Valenzo Harbor — Twilight
Fear coiled in Lorenzo di Civita's stomach like a serpent, cold and familiar. He had known it would come to this—had calculated the risk with the same precision he once applied to economic models in another life. But equations couldn't capture the stench of the harbor at dusk, or the weight of five pairs of eyes boring into him as he knelt beside his livelihood, scattered in the mud.
The dock reeked of salt, sweat, and the particular desperation that clung to Valenzo's outer wharves. Gulls wheeled overhead, their cries like mocking laughter as Lorenzo crouched beside the shattered crate of saffron, its golden threads spilling into the mud like a king's blood. Each strand represented hours of labor, each grain worth more than its weight in gold. And now, worthless.
Guild enforcers surrounded him in a loose half-circle, their silver pauldrons etched with the serpent-and-coin sigil of the Casa di Ferro catching the dying light. Their leader, a hulk of a man named Matteo whose knuckles bore the evidence of countless "negotiations," spat at Lorenzo's feet, the glob landing mere inches from the ruined spice.
"Twenty-five ducats per crate 'damage fee.' Guild law." Matteo's voice carried the bored satisfaction of a man who'd broken dozens of merchants just this month.
Lorenzo felt rage bubble beneath his fear, a dangerous compound. His previous life had taught him the mechanics of monopolies, the stranglehold of cartels. But theory was bloodless; reality had broken bones and hungry nights.
He swallowed his anger, forcing a smile that never touched his eyes. His mud-streaked hands remained steady as he reached for the meager coin purse at his belt—a performance of submission for men who thrived on it.
"A fair price, ser. Forgive the clumsiness of my—"
"Clumsiness?" Matteo kicked the splintered wood, sending precious saffron spiraling through the air like autumn leaves. The violence was casual, performative. "This is sabotage. Your stall's been warned. Twice."
The last word carried a finality that sent ice through Lorenzo's veins. Around them, dockworkers froze, suddenly absorbed in their tasks, eyes averted. No one helped a marked man. Somewhere, a gull screeched, the sound piercing the heavy silence. Lorenzo counted his breaths, his mind racing through scenarios, calculating outcomes with desperate clarity.
Twenty-five ducats. A fortune for a stallholder who already owed the guild twice that amount. Money he didn't have—couldn't have, not after the "harbor fees" and "quality inspections" that had bled him dry for months.
Sweat trickled down his spine despite the evening chill. Three months of careful planning, of nights spent scratching economic formulas onto hidden parchments by candlelight, of building a network of contacts who wouldn't instantly report back to the guilds—all of it hanging by a thread.
Then: a glint of salvation through the gathering gloom.
A shadow detached from the crowd of onlookers—a boy, no older than twelve, with hollow cheeks and eyes too old for his face. He darted toward the wharf, his bare feet silent on the salt-crusted boards. "Ship incoming!" he hissed in the cant slang of the streets, his voice barely reaching Lorenzo. "Contarini colors, three masts, coming in hard against the tide!"
Matteo stiffened, his attention diverted. The Contarinis were rivals to the Casa di Ferro, their crimson flags a thorn in the guild's side for generations. A three-masted galley meant significant cargo—and potential challenge to the guild's stranglehold on the spice routes.
Lorenzo seized the opening with the desperation of a drowning man. He rose slowly, brushing saffron from his hands with deliberate care, as if each grain weren't worth a day's wages.
"Ser Matteo," he said smoothly, voice pitched for the crowd that had begun to gather at a safe distance. "Shall we discuss fees and damages... or perhaps prepare for your real rivals? I hear the Contarinis secured exclusive rights to the Malacca pepper harvest." The lie flowed easily; economic warfare required misinformation as much as coin.
The enforcer's eyes narrowed, suspicion warring with greed and territorial instinct. A heartbeat passed. Then another. Lorenzo felt sweat pool at his collar, his confident smile a mask over grinding teeth.
Then, with a curse that would make a seasoned sailor blush, Matteo gestured his men toward the harbor mouth.
