Chapter 74: The City, By Dawn

The noble district had stopped pretending it was a battlefield by the time dawn arrived. Bound nobility sat against garden walls beneath gray light, while soldiers watched them with plain boredom.

Vito let the day take care of itself for a while, there was one piece of unfinished business to find.

The glow over the religious district was still there.

It had merely lost its splendor, fading to some dirty smear under a pale sky.

He found the answer soon enough. The cathedral compound’s gate was hanging broken from its hinges, and bodies in dark robes lay near the steps. Two or three men in mail were down among them, plainly hired to keep anyone from getting close enough to ask questions.

Domenego’s men held the ground now, weapons still out and faces still battle-hardened.

Once Vito had the whole thing in his head, it made more sense than he cared to admit.

A coup enforced by the lesser houses alone would have needed the church to bless it if it meant to last. The priests would preach obedience to their new masters in return for whatever money had purchased their silence.

Domenego had worked that much out during the small hours, and simply struck the clerical part of the city as hard as the nobility.

What he had actually done there was plain enough, and there was no comfortable way to dress it up.

The bishop lay dead beside the cathedral steps, with two of his deacons nearby. The hired swords paid to keep them alive had died with them.

The rest of the district’s clergy stood untouched in their doorways. Those were the ones who had done nothing except keep their heads down while the whole rotten affair went on, and now they watched soldiers scrub blood from stones that had never asked for the honor.

Vito found that almost amusing as he stood over the mess.

Domenego had been angry enough at the traitorous priests to promise aloud that he would break a finger for every family one of them betrayed. Somehow, in the middle of all that anger, every innocent clergyman in the district still breathed.

Call it discipline. Call it a fool’s attempt to restrain his temper. Either name would serve.

By then, the city followed the news that had already broken the garrison morale.

The retainers and hired swords who could still run made for the countryside, while the militia dropped its weapons as soon as word of surrender reached them, like water finding the low ground without needing directions.

The archons who had sold their own city went into cells occupied only days before by the men they had victimized.

Those prisoners walked free into a dawn they had never expected to see. These men were thinner and harder-eyed, as five days underground left a mark freedom alone couldn’t scrub away before breakfast.

More than one of Rethymno’s neutral nobles also discovered, with speed and absence of shame, that he always privately opposed the whole scheme, from its first hour.

The claim grew stronger the nearer its owner stood to a blade.

By the time the sun had surpassed the rooftops, the company occupied every wall in the city. Together, three war galleys eased into the piers.

The Lion of Saint Mark hung plainly above a harbor by morning.

The city belonged to Venezia now in every way that mattered, its streets, its walls, and the water at its own front door.

The cost sat heavier than Chania’s had.

Vito made himself look at the number. A kinder dawn might have let him step over it and keep walking.

Twelve dead and thirty-four wounded.

Chania’s open field had cost him three dead and fourteen wounded.

The field lets a company fight one battle. One city this size breaks the same fight into a dozen smaller ones, through private gates and separate districts, with the alarm already spoiled and half the plan made in the dark.

Every one of them sends a bill.

The surrender terms came easier than the fighting, which was becoming its own sort of joke.

Vito sat with Skordilis’s cousin and the senior voices of the restored city. The conversation followed the same road it had at Chania, only faster.

The nobility that had just proved it couldn’t police its own house had little room left to argue about what it owed the men who saved them.

Higher tolls and a firm hand over what goods left the harbor and where it went. Then the Venetian quarter, granted without argument.

This was the second city in which Vito had talked frightened, beaten men into thanking him for the privilege of paying more.

Beneath the satisfaction, and with very little surprise remaining, he noticed how natural the performance had become.

By midmorning the whole affair had become worth recording properly.

🦁 [TERRITORY OVERVIEW — RETHYMNO, CRETE]

Sovereignty : La Serenissima

Governance : Latin-Aligned Archontes (Coup Suppressed)

Population : Approximately 3,500

Civil Order : Fragile, but Stable

Harbor : Modest Bay, Stone Pier, Small Port

Military : Stone Walls, Compagnia del Leone Nero

Major Districts : Harbor, Market, Noble, Religious, Suburbs, Venetian Quarter (Reserved)

Barozzi Presence : Established (Garrison, Trade Terms Secured, No Fondaco)

The box appeared over the battle like a seal pressed into wax. For once, Vito let it remain there without reaching for a joke.

He had barely finished reading when the older piece of business finally came due.

🪙 [SYSTEM NOTIFICATION]

Quest Complete : The Siege of Rethymno

Reward : 200 Fate

Reward : Title — Lingua Franca

I’ve chosen the name myself, since you plainly weren’t going to manage it. A fitting reward for a man who fought his way through an entire mansion only to discover at the end that he could not say one useful thing to anyone he had just rescued.

Consider your future ease with foreign tongues a gift, delivered at the traditional time, several dead retainers and one entire siege after it would have done you any good.

Vito clicked his tongue.

Apparently the voice could decide, entirely on its own, that his mind could use improvement, and force it.

The irritation got under his skin.

And some old wound from another life pulled tight for half a breath before he made himself let it go.

Whatever the voice was, it had never lied about the price of what given to him.

And this was a world with no single tongue holding it together. Latin for treaties. Greek for half the coast where he now claimed a piece. Arabic waiting for him in Alexandria. A whole pidgin being invented day by day by men no more official than he was.

It was a poor place to refuse a shortcut like this out of pride.

Cazzo, he thought, more amused than he had any right to be. One man spends decades paying for lessons like a merchant’s apprentice, and apparently he gets handed the answer in days.

Rethymno’s business was finished. Its walls, harbor, and frightened new government were secure.

Not much remained to keep the company on this stretch of coast for another day.

Vito went through the reckoning properly for the whole expedition.

The campaign for Chania, sudden summons to Rethymno, this entire night and morning. All of it went into the sum.

When he reached the end, the number surprised him more than it ought to have.

Nearly three weeks, close enough, since Candia had last seen him standing in it.

He let himself imagine how far Nane’s machines had gotten with nobody there to slow them down, and what new name they had probably earned by now.

Then he wondered what the fondaco’s walls must look like against the harbor after so long left to themselves.

His thoughts came at last to Caterina, and stayed there longest, wondering how she had spent every one of those weeks, away from him.