The waterfront had grown silent hours ago.
Only the slow wash of black water against ancient stone and the occasional cry of a gull disturbed the night. Some pools of amber light spilled from the old lamps across the promenade, leaving long stretches of darkness between them.
From one of these shadows, Massimo checked his phone for what had to be the third time in ten minutes.
"Porca miseria..."
The words slipped out under his breath before he shoved the phone back into his pocket.
Poor bastard, Vito thought. Whoever this buyer was, he clearly hadn’t learned punctuality.
Massimo hated waiting.
Vito, on the other hand, barely noticed.
One hand brushed against the old stone wall near them, his fingers wandering along a groove worn deep by weather, steel, or perhaps a generous helping of both. He couldn’t quite get over the thought of what he was touching.
"Cazzo," he murmured, mostly to himself. "You know what happened right here?"
Massimo let out one exaggerated, strained sigh.
"I’m about to, aren’t I?"
"Twelve-oh-four. Right here, or close enough that the death won’t fuss over the difference."
Vito patted the wall, "La Serenissima lashed their ships together two by two, dropped bridges straight off the masts onto the towers, and climbed into the fight like nobody had told them it wasn’t a party."
Massimo clicked his tongue, "Mamma mia, you’re worse than my nonna at Sunday lunch, every wall’s got a lecture with it to you, boy. Watch the water, not the bricks."
Vito grinned, "Relax, tesoro, I give the history for free tonight. Now here’s the good part, the one leading that whole fleet was Enrico Dandolo, blind as my judgment after a bottle of wine, past eighty years old, and still barking at his rowers to bring him closer to the fight."
"Enough history, Vitale. My patience wasn’t built by you Venetians."
"Ma va’."
Vito laughed as he stood.
"No taste for history, no taste for adventure. What do you even dream about, taxes?"
"Guns, women, and enough cocaine to survive one more night listening to you."
Vito clicked his tongue and let it go.
Behind them the old sea wall ran off into the dark like it had somewhere better to be, crumbled in places, patched in others by eight centuries of nobody caring enough to finish the job. Ahead, the Bosphorus slid by wide and black, ferrying a single tanker toward the Black Sea at a pace that suggested even the ship had heard every excuse Massimo ever made about people that showed up late.
Not a soul in sight for two hundred meters either direction, unless you counted the gulls, which Vito did, loosely, as witnesses who couldn’t testify.
It struck him as an excellent spot to close a deal. Or disappear a body. Possibly both.
His gaze found Massimo again.
"Fine, business then."
Vito popped his shoulders, as though folding away the boy who still got excited over history.
"What are we actually doing tonight?"
"We’ve got guns to sell, Vito. What did you think, holy water?"
Vito huffed a short laugh, though the job kept needling at him underneath it.
"And you’re sure this one’s trustworthy? Twenty minutes late is a strange kind of caution."
"Boat trouble, probably. I don’t interrogate the man who’s about to pay us."
The excuse sat wrong with Vito, though he couldn’t have said exactly why. He looked out over the water, searching the dark for whatever leaking, half-drowned little boat was supposed to receive tonight’s fortune.
That was as far as the thought got.
The crack was hardly worth calling a gunshot.
It came like a dry cough, and the water swallowed it before it traveled very far.
The blow told a different story. A hard flat punch beneath his ribs, and the world twisted with it, throwing him before the ancient wall caught from behind, stone against his skull hard enough to rattle it loose.
He barely felt it. There wasn’t room for two kinds of pain at once.
His hand moved to the wound on its own, some stubborn old instinct convinced that enough pressure could undo what had already been done.
Bright blood came fast, hot against his palm, more of it by the second than any hand was able to hold back.
He looked up.
The pistol was still raised. Massimo’s arm scarcely trembled.
Yet Vito barely noticed the weapon.
His eyes stopped on Massimo’s face instead.
The man’s expression was clenched so hard it shook, his eyes already wet, grief carved plainly across his features.
Fierce rage surged up inside Vito.
Ten years of habit screamed at him to move, to close the distance, to make this betrayal expensive.
The anger reached his hands only to discover they were already too slow, already shaking, already slipping beyond his command.
"It’s just business, Vito. Don Rizzo needed somebody’s head on this."
Massimo’s voice cracked halfway through the sentence, which somehow made it worse instead of better.
The anger vanished almost as soon as it came.
It could not outrun the cold spreading through him, and beneath that cold another regret silently took its place, one that had very little to do with the man standing over him.
What surprised Vito, in the handful of seconds he had left, was how small the whole thing seemed.
A lifetime balanced itself in one miserable instant.
Every evening he’d told his mother next month instead of tonight.
Every name sitting untouched in his phone.
