Eric Flint - The Shadow of the Lion

"I think we need to get this fellow home," Marco said loudly, praying Maria would keep her wits about her. She might not know him well, but she knew that Aldanto had trusted them to spy for him, and guard his back, more than once. He just prayed she'd trust him too, and follow his lead.

She did; playing along with him except for one startled glance. "Fool's been celebratin'?" She snorted, legs braced against the roll of her boat, hands on hips, looking theatrically disgusted. She pushed her cap back on her hair with a flamboyant and exaggerated shove. "Ought to let him walk home, that I should. Ah, hell, hand him over."

Aldanto was in no shape, now, to protest the hash they were making of his reputation. He was shaking like a reed in a winter storm. His skin was tight and hot to the touch, as Maria evidently learned when she reached up to help him down the ladder onto her halfdeck. "Look?you?" was all he managed before another coughing fit took him and Maria got him safely planted. She gave no real outward sign that she was alarmed, though?just a slight tightening of her lips and a frightened widening of her eyes.

"Think we'd better come along, Maria," Marco continued, in what he hoped was a bantering tone of voice?for though they seemed to be alone, there was no telling who had eyes and ears in the shadows or above the canal. "Afraid milord is likely to be a handful. Won't like being told what to do." That last was for Aldanto's benefit. While he talked, he stared hard into Maria's eyes, hoping she'd read the message there.

Go along with this, he tried fiercely to project. I can help.

"You think so?" The tone was equally bantering, but the expression seemed to say that she understood that silent message. "Well, guess it can't hurt?"

"Right enough, then. Benito, give Maria a hand with that line." Marco climbed gingerly down into the boat where Aldanto sat huddled in misery, as Benito slid aboard, the bowline in his hand.

"What the hell?" Maria hissed, as soon as they were out of earshot of the bank.

"He's got fever. Looking at him, I think it is just the marsh-fever, what they call 'mal-aria,' not the plague. You got something to keep him warm?"

Without the need to guard her expression, Marco could read her nearly as well as one of his books. First there was relief?Thank God, it could have been worse, he could have been hurt?and that was quickly followed by anger and resentment. He couldn't guess at the reasons for those emotions, but that expression was chased almost immediately by stark, naked fear. Then she shuttered her face down again, and became as opaque as canal water. At her mute nod toward the bulkhead, Marco ducked under it, and out again, and wrapped the blanket he'd found around Aldanto's shaking shoulders.

Aldanto looked up, eyes full of bleary resentment. "I?" cough "?can take care of?" cough "?myself, thanks."

Marco ignored him. "First thing, we got to get him back home and in bed. But we gotta make out like's he's drunk, not sick."

Maria nodded slowly; Marco was grateful for her quick grasp of the situation. "Because if the people figure he's sick?they figure he's an easy target. Damn!"

"Will you two leave me alone?" muttered the sick man.

This time Marco looked him right in the eyes.

"No," he said simply.

Aldanto stared and stared, like one of the piers had up and answered him back; then groaned, sagged his head onto his knees, and buried his face in his hands.

"Right." Marco turned back to Maria, swiveling to follow her movements as she rowed the gondola into the sparse traffic on the Grand Canal. She wasn't sparing herself?Marco could tell that much from what he'd learned from poling his raft. Which meant she was trying to make time. Which meant she was worried, too.

"Second thing is, we need money. I got some, but not too much. How about you? Or him?"

"Some. What for?" Suspicion shadowed the glance she gave him as she shoved the pole home against the bottom, suspicion and more of that smoldering anger and fear. Touchy about money, are we, Maria?

"Medicine," he said quickly. "Some we send Benito for; people are always sending runners after medicine, especially in fever season. Nothing to connect Caesare with that." Marco fell silent for a moment.

"You said, 'some.' "

"I'll decide the rest after we get him back," Marco said slowly, "and I know how bad it is."

Campo San Polo at last. Up the stairs at water level they went, stairs that led almost directly to Aldanto's door. Aldanto tried to push them off, to get them to leave him at that door. But when his hands shook so that he couldn't even get his key in the lock, Marco and Maria exchanged a look?and Maria took the key deftly away from him.

Caesare complained, bitterly but weakly, all through the process of getting him into his apartment and into the bed in the downstairs bedroom. Not even with three of them were they going to try and manhandle him up the stairs to the room he usually used.

Ominously, though?at least as far as Marco was concerned?Aldanto stopped complaining as soon as he was installed in bed; just closed his eyes against the light, and huddled in his blanket, shivering and coughing. Marco sent Benito out with orders for willow bark and corn-poppy flowers, also for red and white clover blossoms for the cough, not that he expected any of them to do any good. This wasn't that kind of fever. He knew it now; knew it beyond any doubting.

"I hope you can afford to lose a night's trade, Maria," he said, pulling her out of the bedroom by main force. "Maybe more. I'll tell you the truth of it: Caesare's in bad shape, and it could get worse."

"It's just a cold or somethin', ain't it?" Her look said she knew damned well that it was worse than that, but was hoping for better news than she feared.

"Not for him, it isn't," Marco replied, figuring she'd better know the worst. "Same thing happened to me, when I had to hide in the swamp. I caught every damn thing you could think of." Marco shook his head. "Well, he needs something besides what we can get at the drug-shops."

"The Calle Farnese…" she said doubtfully.

Marco shook his head firmly. "More than quack-magic, either."

He took a deep breath. "Now listen: I'm going to write down exactly what I need you to do with those herbs when Benito gets back."

"I can't read," she whispered.

Marco swallowed. With Maria's pride, you tended to forget she was just a woman from a large, poor caulker family. Even the menfolk could probably barely manage to cipher their names. "Never mind. Benito will read it for you. It should help him to stop coughing enough to sleep. The coughing is not serious. The fever is the part that is worrying. It should break soon and just leave him weak and tired. Then it'll start up again. Right now he needs sleep more than anything else. You stay with him; don't leave him. That might be enough?he'll feel like he wants to die, but he's not exactly in any danger, so long as he stays warm. But?" Marco paused to think. "All right, worst case. If he gets worse before I get back?if his fever comes again or his temperature goes up more?"

That was an ugly notion, and hit far too close to home. He steadied his nerves with a long breath of air and thought out everything he was going to have to do and say. What he was going to order her to do wasn't going to go down easy. Maria Garavelli didn't like being ordered at the best of times, and this was definitely going to stick in her throat.

"I know maybe more about our friend than you think I do. I'm telling you the best?hell, the only option. If he starts having trouble breathing or hallucinating, you send Benito with a note to Ricardo Brunelli. You tell him if he wants his pet assassin alive, he'd better send his own physician. And fast."

Maria's eyes blazed, and she opened her mouth to protest. Marco cut her short.