Ragusa (Dubrovnik), 1554 – The Morning After Landfall
The first sight of Ragusa was light — light spilling from the sea and washing the pale stone walls in gold. The Santa Giulia drifted into the harbor like a tired pilgrim. The storm was two days gone, but its memory clung to every rope, every creak of the hull. Elena stood at the rail, hair tangled by salt, her father's compass clutched in her hand.
Ragusa unfolded before her like a living map: terraced houses rising in orderly rows, red roofs gleaming in the dawn. The city was smaller than Venice but cleaner, more deliberate. Its harbor was a half-moon of safety carved into cliffs, its waters alive with galleys, traders, and fishing boats.
Tomas came to stand beside her. "Beautiful, isn't it?"
She nodded. "It looks honest."
He chuckled softly. "No city is honest, Elena. Only its maps pretend to be."
The words struck her as something Luca might have said.
When the ship moored, the dock came alive — sailors calling out in Croatian, porters shouting prices, gulls crying overhead. The air smelled of salt, citrus, and fresh bread from the markets beyond the quay.
Elena thanked the captain and Tomas before disembarking. "You'll be safe here," Tomas said, tightening a rope. "Ragusa minds its own business. But watch your tongue — and your compass. The sea isn't the only thief."
"Will I see you again?"
He grinned. "The sea always circles back."
Then he was gone, swallowed by the noise of the docks.
Niccolò's letter had been brief but clear: Seek Marija Kovačević, printer of charts, at the Street of Scribes. She will know your name.
Elena followed the directions carefully, winding through narrow limestone streets that gleamed under the morning sun. Ragusa was quieter than Venice — less flamboyant, more ordered. The air hummed with languages: Italian, Greek, Turkish, Croatian. She passed stalls where traders sold brass compasses and weathered sea charts, their surfaces curling with salt and age.
Finally, she reached a small square where a fountain murmured beneath the shade of fig trees. A sign above one of the doors read: Cartographia Marijae.
She hesitated before knocking.
The door opened before she could. A woman in her fifties stood there, her gray-streaked hair tied in a loose knot, her hands ink-stained. Her eyes, sharp and bright, studied Elena for only a moment before she said, "You're Luca Valenti's daughter."
Elena blinked. "How did you—?"
"Your father once sent me a letter about the Tabula Veneris. His handwriting is impossible to forget."
She stepped aside. "Come in."
The workshop inside was warm, alive with the smell of ink, parchment, and saltwater air. Maps hung from the rafters — some half-drawn, others drying in the light from the tall arched windows. A great printing press stood at the center, its wooden frame dark with years of use.
Marija motioned to a stool. "Sit. You look half-drowned."
Elena obeyed.
"Da Costa sent word," Marija said, pouring water from a jug. "He said you carry something your father wanted kept safe."
Elena reached into her sleeve and drew out the glass pane with the fragment of the oath map. The silver ink gleamed faintly in the sun.
Marija's breath caught. "So he kept it."
She traced the words with one careful finger. "He told me once there were two kinds of maps — those that tell men where to go, and those that tell them who they are." She looked up. "Your father drew both."
Elena swallowed hard. "He's been taken. The Council called it inquiry, but…"
"I know what Venice does to those who draw too well," Marija said softly. "You did right to flee."
Marija brought her to the back room, where a long table was covered in parchments. She unrolled one, revealing a map unlike any Elena had ever seen.
It wasn't of coasts or borders, but of routes — faint dotted lines running like veins across Europe, marked with strange sigils.
"What is this?" Elena asked.
"The cartographers' road," Marija said. "A network. Across ports, monasteries, and print houses. Those who still draw freely use it to move information the empires can't trace. We call it the Salt Road."
Elena's eyes widened. "Like the sea route?"
Marija smiled faintly. "The name is older than the ships. Salt was once worth more than gold — it preserved what would rot. We do the same, in our way."
She pointed to a mark near Venice, then to another in Ragusa. "Your father's name is known here. His maps passed through our hands more than once. And the Senate fears what they cannot read."
Elena stared at the glowing fragment on the table. "They burned the maps," she whispered. "He said it was to save us. But I think he knew it wouldn't end there."
Marija met her gaze. "No, child. It never ends there."
That night, Elena stayed in the print house. She couldn't sleep. The press loomed silent in the corner, its gears and levers gleaming faintly in the candlelight. The fragment of her father's map rested beside her on the table, the ink seeming to pulse softly, as if alive.
She took out her compass. The needle pointed east — steady, unflinching. Beyond Ragusa lay the open sea and the lands of the Ottoman Empire. Unknown territory.
She whispered, "Show me what he saw."
And then she drew.
Not from memory, but from instinct. From the lines that had begun forming in her mind ever since Venice burned. Coasts that bled into each other. Rivers that twisted like veins. She worked through the night, her hand sure, her heart trembling.
When dawn came, Marija found her asleep over the parchment.
The map before her was strange and beautiful — a blend of known coastlines and imagined ones, of real rivers and hidden paths. In the margins, faint silver strokes formed words that shimmered when the light struck: Lunaria.
Marija's eyes widened. "You found it," she whispered.
Elena stirred. "Found what?"
"The place your father dreamed of," Marija said softly. "A land beyond the reach of kings. He called it his heresy."
Elena blinked. "Lunaria."
"Yes," Marija said. "And now you carry it."
Outside, Ragusa's bells tolled the hour, their echoes rolling across the water. The morning light fell through the windows, illuminating the table where the new map lay drying — the first of its kind since Venice's fire.
Elena stood beside it, her father's compass glinting in her palm, the needle trembling not toward north, but toward destiny.