Chapter 95: Merchants of Considerable Personality

The clerk never looked up again, and Vito decided that a man with so little curiosity had earned his peace. He left the counting house and went looking for parchment instead.

Two letters, short enough to read while standing in a doorway, were sealed with Athanasia’s seal. He sent them off with a pair of couriers toward whatever Levantine houses that owed the Rakotis family a debt worth the favor.

He named L’Ancora and an evening a handful of days ahead.

Then he waited.

Acre gave him plenty to occupy him while he waited. The narrow streets, the tar and salt fish, the church of San Marco minding its business. The counting house had as many Genoese and Pisan tempers as Alexandria ever had, only packed tighter into the smaller room.

Vito’s tongue had not lost a day’s practice in the sea.

He found the Pisan again on one of those idle mornings, at the public scales by the harbor gate.

Wiry and sun-blackened as ever, red to the ears over a crate of oil jars, the man jabbed a finger at the scale-keeper’s accounts as though the ink itself had cheated him. He noticed Vito first, which said enough about how their last meeting had gone.

He spat to one side.

"You."

The rest came in the tangled speech. "I thought I’d left you and your drowned rats back at the harbor."

"Ma va’, you left nothing behind, amico."

Vito’s grin came easily, with nothing in it but delight. "Besides your own dignity floating out there instead, along with whatever’s left of your reputation for steering a straight line."

The scale-keeper suddenly found something else that needed weighing.

The captain jabbed a finger at Vito now. "My reputation’s finer than yours, damned puppy bastard. You’ll choke on that tongue one day, Barozzi."

"Is it?"

Vito spread both hands. "Then prove it, and ram my bloody ships! Cazzo, I’d almost welcome it. Give your crew something useful to practice, since God knows they’ve had no luck with it so far."

Momolo could contain himself no longer. "Momolo has met goats with a surer sense of direction, capitano! Give the word and I’ll set the whole business to verse before supper, and I promise you won’t enjoy a single line of it!"

The captain’s face ran through every color it had shown during their first exchange, and invented a few new ones besides.

His mouth was still thinking of a reply when one of his men called him back toward the crate. He settled for a mangled curse, then stalked off to argue about the oil jars instead.

Apparently, a mouthy Barozzi was already known on Acre’s docks.

The evening he had named arrived sooner than the waiting made it seem.

Vito found Momolo outside the counting house, practically vibrating at the thought of two new men worth talking to. The two of them set off through streets gone deep blue with dusk, lanterns appearing ahead of them.

Momolo was hardly able to keep his feet from hurrying.

"Ser Barozzi, do you suppose either of them sings?"

"Those are merchants, amico. Neither strikes me as much of a singer."

"Then Momolo shall have to teach them."

L’Ancora stood close enough to the harbor that its floor smelled faintly of tar beneath the wine spilled across it. The low-ceilinged room was crowded with sailors from three different fleets, all pretending very hard not to watch one another.

Vito ducked through the low door with Momolo behind him and spotted the table Athanasia’s seal had bought him. Two men waited there.

The first was thin and precise, dressed in cloth too fine for the room’s smoke and noise. One hand lay on a wrapped glass case at his elbow, and his eyes kept straying back to it.

The second man took up considerably more of the bench beside him. He was big, red-faced, already deep into his cup, and he smelled from ten paces away as though he had poured an entire caravan’s supply of crushed flowers and burnt wood directly over his head.

Both men rose as Vito and Momolo approached, one smoothly and the other with a good deal more effort.

The thin man spoke first, giving a bow that stopped just short of ridiculous. "Guibert of Tyre, Ser Barozzi. It is an honor beyond words to finally meet the man Lady Athanasia speaks of so warmly."

He straightened, but one hand never left the case. "I deal in Tyrian glass, the finest this coast produces. Each piece is blown and cooled with more care than most men give their own children."

Vito raised an eyebrow, already enjoying himself. "That’s a brave trade for a man crossing a sea full of drunk sailors and worse weather."

"Brave is one word for it."

Guibert’s fingers tightened around the case when a tankard crashed behind them, and he flinched as if the noise had struck him personally. "That, God preserve her, is Aveline. Her sisters didn’t survive the caravan from Tyre. I buried what was left of them in the sand myself, no one saw how badly I wept over broken glass."

Vito’s grin widened. "You named the glass? Amico, I know a carpenter back on Crete who would like you very much."

Guibert sniffed, plainly wounded. "A merchant should know the worth of what he carries. Not everyone does."

Momolo leaned forward with one hand pressed to his chest. "Momolo understands completely, a performer’s voice is no different. Care for it, or lose it, there is no third road between the two."

The big man cut in before Guibert could answer, slapping one broad hand onto the table hard enough to rattle every cup on it. "Walter of the Burning Sands, if it pleases you, though most men just call me Walter."

He put the name forward with such satisfaction he might as well be a king. "Bruges, if you’re asking where I started. The Damascus route, if you’re asking where I truly became a merchant worth my name."

Vito’s eyebrow climbed higher. "That’s considerably less burning sand and considerably more standing water and sheep, if my geography hasn’t failed me."

Walter waved that away like a fly. "I make my own desert, Barozzi. Frankincense, myrrh, rosewater strong enough to make a Sultan weep, all of it carried up from Damascus on camels I’ve personally talked out of biting me more times than I care to remember."

His voice grew steadier. "I’ve walked that road through sandstorms that buried men whole, bargained with bandits who wanted my beard as a trophy, and once talked an entire caravan master into believing I was a bishop’s cousin. Trust me, I know my trade."

Guibert made a small, disbelieving noise into his cup. "The caravan roads carry goods, and sometimes people besides. Neither fact requires quite so much hideous words to explain."

Walter’s grin never flickered.

"Nobody asked you, glass-doll." He leaned closer.

Momolo coughed once into his sleeve, his eyes watering. "Ser Barozzi, is it customary among the Franks to announce oneself with an entire garden?"

Walter thumped his chest. "Only the ones worth remembering, little man. You’ll know I’ve walked into a room a full minute before you see me, consider it a courtesy."

"Consider it a warning," Guibert muttered, pulling his case a little closer to his side.

Vito let them carry on for a while, watching the two men trade barbs.

It was, he decided, easily the most entertaining introduction he’d had on the whole voyage. Glass, perfume, and a woman’s name had somehow managed to hold the whole table together.

"Ma va’, I could listen to this all night."

He raised one hand before either man could begin again. "Yet Lady Athanasia didn’t send me a letter so I could watch the two of you insult each other until next spring, however much I’m enjoying it."

Guibert straightened at once, his hands folding neatly atop the case as though it had never trembled.

"Then talk, Ser Barozzi, I find I’m considerably more interested in profit than in comedy tonight."

Walter allowed himself one last grin before leaning in, elbows on the table, all business beneath the perfume.

"For once, the glass-lover and I agree."