Chapter 105: La Dominante

High summer had finally caught them beyond Ragusa.

The days had grown long and pale at both ends, and by Bepi’s reckoning his little needle had saved them nearly a week on a voyage that ought to have swallowed the whole month.

The old sailor had quit calling it witchcraft around Corfu, though he still couldn’t quite bring himself to call it a blessing, not while there were saints listening.

Vito had Caterina beside him at the prow that dawn. Her sleeves were pinned back, and for once her account books were below deck where neither of them had to look at them.

Then the sea began to change. The open waters flattened and turned greener, with enough brackish water in it to leave a taste at the back of the throat, as La Contessa pushed through one of the porti cut through the sandbar of the lidi.

It was the same shallow, stubborn water that had defeated every fleet foolish enough to force its way through.

Fishing weirs stood in crooked rows across the shallows and salt pans caught the sunlight in sheets of white and pink. The gulls covered the mudflats in such numbers that the ship’s crew looked like a very small gathering by comparison.

The city then started to appear in the horizon.

First came the campanili, bell towers rising one after another, as though the city figured centuries ago that standing on ground was a weakness best left to places with less to prove. More towers appeared as they drew nearer, until the skyline became one crowded ridge of brick and stone, all standing on pilings like a gambler daring the floor to crumble.

Beyond the marsh, even the open water seemed to be disappearing beneath ships. More hulls rode in the lagoon than anywhere on this sea.

Then San Marco appeared before them, and the Basilica caught the sunlight in its splendor. Four bronze horses stood across the facade, newly hoisted by the scaffolding still tied off at one corner, bright as gold against stone that had spent years waiting for them.

Beside the church stood the Doge’s residence, low and square, looking more like a fortress than a palace. The water before both buildings was so crowded with ships that one could probably have crossed the whole basin by walking from deck to deck and kept his boots dry.

The grandeur came with its escort of noise and smells. Hammers chimed against half-built hulls beyond the Basilica’s reflected gold while fish guts and pitch drifted in with whatever incense escaped through the church’s open doors.

Venezia had naturally considered that splendor and fish entrails ought to share the same street.

Vito’s hand found the rail without him thinking about it, his knuckles whitening against the timber. Two men had been born in this city eight hundred years apart, and both were standing at the same ship now, looking at the same water.

For once, neither had clever words to say. Vito would have called that foolish in anyone else, standing there stunned before a city that was, after all, mostly wood, brick, and an unreasonable amount of mud.

He let himself have it regardless, as he didn’t get many moments like that, no matter how many lives he happened to be living through.

Caterina had gone stiff beside him, which was remarkable enough to deserve notice. Her eyes moved slowly over the city, across the Basilica, the horses, and the crowded ships, never stopping on one thing for very long.

She looked like she was reading a letter from a house that had never wanted her in the first place, perfectly polite and offering nothing she hadn’t already learned to live without.

Her name belonged here, but her life did not.

That had been built in Constantinople, where her family’s true branch had fed, clothed, and married off three generations of Contarini women.

Vito watched her until she caught him at it. Her chin had risen just a little, and he knew that look.

He found her hand before either of them spoke, and she let him keep it there.

"Look at their necks."

Vito started, nodding toward the bronze horses. "No collars yet, cut straight through them to make them small enough for the voyage, and it’ll be nearly a century before some poor bronze worker gets blamed for fixing the job properly."

Caterina looked at him instead of the horses. "Only you could stand before the most stolen horses in Christendom and worry about their tailoring."

He laughed. "Your husband notices what he notices, moglie. One day you’ll thank me for it."

Vito let the grin spread across his face. He had been holding it back since the bell towers appeared, mostly because he wanted to pretend he was above being impressed. He was not.

Either or, he continued. "Whatever this city intends to make of me, it can wait until after I’ve had a hot bath and changed my clothes. Weeks of salt, rope, and Bepi’s grunts about how often a man ought to bathe have earned me at least that much."

Caterina laughed, low and easy, and didn’t argue. Vito’s eyes had already gone back to the water. The closer they came, the more history the place seemed to throw at him.

Beyond the bronze horses and the palace lived a man who owned less of this city than half its fishmongers probably believed he did. Vito had read about the office twice, once as a boy who liked dead history for its own sake and once as a man who had actually sat across a table from the Doge currently wearing the hat. It had amused him both times.

The Doge swore an oath when he took office, and that oath did most of the governing afterward. He couldn’t write to foreign kings without the city reading over his shoulder first, accept gifts worth mention, run a private business on the side.

Six councillors stood behind him at all times, one from each sestiere, chosen in part to make certain he never had the pleasure of owing any of them a favor.

Above the Doge stood the Great Council, sovereign for more than thirty years now and the very body that had elected him and kept him on a leash afterward. Any legitimate son of the family name could walk through its doors once he came of age.

No vote was required, nor fortune had to be proved.

Beneath it, the Council of Forty handled elections and judgments. Three sworn men called the Avogadori de Comùn watched the machinery and kept the records.

There was no senate above them yet, that would come more than twenty years from now. The Council of Ten was still two centuries away, so Venetian men would have to wait a long time before learning to lower their voices in wine shops for that particular reason.

A patrician here was a patrician by name, and the name did nearly all the work that land and inherited office did elsewhere. That meant a cadet with some galleys and no family fortune behind him could have a seat waiting for him the day he became old enough to claim it.

Beneath the patricians came the cittadini, who handled much of the city’s paperwork and could trade wherever their money reached. Beneath them came the popolani, who built the ships, rowed them, and kept the whole Republic standing while receiving rather less gratitude than the work deserved.

All of it eventually ran through the Rialto. The low wooden bridge groaned beneath more carts on a market day than any bridge ought to endure. There the colleganza allowed a man with money and no appetite for the sea to finance a voyage sailed by another man who actually wanted to go to sea.

Families who preferred to keep their fortunes inside the bloodline used a fraterna instead, keeping strangers’ money out of the arrangement.

Behind all of it stood the Arsenal, the Republic’s shipyard, already producing more hulls in a season than most cities could manage in a decade. Vito’s three galleys, and everything that had grown from them, ran on this machinery.

The last stretch of open water ahead of them had narrowed enough that there was no mistaking it for anything but a destination.

🦁 [TERRITORY OVERVIEW — VENEZIA]

Sovereignty : La Serenissima

Governance : Doge, Great Council, Six Ducal Councillors, Council of Forty

Population : Approximately 80,000

Civil Order : Prosperous, Commercially Ascendant

Harbor : Bacino di San Marco. Vast Stone Piers, Extensive Waterfront

Military : Arsenale di Venezia, State Galley Fleet, Milizia Cittadina

Major Districts : San Marco, Rialto, Cannaregio, Castello, Dorsoduro, San Polo, Santa Croce

Barozzi Presence : Legitimate Birth, Cadet Branch House

The data suggests improvement. I would like that noted as a surprise, not a compliment.

Vito grinned at the display and let it stand. Improvement was improvement, whatever the voice chose to call it.

The distance between the prow and the nearest pier kept shrinking, hull by hull, until he could make out faces across the waterfront.

Behind him, Bepi had already begun shouting the fleet toward a berth.

Vito was restless now, but it was the good sort, with two lives’ worth of patience running out at exactly the same time.

"Prepare to be impressed, Serenissima."