"This isn't over, di Civita," he growled, jabbing a thick finger into Lorenzo's chest hard enough to bruise. "You've been granted a reprieve, not a pardon. We'll collect what's owed—with interest."
Lorenzo watched them go, their silver emblems glinting like predator eyes in the fading light. Only when they disappeared around the harbormaster's office did he exhale, his shoulders sagging with relief that made his knees weak. Pride was a luxury for men with power; he would take survival instead.
The boy lingered, thin and wary as a street cat, but grinning with the triumph of the young and bold. "You owe me, spice rat."
"And debts should be honored." Lorenzo studied the child—sharp-eyed, quick-fingered, with the wary intelligence of those raised by Valenzo's unforgiving streets. "Name your price."
"A job." The boy's voice held a fierceness that belied his size. "I'm good with locks, good with ears. I can... acquire things." He tapped his temple with a grimy finger—a gesture too sharp, too knowing for his age. "And I hear things. Like how the guilds are watching you. Like how you've been asking questions about ships that don't fly guild flags."
Lorenzo felt a chill that had nothing to do with the sea breeze. If a street child knew his plans, who else might? He kept his face neutral, weighing risks against necessity. Trust was a currency he couldn't afford to spend freely. But the boy's eyes held a spark he recognized from his own reflection: hunger. Not just for food, but for change, for possibility.
"Meet me at the Salt Cellar tavern. Midnight." Lorenzo pulled a small copper coin from his sleeve—a practiced motion that had saved him during leaner times. "For your trouble today."
The boy snatched it with lightning quickness, testing it with his teeth before it disappeared into some hidden pocket. "I'll be there. Name's Varro." He hesitated, then added with defiant pride, "That's what I call myself, anyway."
As the boy melted back into the gathering darkness, Lorenzo turned to the ruined crate. Kneeling, he carefully salvaged what saffron he could, each thread worth more than most Valenzans earned in a day. Tomorrow, he would water it down, mix it with safflower—dishonest, perhaps, but survival rarely accommodated honor.
His fingers closed around a particularly vibrant strand, and for a moment, he was transported back to lecture halls and economic theory debates. Market inefficiencies. Monopolistic compression. Price elasticity. Terms that had once been academic now meant life or death.
The irony wasn't lost on him. In his first life, he'd been a middling student, more passionate about theories than practice. Now, reborn into this Renaissance-inspired world, those same theories were his only weapon against a system designed to crush men like him—merchants with ambition but without proper lineage or guild connections.
As darkness claimed the harbor, Lorenzo pocketed the salvaged spice and lifted his eyes to the horizon. Somewhere beyond that line, opportunity waited in the form of unregulated markets, of trade routes the guilds considered too dangerous or insignificant to control. The path to power wasn't through confrontation—not yet—but through the cracks in their system.
Later — The Salt Cellar
The Salt Cellar reeked of sour wine and old betrayals. The tavern sat in Valenzo's Minnow District, where the buildings leaned against each other like drunken sailors, and the streets were narrow enough that assassins could leap from roof to roof without breaking stride. It was a place where coin bought silence, and questions were considered a form of suicide.
Lorenzo nursed a cup of bitter chicory, his gaze flicking periodically to the stairs. He'd chosen the corner table, back to the wall, with clear sightlines to both exits—habits formed through painful experience rather than paranoia. The tavern's patrons were the usual mix: sailors between voyages, dockworkers drowning the day's aches, and the occasional merchant like himself, eyes watchful above careful smiles.
His fingers traced the hidden pocket where his true treasure lay: not coin or spice, but knowledge. Knowledge that didn't belong in this world of guild monopolies and mercantile republics. Knowledge that made him both valuable and dangerous.
The boy arrived as the church bells struck midnight, hood pulled low, but not alone. He was flanked by a grizzled sailor with a peg leg and salt-white beard, and a compact woman in well-worn mercenary leathers, a thin scar bisecting her left eyebrow.
Lorenzo felt his heartbeat quicken—opportunity and danger, often indistinguishable from each other. "Friends of yours?" he asked, keeping his voice neutral as the trio approached.
