No, the undines would no longer make suitable guardians. City assassins were not marsh locos. They did not have to perch by the water every day for their sustenance.
And . . . Chiano was not ready yet—if he would ever be—to return himself.
So. Practical steps. If necessary, bloody steps. And he had the perfect instrument for the task, right here at hand in the marshes. In that, too, he understood, the Goddess was giving him a sign. And a gentle warning: no more softness.
He even understood, to a degree, the Goddess’s insistent and unusual hardness. Marco had to be protected. Not so much for his own sake, but for that of Venice. Chiano wasn’t sure exactly why—yet—but he knew it was so. From the very first moment he had laid eyes on Marco, he had seen the great shadow which the slender boy cast in the spirit world. Venice would need that shadow, some day, of that he was certain. And he was certain of it because Chiano himself cast a similar shadow—or had once, at least. But never as wide, never as broad, never as deep.
Chiano sighed. He knew what to do, and how to do it. Even though that doing was . . . distasteful. Even, in the end, perhaps wicked.
No more softness, old man!
* * *
Oh yes, and he’d gotten his little tail well scorched, had the former Swiss mercenary turned fanatic assassin. Fortunato Bespi had been dying when the undines had fished him out and brought him to Chiano. It would have made a pretty wager, whether shock or drowning would have gotten him first.
Neither did. Chiano and Sophia had patched him up and kept him dosed against fever. He had been bleeding from blade wounds, and burned all over. From what Chiano and Sophia had been able to piece together from the man’s semi-incoherent ravings, he had fought off his assailants until they set fire to the house he had barricaded himself in. Even then, apparently, the man had been able to escape and try to find shelter in the marshes, which were the traditional refuge for Venice’s outcasts and outlaws.
Eventually, Chiano had been able to glean his identity from the ravings. And, when he did, had come very close to killing the man himself.
Fortunato Bespi! Of all men! If Sophia hadn’t restrained him, Chiano would probably have rolled the man back into the waters. This time, with his throat slit and a weight around his ankles.
Fortunato Bespi! Even with his broken memory, Chiano had recognized the name immediately.
Bespi was notorious. Perhaps the best—certainly the most ruthless—Montagnard assassin in all of northern Italy. A fanatic, by all accounts. A true believer, not simply a sellsword. A man so dangerous that, apparently, the Montagnards themselves had decided to kill him. Such, at least, was the explanation Chiano had eventually deduced from the words Bespi muttered in the days of his slow healing.
But . . . Sophia had been firm. So she and Chiano had hidden the badly injured man on one of the firmer reed-islands, under a basket made to look like a reed-hummock. Sophia, with her own eccentric “theology,” had insisted that the spirits had brought Bespi to them for a purpose. And, over time, Chiano had come to half-believe it himself.
And was glad he had, for it was now clear that Sophia had been right all along. Who better to guard Marco from assassins than Fortunato Bespi?
It remained only to . . . begin the transformation. And he needed to begin immediately, because the transformation would take many weeks to complete.
* * *
Chiano found Bespi where he expected to find him—squatting on his little island in the reeds, staring at an insect. Bespi did very little else, since he’d finally begun recovering from his injuries. He stared at everything; studied the most insignificant things for hours on end. A man betrayed by the cause he had devoted his life to was trying, Chiano understood, to find meaning in something. Even if it was only the reason that an insect climbed a stalk of grass.
Chiano made no attempt to approach silently. It would have been pointless, anyway. Whatever else Bespi had lost, he had certainly not lost his assassin’s reflexes and senses. By the time Chiano appeared in the little clearing where Bespi squatted, the former assassin was awaiting his arrival. Staring at him with the same intentness he stared at everything.