Chapter 71: A Change of Address

The district didn’t wait for anybody’s plan.

A few minutes of crossing streets and slipping behind garden walls was enough to turn the place from a puzzle into a battlefield.

Vito found himself in the middle of a fight going three ways at once, with not one of those ways asking his permission.

To his left, down a lane clogged with overturned market baskets, a dozen of his men had charged straight into a house that poured retainers out of its front door.

Five or six of them were still trying to lace on mail while they fought. Blades struck in a crush too tight to call a battle and far too noisy to call anything else.

Behind him, at the gate of some estate, another knot of his soldiers forced a smaller group of house guards backward through their gateposts.

Eight men by the sound of it, one bloody step at a time.

Beyond both fights, over rooftops he couldn’t see past, still more noise was rising into the dark. Torchlight glowed orange against the low cloud ahead, from a place he had no chance of identifying.

Zaccaria’s men, perhaps. Orso’s, Pellegrino’s, or Domenego’s.

All of them scattered and every bit as blind as Vito was.

Or perhaps none of them. The noise might belong to something worse.

He couldn’t know, and he had no time to waste finding out.

A shadow burst from a doorway ahead and came straight across the street at him, paying no attention to either fight going on nearby.

It was a retainer with his sword raised and murder written plainly enough across his face.

The man cut low for his gut. Vito shifted his weight onto his back foot and turned his hip aside, letting the blade skim across the links at his waist instead of meeting his belly.

The instant the man’s arm passed him, he stepped in close. His elbow smashed into the man’s jaw, snapping his head sideways.

The retainer staggered, but his sword was already coming back. Vito caught the man’s wrist with his free hand and shoved it aside, then drove his own blade up from below.

The point punched through the gap beneath the man’s jaw. Vito twisted the hilt as he finished the thrust, and the retainer’s sword dropped from nerveless fingers.

He ripped the blade free and let blood spurt across his hand and sleeve as the man collapsed against him before sliding to the street.

Vito wiped his blade against his thigh and looked up at the shuttered, dark houses around him. There were more of them than any company his size could search before sunrise spoiled the night’s work.

A hundred doors, a hundred cellars, searching blind was a fool’s plan. Neither of Vito’s two lives had taught him to let pride stand in the way of paying for a clever answer.

He ducked into the black shelter of a garden wall long enough to catch his breath.

Then he whispered to the voice that always accompanied him.

"Purveyor."

He kept his voice low, chest still heaving, blood not yet dry on the hand gripping his sword.

"Tell me you’ve got a moment for a man presently getting himself killed."

I have exactly as much time as you do tonight. Which is apparently none at all. How touching that you thought to include me anyway.

"Every noble the traitors locked away when they took this city. Where are they keeping them?"

That would be one hundred. Every cell, every prisoner, everyone currently chained beneath floorboards, snoring included.

He winced.

Behind him, steel struck steel. The fight he had left behind was closer than it ought to be.

And here he was, haggling over a man’s freedom like some merchant complaining over pepper prices while the warehouse burned around him.

Two lifetimes, and he still hadn’t broken the habit.

"Narrow it down, give me the men who matter."

Fifty, then. The senior archons only, Skordilis’s cousin included, since apparently he’s the one debt worth paying tonight.

"Sold."

🪙 [FATE SHOP — INTELLIGENCE]

A Change of Address

Where a stubborn cousin and a handful of equally stubborn friends are presently being kept against their will, courtesy of men who are about to regret making the inconvenience.

Cost : 50 Fate

Try not to get the whole lot of them killed retrieving him. I’d hate to have spent good currency purchasing a corpse’s forwarding address.

The place came to him in an instant.

Vito could see it clearly enough in his mind, and he moved without hesitation.

"Toffolo!"

He threw the name over his shoulder, loud enough to cut through the noise still thundering from the fight behind him.

"To me, now!"

"Coming!"

The boy tore himself out of the crush at once.

Blood stained his knuckles, and a grin still managed to break through it all as he shoved companions without losing his stride.

Vito pulled five more from whoever happened to be nearest and willing, then didn’t wait to see whether the rest noticed he was gone.

The avenue across the district was shorter by distance than by danger.

Every street brought fresh noise, blades and shouts spilling from mansions his party never even slowed to inspect. The defenders were scattered thin, pulled toward whichever fire happened to be nearest at the moment.

Their destination stood at the top of a hill, the estate taller than its neighbors while its gate was lit by torches burning steadily in iron brackets.

Some retainers, perhaps a dozen protected the entrance, armed, alert, and plainly warned to expect exactly this sort of trouble.

Vito and his men plunged into the crush without slowing down.

The first retainer swung at his head.

Vito raised his sword just in time, catching the blow on the strong part of his blade. The steel rang against steel, and then shoved the sword aside and stepped inside the reach before he could recover.

He drove his shoulder into the retainer’s chest, knocking him backward into his companion behind him. The retainer stumbled, and Vito cut across the exposed side, his blade biting through cloth and mail, slashing a red gash beneath the ribs.

Then one blade struck his in the dark, close enough that the impact went all the way into his shoulder.

Vito twisted with the blow rather than trying to stop it. The enemy blade skidded off his mail, and he turned the motion into a short cut at the retainer’s arm.

The blade cut the forearm, his fingers spasmed, and the sword dropped.

Screams happened so near him that the cries never quite separated from his heartbeat.

One more retainer lunged through the crush, and Vito knocked the blade wide with his guard, stepped off the ranks, and drove his pommel into his mouth, hard enough to make teeth and blood snap between his lips.

Before the retainer could regain his stance, Vito thrusted into his chest.

The blade went in and the retainer’s hands closed around his wrist for one desperate instant before the grip faltered.

Vito wrenched the sword free, and blood dripped down the blade onto his hand.

He drove his sword forward into whatever yielded beneath it. Some body folded around the blade and went limp.

He tore the steel free in time to meet whatever came next.

Blood reached his knuckles, warm at first, cooling before he noticed it.

Someone crashed into Vito from the side.

He staggered, caught himself against the gatepost, and brought his sword up just before another cut came down. The impact jarred his wrist while he shoved the blade away, stepped forward, and drove his hilt into the retainer’s face.

The retainer reeled.

Vito followed with a thrust beneath his raised arm, and the blade disappeared into his side. When he pulled it free, blood spilled through the retainer’s fingers as he collapsed.

By then there was no enemy left alive.

The main doors waited at the top of a short flight of steps, heavier and better made than most things this campaign had yet asked him to break.

Vito rushed up the steps.

"Open it."

Toffolo’s boot swung through the tempered oak.