An entire decade spent making himself useful to the famiglia, and precious few years spent doing anything worth remembering.
The water slid past the old wall exactly as it always had, paying no attention to any man’s regrets.
His vision shrank to a bright little point.
The city disappeared with it.
Then there was nothing at all.
Stone again.
Only this stone was different.
It was warmer beneath his back, rougher besides, and the pain sweeping through him had nothing whatsoever to do with a bullet.
The world returned a piece at a time, like a careless man emptying his pockets onto a table.
Steel clashed against steel somewhere close.
Dozens of men shouted and screamed in more than one language.
Everywhere, smoke hung thick enough to chew, sour with a fire that had plainly been burning for hours.
Nearby, there was an enormous growl before whatever it was split apart, timber crashing beneath a burden it had never been meant to carry.
Vito tried to sit up and managed only to turn his head.
That was when he noticed the arrow.
Its shaft still protruded beneath his neck.
As he stared, it began creeping backward out of the wound, and with it, flesh closed behind as neatly as though time itself had figured to walk in reverse.
He understood none of what happened.
That unsettled him a good deal more than the pain.
Hello. I see you survived the transmigration. I want to be clear that I had accounted for both outcomes, so this isn’t a surprise so much as a preference being fulfilled. Welcome to the experiment. Please try not to embarrass us both immediately.
Vito lay perfectly still, which was no small accomplishment considering an arrow had only just climbed out of his neck.
Mostly he felt like a fellow who had wandered into some odd conversation but was far too curious to excuse himself.
"I’m sorry."
Vito looked around at nobody he could see.
He seemed to be in some tower. Through the smoke, shadows moved that might have been men, gone again before he could decide if they’d noticed him. Nothing that explained a voice this comfortably in his skull.
"Did you just call surviving a preference?"
I called it a preference being fulfilled, which is different, and considerably more accurate. Do try to keep up. You have somewhere else to be in a few minutes, and there will be a remarkable amount of screaming.
Vito looked down at himself, at the wound sealing beneath a coat of mail he’d certainly never owned, then at hands that looked close enough to be his but not close enough to satisfy him.
"Where am I? What am I wearing? And whose hands are these?"
Yours, as of a few minutes ago. Your name, also as of a few minutes ago, is Vitale Barozzi.
That only made him more confused, and it wasn’t solely because of the battle that raged around the tower.
"That’s my name."
He spoke slowly.
"That’s already my name."
How touching that you noticed. I’ll let you think about what that means later, assuming later proves willing to cooperate.
"Cazzo, just tell me where is this?"
Constantinople, twelve-oh-four. The twelfth of April, if you enjoy precision. At present you’re lying in the middle of a siege, and I’d rank that above every other mystery demanding your attention.
"And who are you?"
A man nearby screamed in a fashion that made Vito flinch, though he kept speaking to the empty air.
"You got a name, or am I supposed to keep guessing?"
None are your concern today. Call me whatever helps you sleep, though I wouldn’t waste time trying flattery. It has failed every person who ever attempted it, and today isn’t likely to improve its reputation.
Despite the absurdity of the situation, Vito smiled. "Some random voice who reads minds and delivers terrible motivational speeches. I’ve had first dates that started worse."
Cute thought. Also a stupid thought. I would rather call it damage control, and you’re the damage.
"What is all this, then? Am I dead? Did I die twice? Does that sort of thing happen often?"
None of that information is free, and most of it wouldn’t keep you alive through the next ten minutes regardless. Worry about your survival, I’ll concern myself with everything else, which is, frankly, the division of labor most likely to preserve us both from disappointment.
Before he could ask another question, the space before him folded itself into neat glowing text until they formed enough to read, floating a few feet from his face as naturally as a shop sign.
⚔ [QUEST ISSUED]
Baptism by Fire
The wall beneath you is not finished falling, and neither, it turns out, are you. Soldiers nearby have just noticed the body they left for dead is breathing again. What happens during the next minutes decides whether that becomes an inconvenience for them, or an extremely short second life for you. Survive.
Reward : 10 Fate
Reward : The complete memory record of the original body
"Fate."
Vito tasted the word as though it might decide to bite.
"Well, that’s cheerful. Sounds biblical. I rather like it."
Less commentary. More surviving.
Two shadows broke from the smoke along the walkway and came pounding into the tower, weapons raised.
One shouted sharply enough to slice through the surrounding noise.
"Ζει! Εκεί!"
The other never slowed.
"Σκότωσέ
Vito’s hand had already found the sword lying beside him, the one that had fallen with this body and never left it.
His fingers wrapped around the grip with confidence, as though they had practiced the motion a thousand times before.
Perhaps they had.
He had no notion how to use the thing.
He had a strong suspicion he was about to receive an education.