So it had gone with the White Tower, where I’d first been made the royal fool to Lear, and later the royal consort and kind-of-a-king to Cordelia. Genoa was no London, though. She was a seafaring town like Venice, if Venice had been built up the side of a hill instead of in a bloody swamp. The masts of the ships in the harbor were as thick as bristles on a boar’s back. And as Othello had said, the harbor was fortified: catapults and ballistas at the mouth of the harbor, arrow loops in the lighthouse tower, and a fortified battlement just below the lights; a massive winch that could raise a chain with links as big around as my leg across the harbor entrance that no wooden ship would be able to break. No, the prison had not been a palace, it had been a fortress, and could be pressed into defending the harbor at the sound of a trumpet. For all I knew, they had trebuchets that could be raised on the roof that could hit any ship trying to reach the harbor mouth. At the opposite side of the harbor lay a shipyard every bit as large as Arsenal in Venice; even at dawn, the hammer blows were rattling across the water in a furious tattoo, and a dozen war galleys were growing into tall wooden frames from which they would slide onto the seas. So this was the other side of the war for the seas that Venice had been fighting for fifty years?

“Othello defeated this lot?” said Jessica, taking it all in.

“Well, not entirely, but he sent them away licking their wounds.”

“No wonder Desdemona turned away Venice’s darlings for him. A hero, he is!”

“Yes, well, a common pirate who had a good day, innit? Annoyingly earnest, too.”

“Speaking of, he told me that you had something you should tell me.”

“Yes, well, for now we should set our sights on liberating Drool.” We were nearly to the fortress; its main gate faced away from the harbor, toward the hill. I chose to approach a guard at a small portal in the side, who looked to be nearly falling asleep on his lance, but as we approached I could smell the soured wine stench coming off him as if he’d been painted in the blood of the grape.

“Shouldn’t we find an officer?” Jessica inquired.

“Always bribe at the highest amount you are willing to pay, at the lowest level of command. Resentment is as good as gold when loyalty is being sold.”