Chapter 81: A Compass, Finally Trusted

The galleys caught their rhythm within the first few strokes, and six ships pulled away of Candia’s harbor together. Canvas caught the wind one hull after another until the whole convoy sailed like one creature that had somehow acquired six separate backsides.

Vito stood at La Contessa’s stern and watched the shore go away from him, piece by piece.

Zaccaria was the last man on the pier Vito could still pick out by shape alone. He stood apart from the crowd, like he had inherited an entire island and still didn’t know whether he had been blessed or cheated.

Behind him, the dockworkers went on hauling cargo up, too busy with their own morning to give the fleet another look now that it had actually left.

Nearer the walls, a thin line of the company soldiers kept the watch they had drawn for the season. These were the men who had lost whatever game decided who got to sail and who stayed behind to mind the fondaco.

And there, smaller than she had any right to look, was Caterina. She had one hand held flat against the glare, while the sun did most of the work of hiding her.

Past her, the city thinned into rooftops, then into the raw new stone of the fondaco’s walls.

Marietta’s crane still stood over all of it, as if she meant to keep working long after everyone else had stopped watching.

Candia held its shadow longer than seemed fair, low and pale in the distance. Then the horizon finally swallowed it and left nothing behind worth staring at.

Vito stayed at the rail regardless, listening to oar and water where a whole harbor’s worth of ruckus had been only an hour before.

Once there was nothing left to watch, the voice apparently decided he had earned more to look at.

🦁 [VITALE BAROZZI — STATUS]

Rank : Cadet of House Barozzi. Legitimate birth, junior standing

Reputation : Considerable, and reaching Venezia’s halls now

Influence : Real enough to run an entire island, though none of Venezia’s paperwork has caught up to admit it yet

Title : [Conquistatore per Contratto], [Lingua Franca]

Fate Balance : 0

Vito read it, and was still deciding whether the display annoyed him or merely amused him when two hot cups appeared at his elbow.

"Here. Drink that before you take root where you’re standing and I have to plant crops around you."

Bepi shoved a cup into Vito’s hand without waiting to find out whether he wanted it. The spiced wine was still steaming faintly against the cold coming off the water.

He planted himself alongside him with no intention of moving until physically relocated. "You’ve had that face on since the mole, Barozzi. I’ve seen dogs left behind at market pine less than that."

"Admiring the sea, Bepi. A patron’s allowed a hobby."

The old sailor snorted. "Last I heard, the view doesn’t blush when you stare at it too long, and Candia’s been gone the better part of an hour. Missing the missus already? Barely out in the waters and you’re sulking like a boy shipped off to his first posting."

Vito clicked his tongue. "I don’t sulk, I brood. Entirely different trade, one gets a man sympathy from women, the other gets him pity from old sailors who ought to mind their own rigging."

Even then, he laughed and nodded to Bepi.

"You’re getting sharper in your old age, amico. I’m almost worried."

Bepi only shook his head. "Or you just made yourself easy to read. No one needs a chart for a man mooning over a woman, that reads itself in any weather."

He clapped Vito once on the shoulder, hard enough to rock him half a step, then drank deep from his own cup.

After that, his gaze traveled from what they had left behind to whatever waited ahead of the bow.

They walked the length of the deck while they talked, past the oar benches where the buonavoglia kept their easy, practiced rhythm, and past the thin rows of soldiers this voyage had actually needed instead of merely wanted.

Beyond them, La Contessa’s narrow hull gave them a clear view of the naves holding their places in the wake.

The ships rode low and fat with whatever cargo Caterina had decided the venture could spare.

"So."

Bepi finished what was left in his hand and turned businesslike, folding the teasing away as neatly as it had appeared. "Alexandria. The old way, we hug every rock from here past Rhodes and down the Levant coast before we ever smell Egypt. That’s ten days if the wind behaves herself, twelve if she doesn’t."

He reached into his coat and brought out the little brass needle Vito had put into his hands months before.

He turned it once in his palm, still not entirely convinced yet incapable to not use it.

"Trust this instead of my own eyes, and I’ll have you in Alexandria in five days. Six, if she’s feeling unkind."

Vito turned the number over in his mind, pleased despite himself.

"I read whole books written by frightened monks about sailing in open water."

"These fools never had this in their hands."

Bepi tucked the needle away again and patted the pocket as though it might otherwise decide to escape. "I’ll take a scrap of brass over an old man’s blessing every morning of the week, and twice on Sundays besides."

"Forty years reading a coastline, and now you let a piece of metal do your thinking for you."

"Watch your mouth."

He said it like a complaint, then checked his course against the needle regardless.

The correction was so small and so exact that Vito doubted Bepi had even noticed himself making it.

"Cazzo. Don’t you dare tell the rest of the fleet I said any of that."

"Your secret’s safe, amico. Point her east, then. Let’s see what she’s made of."

Bepi grunted what could have meant agreement, or could have been one more complaint about the whole business, and went to pass the order down the deck.

The days that followed passed with a strangeness none of them had words ready for.

There was no coastline to hug, no headland to mark the hours by. Only the sea stretched flat in every direction, with Bepi consulting his needle each dawn the way another man might check the sky for rain.

The naves kept their places without complaint.

More than one soldier who normally spent a voyage grumbling about the food found himself simply standing at the rail, staring at a horizon that had nothing in return.

Not one soul whistled.

There was no land this far away, not within swimming distance.

On the sixth morning, low and pale against a sky only beginning to color, Egypt came into view.

Bepi started to shout immediately, barking corrections at the oar benches.

Vito was left alone at the gunwale, with nothing ahead of him yet but a smear of coastline too far off to have a proper shape.

Beyond that coastline sat a kingdom that didn’t yet know how short a road it had left to walk.

Aimery of Lusignan had two crowns down there, Cyprus and Jerusalem both.

Vito knew, in that specific and mostly useless way, that the King had less than a month left to draw breath.

And no one trading through Alexandria’s markets had the smallest reason yet to plan around that.