred now, for cats—black cats in particular—were the special darlings of the Goddess. There was a mama-cat with a young litter laired up down here that Harrow had begun luring in with patience and bits of food. He had hopes he could tame the young ones enough for them to stay with him.
For the rest, he had a bed of sorts, made up of a couple of blankets and armfuls of dry rushes brought in from the swamp. Certainly no one ventured down here, so anything he managed to acquire was safe. It wasn’t much. He sat down on the bed and opened the bundle.
What the boy had given him tonight was very welcome. The little fire was guttering and so rather than waste his meager fuel supply he lit one of the tallow candle-ends Marco had given to him. After pulling the new cloak over his chilled body, he examined each little prize with care. Then he stowed it all away within reach of his pallet so that he’d be able to find the stuff if he needed it in the dark.
He re-made his bed to add the new coverings to the top and the rags that the boy had brought as padding underneath; then Harrow blew out the candle-stub and lay back on the pallet, staring into the darkness. Thinking.
Thinking mostly about his past. Thinking about his life as Fortunato Bespi. It was mostly a life he would rather have forgotten. A time when he had been one of the most deadly killers and workers of mayhem that Duke Visconti had ever recruited into his Montagnard agents. He’d served the Montagnard cause, for which he’d done much . . . that was to the superficial look, evil. He had done it all with a clear conscience, knowing the cause was good. Now—in the light of hindsight—he could see that the “cause” was no more than a thin cover for the ambitions of the only one he’d ever really served. Filippo Visconti.