Chapter 77: Formally Destitute, Again

Caterina woke up lazily, well into the night by then.

Few seconds into consciousness, and she came off Vito’s chest as if boiling water was thrown on her, both hands going straight to her mouth.

For an expansive, speechless moment, she stared at him, trying to reconstruct how she had ended up curled against some broad, muscular chest and with her lips open against his neck. The effort robbed her of more complexion than the entire public performance had managed.

"If you tell a single soul I snored, Vitale, I will have you buried at sea before you finish bragging about it."

She wouldn’t quite look him in the eye, and she straightened her overgown with enough force to make the laces fear for their lives.

Vito gave her the space she so plainly wanted and didn’t push the joke any further.

He could have reminded her whose lap she had snuggled on, or that she had been snoring against his neck less than five minutes earlier, but some victories were improved by keeping them to oneself.

By the time the last of the wine had worked its way out of both their heads, the evening had returned to ordinary.

Caterina withdrew to her bed with a dignity she appeared determined to recover by force of will alone. Vito left her to it.

He had a simpler matter of business to handle, a balance that had been sitting untouched in his mind since Rethymno’s dust had barely settled. It was large enough to make a man who had once counted every coin twice feel a little foolish for leaving it there.

The walk to the fondaco took little time. The streets were empty except for lamplight slipping through shuttered windows and one old dog that was too tired to waste a bark on him.

The site itself had a serenity that daylight never permitted. Marietta’s crane stood black against a sky crowded with stars, its great wheel in silence. Isotta’s beam-work now went clean through the north wall, while Santina’s frame waited beside the harbor mud, her hammer at rest and whatever piling she had last driven sunk as far as it was going tonight.

There was no hammering, no wheel groaning beneath the weight of two men. Only water working against the new stone pier, and behind him the sleeping mass of a city that finally had silver in its pockets.

Vito found a piece of scaffolding timber that looked willing to support him and leaned against it. His eyes wandered across the harbor.

Lamps showed in twos and threes among the buildings, while the ships rode low in the water, quiet for the night.

"Purveyor, I’ve got a balance that’s been embarrassing me since Rethymno."

Four hundred and twenty.

The answer came at once, entirely too pleased with itself.

I confess I have a fondness for the memory of you spending most of a week worrying over ten, weighing a blueprint against his dignity as though the two were worth the same. Whatever cured you of that caution, I hope it was worth what it cost you.

"Cazzo, I can learn."

Vito grinned at the darkness. "Ten Fate looked like a fortune back then, but these days, I wouldn’t cross the street for it. Let’s start with what actually matters."

By all means. I do enjoy watching you pretend this is business when you’re plainly enjoying yourself.

"A man of my talents contains multitudes."

He let the grand statement sit there for a moment, then got on with it. "I want a merchant already inside Alexandria’s fondaco, one who knows which officials take bribery silently and which ones only enjoy pretending they won’t."

A reasonable desire, for once.

🪙 [FATE SHOP — INTELLIGENCE]

A Foothold in Alexandria

A merchant already established within the city’s fondaco, indebted enough to want a new patron and discreet enough never to mention the arrangement. He knows which officials can be bought, and which merely enjoy being asked.

Cost : 150 Fate

A whole city’s customs men laid bare for a hundred and fifty Fate. Venezia’s ambassadors have spent years failing to learn the same thing through treaties, and with considerably more dignity.

"Sold."

He paid without a second thought.

Only after the currency was gone the significance of the purchase catch up with him. Venezia’s treaty with the Sultan was still young by his reckoning, built slowly and formally by men who had never once needed to slip a letter past a customs house in the dark.

Whatever door this pushed open tonight, it opened long before anyone’s official schedule. Doors opened early had an old habit of letting in more than a man asked for.

He let that thought go and reached for the next one.

"What else is worth having for a man trying to build an empire?"

Ambitious.

There was a pause.

