Chapter 64: Terms and Conditions Apply

Kalergis led them through the gates himself, just as he had promised. The delegation closed in around Vito, with the platoon following behind. For a few moments it looked almost like a procession for honored guests, robes and spears mingling at the gate, and Vito let himself to enjoy the performance while it lasted.

The walls crowded them for three shadowed strides.

Then Chania spread out before him.

🦁 [TERRITORY OVERVIEW — CHANIA, CRETE]

Sovereignty : Unclaimed (La Serenissima)

Governance : Fractured (Minor Archontes, Senior House Deposed)

Population : Approximately 8,000

Civil Order : Shattered

Harbor : Broad bay. Stone Pier, Sizable Port

Military : Stone Walls, Undermanned Garrison

Major Districts : Harbor, Market, Administrative, Noble, Religious, Suburbs

Barozzi Presence : None

Governance reads fractured, since the senior house appears to have deposed itself on your behalf, dragged through its own streets before you’d even reached the gate. I had several intimidation strategies prepared for this morning. It seems your reputation did the work without needing my help, or yours.

"I didn’t even have to raise my voice."

You rarely do. It remains one of your few economical qualities.

He decided that one didn’t deserve an answer and looked back to the street.

Shutters were already banging closed as the platoon went by, one after another, like a wave breaking ahead of them and forever staying just out of reach.

To his left, a man spat beside their boots and shouted short and filthy words in Greek. It needed no translation.

Farther down the street, a woman’s voice burst from an upper window, one word repeated twice.

"Φονιάδες! Φονιάδες!"

Murderers.

She was hauled back inside before the platoon could close on whatever else she had to say.

At a corner where the street cut around a well, an old woman knelt in the dirt. Her shawl had been torn open at the collar, and ash ran down her cheeks in two streaks.

She clawed at her own face as she rocked back and forth, repeating some name until grief had worn the meaning out of it and left only the cries.

Not one soul stopped to comfort her. Not one looked away, either.

"Can’t fault them for it."

Domenego said plainly, keeping the words between them.

"I’d curse the men who buried my sons too, whichever banner marched them there."

Near the market square, two of the platoon’s footmen stepped forward without waiting for orders and took the rope from the archon’s man.

Melissenos lurched onward, his legs apparently no longer interested in obeying him. Neither soldier gave him more attention than was needed to keep him upright.

There was not much left to say to him that a fist had not already said better.

Vito found Kalergis beside him, ink still staining his fingers.

The man was watching the crowd with his own share of unease, wondering whether some of that hatred might include him.

"The Genoese," Vito snickered. "Where are their ships?"

Kalergis winced as if the question had struck him. "Gone, Ser Barozzi. That night. Before your galley came around the point, they were already gone. Already at sea. We could not stop them, nobody could stop them."

Cazzo.

He ought to have known better than to hope for anything else.

"Let them run. Genoa can explain to its own investors why the venture failed."

Kalergis gave him a short, grateful nod. He had braced for a blow and discovered, pleasantly, that it was not coming.

"Quarters, Ser Barozzi."

Kalergis pointed ahead toward a long stone building beside the square, its yard empty except for a few pigeons pecking at spilled grain.

"The city barracks, if it pleases you. Or..."

He glanced behind them at Melissenos being led along.

"The estate of Traitor Melissenos..."

Vito only shrugged. "I’ve slept in worse men’s beds than his, but never in a man’s bed during the week I broke his army. The barracks will do."

Kalergis nodded so quickly that Vito could almost see a worry leaving him.

He went another few paces before finding the courage for what came next.

"Ser Barozzi. Forgive me."

His eyes remained on his ink-stained fingers instead of Vito.

"We hear things from Candia. An arrangement, trade, seat for the archons in your council."

Παρακαλώ, he murmured, catching himself and switching back to Italian.

"Might Chania hope for something the same?"

Vito looked at him for a moment. There was no need to be cruel about it. "I’m not going to hand you Candia’s terms while standing in a street I walked into an hour ago, amico."

A faint grin appeared despite everything.

"We’ll discuss once your city is properly secured, and not a moment before."

"Yes. Of course. Thank you."

Kalergis looked almost relieved to have been told precisely nothing.

Vito let him get a few paces ahead, then started to ponder as he always did, whether he wanted to or not.

He never liked the answer much better for having found it.

Forty soldiers. Eight thousand people behind these walls, more scattered among the farms and villages beyond them.

Pellegrino had Candia, with barely enough men to keep its gates shut after dark. Zaccaria and Orso were on the other side of the island, hunting down archons who had never drawn a blade against him in the first place.

There was no army coming to garrison Chania properly.

Forty soldiers could not hold a city this size for a week if its people ever decided to test them.

And that was the part Vito understood now.

What he had walking these streets was fear, freshly earned in a streambed and a chokepoint the day before. Fear was useful, but it did not last. Leave it alone and it burned itself out, given nothing to do, it turned sour within a month and became resentment.

So he needed terms, close enough to make cooperation look cheaper than a knife in the dark.

When he stopped dressing the thing up in respectable words, he was remarkably close to every extortionist he’d ever helped move product for in his other life.

The numbers were the same. The cloth was better. And this time there was a more patient god keeping accounts.

Vito decided he could live with that.

He usually could.

The barracks stood ahead, long and low, with nothing in the yard except pigeons and old straw.

The platoon began filing through the gate behind him, boots striking stone that had not heard the proper tread of soldiers in a long while.

Kalergis stopped just short of the entrance. He looked at the barracks as though the place already belonged to somebody else.

"Today is finished, then?"

"Indeed."

Vito looked past him toward the rooftops, and beyond those to the harbor.

"Tomorrow we talk about what happens next."

Kalergis bowed his head and turned back the way they had come, toward whatever remained of a city that had watched its own army die and its own government arrest itself, both before the day was out.

Vito stayed in the yard a little longer.

Forty tired men were settling into barracks built for more than hunreds, and there was nothing useful left to do about it tonight.

So he let the day’s business lie where it was.