Chapter 109: Objective: The Rialto

Dawn got into the room before either woke up. The lamp had burned itself out in the night, and the light slipping through the shutters now came from the sun, pale and thin and entirely unconcerned with whatever the two of them had been doing while it was away.

Vito woke to discover that he had lost the battle for the bed.

Caterina had acquired nearly all of him after midnight, one arm across his chest and one leg hooked over his, her cheek against him. Her dark hair had spread over both of them in a manner no comb was ever going to forgive.

Her chemise had ridden up during the night’s negotiations and left one smooth shoulder bare to the morning air. The upright, composed woman who kept Rialto brokers sincere by daylight had apparently gone somewhere else when she went to sleep.

Every few breaths she made a soft, unguarded noise, the very one she had once sworn, upon her honor and many saints besides, would earn him a trip overboard if he ever dared mention it.

Vito intended to enjoy it for as long as decency permitted, which, according to him, was considerably longer than decency would have approved.

Then, at last and unfortunately, he stirred against him, burrowed closer, and whispered sweet words into his chest.

It was half word, half sleepy whimper.

"Ancora cinque minuti, marito mio. The tide can wait for us."

Her voice was thick with sleep, softer than he had heard it in weeks.

Then her eyes opened properly.

They found his face grinning down at her, and she understood exactly how she had spent the night lying across him.

The blush reached her cheeks in an instant, and the shriek that came after it went clean through the shutters and probably halfway down the calle.

The door was pushed open immediately after.

Their guard came through first, one hand already around the hilt at his belt, prepared for whatever blood or blade the noise had promised him.

What he found was his own lady half out of her chemise and tangled in a Barozzi’s arms.

Caterina’s shriek immediately found a second purpose, and this one was directed at the guard. She ordered him back through the door with enough force to leave him no time to apologize for having entered it in the first place.

Marouda came in right behind him and showed no intention whatsoever of leaving.

She took in the room at one glance, from Caterina red to the ears and Vito bare-chested and entirely unashamed.

"Kyria! Panagia mou! What in the name of the Holy Mother is this?"

She rushed to the bed. "Out of that bed, this instant, you shameless patrician! Shall I fetch a priest myself and have the whole matter done before breakfast?"

"Marouda, amica, I am afraid there is not a soul in this world that can frighten me."

Vito pushed himself up on one elbow, grinning through the assault.

"Then I shall be the first, Barozzi! By Panagia, I swear it!"

She had acquired a slipper from somewhere and brought it against his shoulder with considerable conviction. "A proper man asks the priest before he climbs into a lady’s bed, not after, you shameless patrician! Out, out! Before I call every servant in this house and have them drag you out by the heels!"

"Marouda."

Caterina finally found her voice. She pulled the sheet higher with one hand and held the other out flat. "Nothing happened here, Marouda, except that two people slept in the same bed. No priest is needed for that, and certainly not your slipper."

"You promise me many things, Kyria, and somehow I am always the one left picking up the pieces!"

"Marouda."

Caterina breathed out as though the day had already exhausted its supply of patience. "Must every dawn in this city begin with servants storming through my door as though the house were under siege?"

That finally accomplished what the sheet and the explanation had not.

Marouda lowered her slipper, looked between them one last time, and withdrew with a mutter in her own tongue that needed no translation.

The guard, still hovering beyond the doorway, kept his eyes firmly on the floor, mumbled an apology to it, and pulled the door shut behind them.

Vito waited until the latch caught, then laughed.

"Don’t laugh, Vitale."

She briefly buried her face against his shoulder, and in the end, started to laugh too.

By the time they were properly dressed and had come down to a modest breakfast at L’Angelo’s common table, Vito’s grin had become a permanent feature of the day.

He was thoroughly pleased with the entertainment. Caterina’s blush had become permanent just as firmly, though she was much less pleased with the company it had chosen to keep.

Zaccaria was waiting by the time they stepped into the calle. He was dressed for the city rather than war, with no mail in sight and only his sword at his hip.

He looked them over once, noticed the blush still lingering in Caterina’s face, and let one corner of his lips twitch.

"I hear there was a little excitement upstairs this morning."