"Friends of yours, if you pay well enough," the woman snapped, her accent marking her as Caldaran—from the northern archipelago where loyalty was expensive but absolute once purchased.
"Varro says you're looking for a crew," the sailor added, his voice a rumbling bass that carried the rasp of decades shouting orders against sea winds. "Says you've got plans that don't align with guild interests." A dangerous statement, spoken openly. A test.
Lorenzo spread his hands in a gesture of calculated openness. "I need a crew. One that won't ask why we're sailing to the Scorpion Isles when the trade winds favor the Silk Route."
The sailor snorted, a sound like canvas tearing. "Pirate waters. Suicide run for most."
"Not if we time the tides. And avoid the guild's patrol routes." Lorenzo carefully unfolded his map—crude parchment to outsiders, but to him, a cheat code. He'd spent countless nights charting wind patterns from memory, modern memory, comparing them against sailors' superstitions until he found the truth between.
The tavern's dim lantern light caught the sea charts, illuminating ink lines that represented not just geography but opportunity. Routes the guilds deemed too dangerous or unprofitable, islands they'd written off as worthless—but Lorenzo knew better. He knew about market gaps, about supply meeting demand, about how fortune favored those who zigged when monopolies zagged.
The boy leaned in, eyes wide as he studied the charted course. "You're... different," he murmured, voice hushed with something between suspicion and awe.
Lorenzo's smile didn't reach his eyes. Perceptive, this one—too perceptive, perhaps. "Different enough to make you rich if you're willing to risk guild displeasure."
The woman exchanged a long glance with the sailor, silent communication born of years working together. Then, slowly, deliberately, she nodded.
"Double shares," she said, her voice flat but her eyes sharp with calculation. "And we're not dying for saffron or silk or whatever pretty thing you're chasing. First sign of real trouble, we turn back."
"Agreed." Lorenzo extended his hand, aware this might be either the beginning of his rise or his ruin. "You'll have names, I assume?"
"Enzo," the sailor growled. "This is Mirza. We don't use our birth names in this line of work."
As they shook hands to seal the bargain, Lorenzo felt the reassuring weight of the map in his coat, the secret annotations visible only to those who knew to look for them. The Scorpion Isles were a week's sail with favorable winds—a lawless maze of coves and reefs where the guilds dared not follow with their lumbering galleons. Where he could buy spices without their taxes, trade without their oversight.
Where he could start a war not with swords, but with economics. A war against the very system that kept men hungry while guilds grew fat. A war he'd been preparing for since the moment he'd opened his eyes in this new world, with the memory of another life still fresh in his mind.
As Mirza and Enzo withdrew to make preparations, leaving Varro to watch him with undisguised curiosity, Lorenzo allowed himself a moment of true feeling. Beneath the calculations and the strategies, beneath the mask of the struggling merchant, there burned something ancient and unquenchable: the desire to be free. To build something that was his own, not by the grace of powerful men, but by the strength of his own mind.
"You're planning something big," Varro said, his young voice suddenly solemn. "Something that'll make the guilds bleed."
Lorenzo regarded the boy thoughtfully. "Would that trouble you?"
"Trouble me?" Varro pushed back his sleeve, revealing a brand on his thin wrist—the mark of a guild-owned orphan, worked to the bone in their countinghouses until he'd escaped. "I'd give my right hand to see them fall."
In the boy's fierce eyes, Lorenzo saw a reflection of his own resolve. But also vulnerability—the kind the guilds exploited without mercy. The kind he couldn't afford to indulge if he wanted to survive long enough to change this world.
"Then listen carefully," Lorenzo said, leaning forward. "Because we're not just going to make them bleed. We're going to change the rules of the game entirely."
Outside, the moon rose over Valenzo Harbor, casting silver light on guild ships and free traders alike. In the shadows between, Lorenzo di Civita plotted a revolution—not with cannons or swords, but with ledgers and trade routes. With economic weapons that no one in this world, save him, fully understood.
And perhaps, he thought as he outlined his plans to the wide-eyed boy, that would be enough to bring an empire of merchants to its knees.