Chapter 85: Profit Has No Shame

The corridor spread longer than it had any right to look from the doorway. Two servant girls came toward him with baskets of washed linen against their hips, laughing over some joke neither had bothered to share.

Vito smiled at them without slowing down, and one nearly walked into the wall trying to hide her laugh behind her hand.

Venezia kept no consul sitting in this city, and would not for years to come. There was no treaty yet worth the trouble.

The fondaco managed well enough with a resident merchant who had the influence and nerve to do a consul’s work without being given the title. Every quarrel between Venetians and every letter sent home to the Senate passed through his hands, for better or for worse.

Vito turned that over as he walked, and found it curious enough. He was building much the same sort of standing on Crete himself. There was no Duke behind him, no title from Venezia, and no piece of paper making any of it official.

He reached the door and knocked once against the frame.

"Enter."

The room smelled of ink and dust, with a sweeter aroma burning low in a brazier by the window. Accounts books stood stacked three deep against one wall, while a chart of the Mediterranean hung pinned across another, its coastlines softened by years of handling.

A signet ring sat on the desk, heavy enough to seal a Doge’s letters rather than a merchant’s.

Behind it sat a man in a chair large enough for two of him. He was wrapped in enough fur and velvet to survive a Venetian winter, yet seemed entirely unbothered by the heat against every shuttered window.

He didn’t rise.

"Marino Soranzo."

The name was given as if it was title carved into stone. "Consul of this fondaco. And you’ll address me as such, whatever passes for manners on Crete these days."

"No wine, Consul?"

Vito let his eyes swept once around the room, calm as you please.

"I’d heard Alexandria kept a generous cellar."

"Wine is for men who’ve come to be entertained."

Soranzo ignored the untouched jug on its shelf.

"Sit, if you’ve come to discuss business."

Vito sat.

The consul wasted no more time on pleasantries.

His voice filled the room like a bell fills a tower, with no hurry to make itself pleasant. "Word of you reached this office months ago, Barozzi. First from Constantinople, with some outlandish story about a fish spear and an emperor bleeding in a gutter. Then louder from Crete, an island apparently already yours, lacking only the paper that says so."

He folded both hands over his books.

"So tell me plainly what you want here, and what your presence will cost this office, or earn it."

Vito had spent enough time in dangerous rooms, in two different lives, to know what this one wanted.

Boniface had wanted a way out. Dandolo had wanted patience, enough to prove himself worth confidence. Leon had wanted stability for his family.

Soranzo wants were simpler.

Profit.

Vito straightened in his chair and let his voice cool into some more formal tone.

"Consul, I have not come to trouble your harbor."

He kept his hands on his lap. "I have come to build a road between this harbor and Venezia’s markets. It runs first through Crete, where I already hold ground, and it profits every man who helps me extend it."

Interest finally stirred behind Soranzo’s eyes.

He leaned back, looking unimpressed because he clearly intended so.

"Position is a fine word, Barozzi."

Soranzo’s fingers tapped once against the books.

"But the island proves nothing to me until I see the ships and the goods that come with them."

"Then let’s talk numbers, Console."

Vito told them plainly. Grain, wine, honey, wax, cheese, wool, and cotton coming out of Crete, along with a distillate no customs man in this harbor had tasted before that day.

All of it would trade into Alexandria for pepper, cinnamon, sugar, and alum the other way, toward Venezia and every port between.

"Three naves this season, and more next season if the arrangement suits us both."

"And who backs all this?"

Some of the frost had gone out of Soranzo’s voice before he seemed to notice.

"A rich uncle back in the lagoon, or does the Barozzi name still open purses by itself these days?"

"My own house never thought the venture worth a single mark, Consul."

Vito said it without shame, as clearly as a man might report the heat. "I work with the colleganza instead, in their majority investors from Venezia and Constantinople who put up the money. We divide the profit according to the terms we put on paper."

Soranzo’s hand moved toward the chart without his seeming to notice, one thick finger following the very line Vito had just described.

"Cheese, you said. Genuine Cretan cheese, and this distillate besides?"

His voice had climbed a full tone, and the cold formality had vanished altogether. "I could name three merchants in this very building who would trade their mothers for first claim on either one."

Vito had learned long ago that pride sold cheap once money walked through the door.

Soranzo’s bravado and borrowed title meant considerably less now than the accounts lying open before him.

By the time the two men finished trading figures, the terms of an agreement lay plainly between them.

"Business done, then."

Soranzo finally set down his pen.

"Now for how it actually moves through my office."

The discussion went quickly.

Warehousing fees would apply to anything kept past a set number of days. The fondaco’s courts would settle any dispute between Venetians without waiting for a word from the Senate. Every letter concerning the agreement would go back to Venezia through Soranzo’s hand.

"One more matter."

Soranzo folded his hands again, looking rather more satisfied with himself than he had at the beginning. "I believe you’ll want one contact in this city who actually knows its markets, Barozzi. A merchant who can tell a genuine price from a foreigner’s tax. I’ll assign a man of my choosing to handle your buying and selling here."

He clearly expected the order to be taken as one.

"Generous of you, Console."

Vito’s voice remained easy and untroubled. His eyes sharpened by the smallest degree as he stood, but his face gave nothing away.

Soranzo looked pleased with himself as the meeting came to an end.

Somewhere inside these same walls was a merchant ready to answer to a new patron. Vito had bought and paid for the contact a season ago, half a sea away.

The man was discreet enough never to mention the arrangement to anyone, least of all the fellow who now believed he alone controlled every merchant Vito would deal with in this city.

Soranzo had no idea he had no influence in who was in charge of the trade.