He fell into step beside them without waiting for an invitation.

"Marouda’s voice carries farther than any battle I’ve ever heard."

"Don’t you start, amico."

"I wasn’t going to. I’m only grateful I wasn’t the poor devil standing there with a dagger in his hand when she came through that door."

Caterina shot him a look that promised the matter would not improve with further discussion.

Zaccaria answered it with the dry patience he used for nearly everything.

They walked on together, the day’s business clear enough between them, the Rialto, and whatever hands could be found there willing to take cargo off theirs in exchange for coin.

The walk itself became a small education.

L’Angelo sat close enough to the market that the calli leading toward it suddenly parted open into little campi and then closed again, as though the city founders had thrown down a length of rope and built streets wherever it happened to land.

Low bridges brought them over canals crowded with cargo boats and gondolas, all of them poling through traffic that seemed to recognize no authority except its own. Porters hauled crates past fishwives shouting the recent catch while artisans worked in open shops with their doors thrown wide to the street.

Behind it all, the church bell proclaimed an hour that nobody in the crowd seemed particularly interested in.

All around, patricians in fine cloth passed popolani in rough wool on the same narrow stones, and neither side seemed troubled by the inconvenience.

Vito’s eye caught on a moneylender’s bench across one crowded stretch.

A heavyset man argued figures with a merchant twice his age, and Vito had a story for it in the tip of his tongue.

"Did you know, moglie, this very street gave us the word for bank?"

He was clearly enjoying himself. "When a lender couldn’t pay his debts, they broke his bench right here in the street. Bancarotta, they called it. That’s where your bankruptcy comes from, moglie, born right here on these stones, and look at them now, all this shouting, all this money, and not a soul seems ashamed of it."

"Vitale."

Caterina let the silence sit for a moment before finishing the thought for him.

"I’ve sat at one of those benches myself. More times than I care to count."

He looked at her, then laughed loudly enough to make the moneylender look over.

"Ma va’! Here I am, teaching a moneylender her trade. Dio mio, what a fine teacher I make."

"I told you what I was the very first evening, Vitale, plain enough, if you cared to remember."

"You did. And there I was, too busy enjoying the sound of your voice to remember it."

He shook his head, still laughing. "Forgive me, mia cara. Next time I’ll remember that you already know rather more about ruin than any story I could tell you about it."

"See that you do." ℯℯ𝑙.

She smiled.

"I’d hate to see you make a fool of yourself in front of a merchant, marito."

Zaccaria, walking a step behind them, gave a short breath that might have been a laugh.

Ahead of them, the church of San Giacomo di Rialto came into view, its old stone standing at the heart of the market, older by centuries than the fortunes around it.

Beyond the church, the low wooden bridge groaned beneath its daily burden, with carts that crossed two and three at a time while workers below shouted at any soul foolish enough to block the way.

Then the market appeared before them.

From brokers shouting bids across one another like exchanging blows in a street fight, each price landing on top of the other, to moneylenders working their benches in rows, silver sliding over worn wood so quickly it blurred, and notaries bent over open accounts, scratching down figures that could make or ruin a house with one bad stroke.

Every entry was its own little report from a battlefield no one had thought to call a battlefield.

The porters shoved crates through gaps that seemed too narrow to hold them.

Vito had stood in rooms like this before, though in another life and with cargo far more dangerous than pepper.

He knew contested ground when he saw it.

The difference was that, on this ground, he had never once needed a sword to win.

They stopped at the outskirts not yet swallowed by the crowd.

A battlefield, you call it. How generous. Give ordinary greed a grand enough name and suddenly a poet might mistake it for courage. Let us see whether those instincts of yours can win a fight where reputations bleed just as easily as men once did on a real one.

⚔ [QUEST ISSUED]

The Merchant’s Game

Every broker on this bridge already has a patron, and every bench is sponsored by a name that isn’t yours yet. Silver and reputation can build a foothold here just as steel, but if you ignore it, this city will go on deciding your fortune without ever bothering to ask your name.

Reward : 100 Fate

Reward : ???

Vito read it.

His grin sharpened, and this time there were teeth behind it.

"Well, moglie."

He clicked his tongue once.

"Let’s go take some ground."