the old girl see to your hand.”
He drank, not much caring what it was. It was harsh raw alcohol, and it burned his throat and brought more tears to his eyes. He put the bottle down, gasping; then gasped again as Sophia took it from him and poured its contents liberally over the wound. The clouds were clearing now, and the moon emerged; you could see it from under the edge of the basket. Sophia propped up one side of the basket and held his hand in its light, examining it critically.
He had occasion to stifle a cry and seize the bottle back from Chiano, more than once, before she was through with her probing.
“Should be stitched—but the grappa will stop the flesh-rot. I’ve a poultice against the swelling. You tied it off right well. I don’ reckon ye lost too much blood. What happened?”
“Gianni,” Marco coughed. His 中古車買取 throat was still raw from screaming and crying. “He must’ve seen me; followed me in. Ambushed me.” Sophia was smearing something onto the wound that first burned, and then numbed the pain. Then she reached back into the darkness behind her, locating rags by feel, and bound his hand tightly.
“I settle that one tomorrow.” Chiano’s eyes narrowed. “For good ’n ever, this time.”
Marco shook his head weakly. “You won’t have to.”
Once the meaning of the words penetrated, Sophia looked up into his face with stunned awe. Gianni was a legend among the marsh-dwellers for his crazy viciousness. That Marco should have taken him out . . .
“There was someone else, too,” Marco added, half-gasping the sentences. “Never saw him. Helped me at the end. I would have drowned otherwise. Never saw him, not once.”
The alcohol had shaken Marco out of his shock and he was beginning to take account of his surroundings again. He noticed Chiano and Sophia exchange a glance.
“Well,” Chiano said. Just that one word, but it held a world of approval. In some obsc 写真共有 ure way, Marco understood the approval encompassed more than just he himself.
“Boy, you needn’t hide again? Ye didn’t come crawlin’ out here in th’ dark an’ th’ rain fer the fun a’ it.” Sophia came right to the point.
That woke him fully—reminded him of his purpose.
“N-no. I’m fine in town—but Sophia, I need something from you, one of your ‘cures.’ I got a sick friend in town. He’s got a fever—the one with the chills and the sweats every two days. Getting worse. He hardly knows where he is.”
“I know it.” Sophia nodded, her face becoming even more wrinkled with thought. “Only it don’t gen’rally get that bad.”
“Except my friend’s not from Venice.”
“Then