The reply he’d been piecing together never made it out. It died somewhere behind his teeth.
An old habit caught it first, one that had earned its keep years before in another life, when saying the wrong name in the wrong room could turn a profitable day into a very short one. A church packed with wounded men was no place to be talking to empty air.
He finally took a proper look at where he’d landed.
Physicians moved between the rows at an even pace, stopping only long enough to stitch a wound, tighten a bandage, or shake their heads before moving on again. Whatever hurry the day had begun with had long since bled away.
Farther down the nave, one man’s breathing had slipped into the ugly sort of rhythm that only ends one way, and nobody nearby wasted the effort pretending otherwise.
Satisfied nobody cared enough to notice one more fellow muttering under his breath, Vito lowered his voice to speak.
"So."
It came out little louder than a whisper. "Seeing as we’re stuck together until this whole affair runs its course, humor me. Am I the only project on your desk, or have you stuffed this little experiment into the heads of other poor bastards too?"
Even assuming there were others, letting test subjects compare notes tends to spoil the results. I’ll let you keep guessing. It seems to be the only thing keeping you occupied at the moment.
"You really do enjoy watching me work."
He grinned up at the dome, since the voice plainly had no interest in showing herself.
"Wouldn’t hurt you to admit why."
It might. I haven’t yet decided how attached I am to this experiment, and I have no intention of finding out over something as small as satisfying your curiosity.
"Fine, then. What happens if I stop playing along? Strictly for scientific purposes."
You could. I keep a tab in my records reserved for uncooperative subjects. It’s mostly empty, and I’d like it to stay that way. Filling it has consistently proved much less pleasant for the subject than for me.
"Ma va’."
He shook his head, a little more impressed than he intended to let on.
"Fine. Throw a wounded man a scrap, then. Tell me I’m doing well."
Words are cheap, and today they’d be wasted on your self-regard. I’ll show you instead.
Glowing text gathered before him just as it before, though this time it looked nothing like a quest.
🦁 [VITALE BAROZZI — STATUS]
Rank : Cadet of House Barozzi. Legitimate birth, junior standing.
Reputation : Rising rapidly. Widely credited with slaying the Emperor of the Romans.
Influence : Modest. Extends little beyond your family’s standing and a single powerful patron.
Fate Balance : 10
There. Now you have something to study besides yourself.
Vito read the display.
It made his grin even wider, despite what that cost in pain.
"Well, there it is."
He looked up at the saint painted on the wall. "A man can wake up a nobody, spend the afternoon killing an Emperor, and go to sleep exactly the same rung of the family ladder."
It would be a poorly designed society otherwise.
"Well, that’s comforting."
His eye stopped on the only part that resembled a number instead of a judgment.
"Ten."
He rolled it around on his tongue as though that might help.
"What exactly is Fate? You keep using the word like I’m supposed to know what it means."
Fate is mine to grant and yours to spend. You earn it by doing something worth remembering, which today you accomplished with an efficiency most subjects fail to achieve in an entire lifetime. You spend it asking me for things the world cannot otherwise give you. Ten is enough to buy something, though not much.
"Then show me this shop of yours."
It will award you only disappointment. Looking, however, costs nothing. That is about as generous as I ever become.
More glowing text gathered before him, enough like a merchant’s price board to make the comparison obvious, though no merchant had ever written his prices in light.
🪙 [FATE SHOP — FEATURED]
Enrico Dandolo’s Intentions
Category : Intelligence
Everything the Doge intends for Constantinople, the ruins of the Eastern Roman Empire, the Latin Empire, the partition of the conquered lands, and Venice’s place in what comes after.
Cost : 200 Fate
Master Shipwright
Category : Personnel
A shipwright with uncommon hands and no shortage of ambition. His finest ship has yet to leave the stocks, and all he lacks is a master worth building it for.
Cost : 150 Fate
Second Chance
Category : Fateweaving
A miracle bought before you need it. One moment of divine favor, paid for now and waiting in the wings for the day everything goes wrong.
Cost : 500 Fate
Vito looked over the list the way a hungry man watches the window of a bakery after the door has been locked for the night.
"Are those prices for real..."
He let out a slow breath through his teeth.
"Cazzo. You never learned how to do anything by halves, did you?"
Obviously not. Motivation becomes difficult to manufacture in a subject who’s already killed an Emperor before lunch. One must work with the material available.
When the rest of the display faded, one line remained.
It was the only thing priced within reach.
Lateen War Galley
Category : Knowledge & Blueprints
A war galley from the next century, drawn plank by plank. Give the plans to a good shipwright and let tomorrow’s fleet take the water today.
Cost : 10 Fate
He stared at it for a long while, the way a man might admire a fine blade sitting behind a shop window with no hope of paying for it.
Then he left it alone.
A blueprint was only paper until there was a keel beneath it. At the moment he had no shipyard, no shipwrights, and not so much as a plank to his name. What he did have was a ruined leg and a place among the wounded in a church that seemed determined to personally escort them to heaven, or most likely hell.
To spend a currency he barely knew on some blueprint he could not use for months struck him as little different from throwing it into the sea. He’d rather keep it until the day it could earn its supper.
How unexpectedly patient of you.
"Don’t get comfortable."
That concludes the tour. I’ll be watching what you do from here. For the experiment’s sake, if nothing else.
"What experiment?"
He gave up jumping around the question and came straight at it.
"Am I supposed to know what you mean?"
The word explains everything you’re presently allowed to know. The rest remains mine until I decide otherwise, and nothing said inside this church is likely to hurry that decision.
The door, wherever such a thing truly existed, closed with the snap of one that had never really stood open in the first place.
Vito let it be.
There was little profit in shoving against a wall built that solid. All it usually accomplished was leaving the fellow doing the pushing with sore hands, and he already had enough aches to see him through the week.
The voice offered nothing more.
Beneath the golden dome, the church was ordinary again.
Vito realized, only then, not once had anybody stopped to ask what he wanted.
His eyes drifted back to the dome, where the gold still caught what little light slipped through the high windows, and he reached for an answer to a question neither of his lives had ever thought to ask him outright.
A galley captain wanted ships. A patrician wanted the council seat waiting behind his family name. A dead arms dealer had wanted nothing grander than another ten years he never lived to see.
None of those answers quite fit.
In his heart, that had already found room to mourn a mother he’d never known, a sentiment started to rise. It was only half-formed, entirely his own, and stubbornly refused to make itself into words.