Chapter 17: There Are Rather a Lot of Emperors

The pitch and salt reached him first, as they always did on a morning when the harbor had been awake before he was, with gulls screaming over the fish stalls and half a dozen tongues haggling over prices at once. Vito put one hand against a mooring post and stretched his leg without thinking much about it.

Fine and dandy, just some old ache where an Emperor’s blade had once cut him to the bone.

He might have laughed at how pleased that made him, if there had been anybody nearby who would have understood the joke.

Then he saw his three galleys sitting low among the crowd of ships moving across the water, and the whole month came back at once, the way a debt does when some tax inspector finally has the bad manners to name the sum.

Boniface lost the crown. The vote merely took a little while to make it official.

That was probably the least surprising part of the month. Baldwin had the crown, Boniface had the consolation prize, and the rest of the city had already found more interesting things to argue about.

Beyond the walls, matters became considerably sillier. What remained of an empire had split itself among three separate men, each perfectly certain that he alone was the one true Emperor of the Romans.

One camped in Nicaea, another ruled the coast from Trebizond as though nobody would notice the coincidence, and the third had court somewhere in Epirus, far enough west that even Vito’s memory had trouble putting the place on a map.

Ma va’. Everybody wanted to be Caesar this year, and nobody had thought to ask Caesar what he thought.

Two days after the coronation, with the ink barely dry on one crown, Boniface finally put his seal to another matter. A thousand silver marks paid up front, ten thousand gold hyperpyra a year after, for as long as the deal lasted. The very figures Vito had estimated aloud with a straight face and absolutely no proof behind them were now sitting in a Venetian contract as fact.

Caterina’s month had been more silent, and considerably more troublesome.

She had turned one loose promise into an actual list of names, with real investments coming from real families who were tired of watching crusaders return home richer than they were. Vito had not seen the full list yet, and he suspected he was not meant to, at least not until Caterina decided he had earned the privilege.

Vito was interrupted by reality, when some dockhand carrying a coil of rigging rope over one shoulder nearly walked straight through him.

He grunted, "Eh, signore, move your fine patrician arse, will you? Unless you’re planning to help me carry this damned rope, you’re standing exactly where I need to be."

The man had a fair point, and Vito stepped aside.

That, at least, was real progress.

His three galleys were by then patched, provisioned, and finally ready for water since the siege. Beside them now were three naves bought outright with Caterina’s investors, riding low and round-bellied, broad in the beam and deep in the hold, the fatness of a cargo hauler.

Their cargo holds were already swallowing barrels of salt fish, sacks of grain, and enough sawn timber to raise a fondaco from nothing before anyone on Crete had the chance to complain about it. Farther down the docks, crates of nails and coils of rope waited their turn up the gangplank, which was the less glorious part of an island’s worth of ambition.

Somewhere in that very crowded traffic of ships, Vito’s share of the sack’s plunder was already riding home to Venice, packed among a dozen other companies’ cargo bound the same way. It was a debt owed to every family member and merchant who had trusted three galleys to a cadet nobody had yet found much reason to believe in.

His private retinue still worked the decks, though hired hands drawn from the city’s own idle post-sack workforce had swollen their numbers far beyond anything a soldier had ever signed up for.

Carpenters, provisioners, men whose only weapon in this life was a good set of knots.

"Barozzi!"

Zaccaria’s voice found him, carrying easily over the harbor noise. He crossed the dock with Pellegrino one step behind, already counting something on his fingers, while Orso followed them both with bravado.

"Look at that."

Zaccaria looked him over from head to boot with genuine appreciation. "And here I was hoping we’d get another month of watching you being carried around like some wounded saint."

"Cazzo, I’ve decided to stop giving you all the satisfaction."

"Pity, the men enjoyed the sight more than they’ll ever admit to your face."

Pellegrino stepped in before Zaccaria could enjoy himself any further, still counting on his fingers as he came, his little wooden saint’s medal swinging loose from his neck with every step.

"Nineteen."

He held up both hands, fingers spread, then folded two down with great solemnity. "Nineteen candles owed and counting, and Father Ambrogio has stopped believing me on the confession alone. Told me last week that God had quite enough of my installments and threatened to start charging interest, if you can imagine a priest doing such a thing."

"Nineteen for what, exactly?"

"For everything I helped myself to during the sack, which, if I’m not exaggerating, was most of everything."

Pellegrino crossed himself without slowing. "San Marco forgives slowly. I’ve learned that the hard way, one candle at a time."

Vito laughed. "Fratello mio, at this rate you’ll still be paying off your sins when we’re both old men on Venezia."

"... perhaps I ought to bring a bigger candle next time, or better yet, build San Marco an altar. It seems cheaper than relying on Father Ambrogio."

Meanwhile, Orso had been waiting his turn so impatiently that patience itself seemed to have offended him.

"Enough about candles."

He hooked one arm beneath a canvas tarp lashed over a crate and hauled it back in one motion. Underneath sat a church bell the size of a small barrel, bronze and green with age, still fitted with enough of its mounting iron to show exactly where it had come from and how recently.

"This is what a man brings home from a war."

"Shut it, there’s no way you carried that thing yourself."

Pellegrino eyed the bell suspiciously. "It weighs more than you do, and by supper you can barely lift your own mace above your head."

"I carried it fine. Six streets, on my own back, while lesser men wept about their knees."

"Six streets with four of your friends underneath it, you mean."

"The friends were there to steady the bell. I was the one carrying it."

"Never took you for a religious man, Orso."

Vito looked over the bell with exaggerated approval. "But in the name of the outpost we’re about to build, I gladly accept your generous donation to the local church."

Orso grunted. "You’ll be a bishop next, if you keep finding other men to pay for your piety."

Zaccaria clicked his tongue and stopped them before the argument could run out for the entire day. "Madonna mia, you three quip like old widows with a whole afternoon to waste, and we’ve got green hands aboard to babysit until they learn that a ship is not a tavern and a sword is not a spoon."

Vito grinned "That’s what I pay you for, captaincy, panic, and the occasional miracle. I expect the full service."

"Captaincy, certainly. The rest I charge by the disaster."

Vito clicked his tongue, ready to reply, but two of his hired hands suddenly stepped aside nearby, making room for a small, well-dressed escort to reach them. Three men in matching equipment flanked their master at a respectful distance, the sort of escort a wealthy man kept mostly because it looked right, especially in a city that noticed everything.

The man in the middle wore a wine-colored doublet, soft boots and enough fine cloth to keep three lesser men respectable. His sleeves were spotless, his hair had plainly been introduced to a comb that morning, and the whole fellow looked as though hard work might leave a mark.

Vito needed no introduction. Those were a cousin’s features made soft where his own had gone lean, prosperous where his own had gone scarred.

Andrea Barozzi looked at the bell still sitting open on the dock, then at the ships, and finally at Vito himself, with flat, unimpressed attention.

"Ah, cugino. Zio Marco is already wondering which of us he’ll have to send after you to clean up the mess."

Andrea brushed an invisible speck from Vito’s shoulder.

"Try not to embarrass the name any further than you already have."