Immortal Read Online Free Page B

the porcelain dolls I’d seen in the bags of peddlers. He held something in his hand. “You’re the boy from the street?”
    “Luca,” I said. “Luca Bastardo.”
    “Don’t feel bad about that, we’re all bastards here”—he chuckled—“and worse. You hungry?” He tossed the thing in his hand to me. It was a small pastry and I snatched it gratefully from the air and gobbled it. Marco sighed. “He’s been planning to take you for a long time, you know. Silvano was waiting until he had use for you, and then last week he got rid of a boy who didn’t work well.”
    “Why me?” I asked, intrigued.
    Marco shrugged. “I heard him speak about a beautiful noble woman with hair like yours. She came through Florence looking for her son, and she wept as she asked people if they’d seen him. Silvano always laughed about it.”
    “I had a mother who looked for me,” I said, wonderingly.
    “You’re lucky, she wanted you. I was left here by my parents. They got three florins for me. That’s the most Silvano’s ever paid for one of us.”
    I swallowed the last crumb and licked my fingers. “My friend Massimo only got one florin for me.”
    “I was worth more than you because I wasn’t covered with dirt and lice,” Marco teased, wagging his black eyebrows playfully. I scowled and he shrugged. “Good friend, that Massimo.”
    It was my turn to shrug. People do what they must to survive. The streets of Florence had taught me that. I shouldn’t have been surprised, except perhaps that Massimo hadn’t sold me sooner. Trust was not to be indulged in by such as me. Maybe I had once had parents, but for as long as I could remember, I had been alone in a way that other people weren’t. “At least it wasn’t my parents who sold me!” I said.
    “At least I knew my parents,” Marco returned, grinning. “Did you ever try to find yours?”
    “I never really thought about them,” I admitted. “I was just glad they didn’t strangle or drown me.”
    “Sometimes I think it would be better if my parents had killed me, instead of selling me to Silvano. Maybe if I hadn’t been so beautiful.” Marco’s face shuttered with despair, as if it really were made of porcelain, as if he weren’t a living thing. It was a look I would see often on the faces of the children at this establishment.
    I ventured softly, “Is it bad here?”
    “Very bad, but they feed you well,” he said flatly. “You can’t work if you’re not well fed. He’s going to beat you soon. Whatever you do, don’t resist! And don’t scream. He likes that and it’ll make him hit you more.”
    “I’ve been beaten before and I never screamed,” I said, with some pride. I was no doughy girl to shriek at a little pain. Many times I had withstood Paolo’s fists when he knew I had bread or meat and he wanted it. I often hid myself when I acquired something. The burnt-out walls of the old granary market at Orto San Michele, or the wooden supports of the Ponte Santa Trinita, those were good hiding places. I would have given anything to be squatting there now. I knew all the hiding places in Florence, all the secret passages and shortcuts. Some of my faith in ingegno trickled back into me and I lifted my chin. “I won’t let him beat me! Even if he does, I won’t be here long. I’ll find a way to get out.”
    “There’s no escape from Silvano!”
    “I’ll think of something. I’ll use ingegno,” I said with certainty. “I’ll run away.”
    “He’ll find you and bring you back.”
    “If Silvano knows who my parents are, I’ll find them, and they’ll protect me,” I said vehemently. “Or I’ll hide. I know everywhere there is to hide in Florence!”
    “No one can protect you from Silvano.” Marco looked at me with pity. “There’s no leaving this place. You’ll see. You have to learn that if you don’t do what he wants you to, it will go hard on you. You’ll be hurt. You could be killed. He enjoys killing.”
    “In the Arno,