Chapter 111: A Patron on the Rialto

The pause didn’t last long.

Vito broke it, nodding past the flask and the fold of silk sitting on Marina’s table toward the crowd packed in beyond her portico.

"We didn’t walk this blessed bridge, signora, just to stand here while you drink my wine and give me nothing for it."

He tipped his head toward the warehouse district. "There’s a whole hold of the stuff sitting back there, only worth dust and Zaccaria’s excuse to complain about that cursed shoulder of his. And you’re the first soul on this street who doesn’t already have a rope around her neck, so I mean to discover whether that freedom of yours is worth as much as it looks."

Marina retorted immediately.

"Dust! In Venezia, cara? You wound me."

She made the word sound like an insult to the warehouse. "Not once the right mouths hear the word Cyprus. The Ca’ Zorzi will have the first bottle poured before their cook has even finished drawing the cork, mark me."

Marina leaned closer, lowering her voice into a conspiratorial tone. "And old Donata Morosini has been whining since Lent that her cellar has gone stale. Put a wine in front of her that none of her neighbors have tasted, and she’ll empty her purse just to sit at her table tonight and watch every woman there envy her."

Caterina fished the little notebook from her hip, her attention sharpening at once.

"And what of the silk, signora? Does that also sell as quickly as you promise?"

"Faster still, cara, much faster."

Marina waved as though the matter hardly deserved discussion. "There isn’t a respectable house on this lagoon that doesn’t have one girl to marry, one wedding to pay for, or both. And every one of those mothers will swear she cannot possibly live without that silk."

She snapped and cuffed an apprentice’s hand away from a bolt of cloth he had been fingering behind her.

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Then she turned straight back to them as though nothing had happened. This was apparently a normal way to conduct business on the Rialto.

Zaccaria reached into the satchel again and pulled out one more piece, still wrapped in plain cloth.

He put it on the low table between them and unwrapped it.

The glass caught the light as soon as the cloth came away. It was a single cup, Tyrian glass by the look of it, blue enough to seem almost black until the light found it properly. Then it turned blue again, with threads of green that seemed to move with the cup.

"Cazzo..."

Vito breathed it under his breath. He was admiring the change in color himself, and Marina hadn’t even touched the thing yet.

Her hands went rigid the moment she picked it up.

"Madonna santissima..."

She held it toward the light beneath the portico and studied it as though she expected it to disappoint her.

It did not.

She turned it again, watching the blue deepen and shift, and when she finally spoke, most of the performance had gone out of her voice.

"Cara, our glassmakers could blow glass from now until Judgment Day and still not make the like of this. Not yet, anyway, give them another hundred years, perhaps, and then they may finally teach themselves how."

Then, in the same breath, the performance returned. "I’ll tell you what I’d pay for it this very minute, cara, and then you’ll want to slap me for having the guts to say the number aloud."

Caterina met her eyes over the rim of the notebook, one eyebrow lifting just slightly. "Try me, signora. I’ve been offered worse, and by merchants considerably more frightening than you."

Marina barked a laugh, quite untroubled, and set the cup down with more care than she had shown when picking it up. "Numbers like that belong behind a closed door, cara. Not shouted into the Rialto where every broker, beggar, and busybody can stick an ear in and learn my business for free."

Caterina closed her notebook with a small, firm snap. "Two days from now. L’Angelo, after the third bell. Bring your accounts, signora, and bring the numbers you mean to stand behind. Then we shall see what the wine and silk is truly worth."

"Very well, cara. I see how important you have decided I am."

Marina pressed one hand to her chest. "I’ll dress like a respectable woman, sit behind your fine little table, and pretend I have never stripped a sailor of his last denaro while half the Rialto watched and blessed me for it."

"Ma va’, signora. You needn’t make such a ceremony of it."

Vito stepped a little closer and let the easy tone that had carried him through business fall away.

"But before you go back to your business, listen to me."

He spread one hand, as he warmed up to the discussion.

"There’s more in this for you than a hold of wine and a few bolts of silk, Marina."

He let that sit for a breath. "Sell this lot well, and tomorrow there’ll be another. Then another after that. We need a contact here who knows where to put our goods, who knows whose door to knock on, and who’ll still be standing there when we come back with more."

Caterina picked up the thread without missing a beat. "Which is precisely why we are not putting our name, our goods, and our trust into the hands of the first clever tongue that makes us laugh."

She leaned in just enough to make the next words private. "Sell this consignment properly, guard our name and deal honestly while our eyes are elsewhere. Do that, and we’ll talk about what comes next. Fail us, and there will be nothing more to discuss."

Marina’s brows rose. For a moment, the merchant’s smile disappeared, replaced by a far more interested expression.

"Ah."

She crossed her arms, and a slow grin began beneath the word.

"So this is how it is, is it? I am the one on trial now."

"Since the moment we walked up to your stall, cara."

Vito’s grin matched hers, tooth for tooth.

You simply didn’t know it

"Fair enough, cara. I’d have judged you just as hard in my place."

She looked between them again, weighing their offer, and the grin widened from teasing into much closer to real appetite. "And when I’ve sold the last flask and the last cup, and Venezia is gossiping about your name, will you finally decide I’m fit for the work?"

Her grin widened.

"Or is this how you mean to keep me dancing to your tune until I die?"

"That, cara, depends on whether you mind having two pairs of eyes on you."

"I’ve had men watch me with far more enthusiasm than you, cara, and I never let a one of them do it for free."

She laughed again, loud enough to turn a head or two as people passed.

Then she swept both hands toward her stall. "Two days, then, at your L’Angelo. I’ll bring my books, you bring those serious faces, and we’ll see who has the better bargain by the time the candles burn low."

By then, there was little reason to waste more time there.

Marina turned back toward her apprentice and scolded him over some fresh crime against a bolt of silk while waving the three of them away with her free hand.

Zaccaria folded the satchel flat beneath one arm and let out a tired exhale.

The merry band disappeared into the crowd together, and Caterina didn’t hesitate to suggest their next destination.

"San Bartolomeo, then. The Germans and Lombards, we should catch them before they scatter."

"Mm."

Vito glanced up at the sun, and considered the hour against the daylight the market had left.

"If we hurry, moglie, we may still catch a few fat fishes there."