There is a systematic method of finding your way along a coast without relying entirely on memory, guesswork, or the continued cooperation of the weather. And, because apparently navigation and sobriety are both worthy investments, I have blueprints for the distillation of spirits.

Twenty Fate apiece. Much less interesting than Alexandria, and much more useful to the woman who currently keeps your accounts.

"She’ll want both. Set them aside."

Already done. I do love the sound of a man spending money for somebody else.

Vito considered that once, then asked the other question that had been sitting at the back of his mind.

He already knew the answer.

"And a second chance? Still absurd?"

Five hundred. Same as ever. Scarcity does not discount for loyalty, and you don’t have it tonight, whatever else happens before morning.

"Fair enough. I wasn’t planning to die on the walk home regardless."

I imagine those were also your words, on your previous life.

He left that one unanswered, mostly because she was right, and moved on to the question that had actually brought him out here.

"That shipwright you offered me. Back in Santa Sofia, is he still out there somewhere?"

Still there.

🪙 [FATE SHOP — PERSONNEL]

Master Shipwright

A shipwright whose best work still lies ahead of him. He has not yet found the patron worthy of keeping him.

Cost : 150 Fate

"Then he’s found his patron."

Vito’s grin sharpened. "And the galley that goes with him, the one you dangled in front of me while I couldn’t even stand without help."

🪙 [FATE SHOP — KNOWLEDGE & BLUEPRINTS]

Lateen War Galley

A superior galley design, complete with hull lines and rigging. Any competent shipwright can build her once shown how.

Cost : 10 Fate

Systematic Compass and Coastal Charting

The reliable method for determining a ship’s course with considerably less reliance on instinct, landmarks, and prayers and a practical system for mapping coastlines, harbors, shoals, and other places where discovering the rocks by impact is generally discouraged.

Cost : 20 Fate

Distilled Spirits

The complete process for producing strong, consistent spirits at commercial scale, including a method for achieving unusually high purity. A new luxury commodity for merchants, apothecaries, and anyone wealthy enough to discover that wine can be made considerably more dangerous.

Cost : 20 Fate

Subtotal : 50 Fate

That left one thing.

Vito clicked his tongue. "The last of it. I want good word of the Vitale Barozzi name finding its way into rooms in Venezia where I’ve never set foot. Council chambers, merchant houses, the sort."

Reputation management.

The words came out flat enough to make her opinion of the whole business perfectly plain.

Beneath me, which is precisely why it costs what it does. One ought to be paid for the indignity of caring what strangers think of you.

🪙 [FATE SHOP — WHISPERS]

Whispers Along the Rialto

Your name spoken well in rooms you have never entered, by men who have never met you, until it becomes simply what is known. Nothing to point at. Nothing anybody would think to doubt.

Cost : 70 Fate

"Done, then."

Vito did the sum in his head and discovered, without much surprise, that it came to nothing at all.

"And not a grosso left standing, I’d wager."

You are now formally destitute.

Zero requires no further remark from me. I trust you’ll find some way to make the number interesting again. You generally do.

Vito laughed outright, and it traveled farther than he had intended across the empty site.

He pushed himself away from the scaffolding timber in glee.

The harbor would be empty inside a month. Ships would be dragged onto dry ground and their hatches sealed against a sea every captain on this coast had known for centuries was not to be trusted past November.

Nane would keep building. Walls would rise behind shuttered winter doors while an entire new building rose into place.

Somewhere in a locked drawer, a letter for a merchant inside Alexandria’s fondaco would wait for the first ship foolish enough to carry it when the season finally turned.

March would open the sea again. April would follow close behind. Beyond that run of good weather waited a field outside a city called Adrianople.

There, too, waited an old blind man Vito had once shared wine with in a room full of books and a woman’s sharp laughter.

Enrico Dandolo himself, riding at the head of an army that wouldn’t come home the way it had left.

Vito already knew how that day ended. He had known from the moment he opened his eyes on a burning wall eight hundred years before his own time.

For now there was only winter, the work, and a whole season still to spend before any of it came due.