Florence, Late 1500
Elias learned quickly that power in Florence didn't flow through gold alone.
It flowed through information.
And information lived not in palaces or banks, but in kitchens, cellars, and candle-lit back rooms where servants whispered and merchants drank too much wine. It travelled faster than horses and lingered longer than memory.
Elias needed ears. But he couldn't hire spies. He was still a child.
So he did the next best thing: he listened to the ignored.
---
Sister Marta, their maid, had a soft voice and a sharp tongue. She moved from room to room like a breeze and never realized how much she said.
"The Conti's daughter ran off with a stableboy again," she murmured while scrubbing the floor.
"Messer Bartoli's boy's got the pox," she said to no one in particular, drying laundry.
And once, while pouring soup: "They say the Medici cousin is back from France. But he came with no escort. Odd, that."
Elias began writing it all down.
He kept a private journal, hidden beneath the floorboards of his room, where each entry had three categories:
Event
Source
Potential Leverage
It was crude, but it worked. Within a month, he knew:
Two local grain merchants were secretly price-fixing.
A junior priest owed gambling debts to a Roman courier.
And a certain captain of the watch was sleeping with the wife of a merchant whose loan was about to default.
None of this he would use yet.
But knowing was the first power.
---
The next step was testing value.
He approached Vincenzo, his father's sloppy assistant, and handed him a small slip of parchment.
"What's this?" Vincenzo asked wine on his breath.
"A rumour," Elias said plainly. "You can sell it to the right merchant. About Messer Tullio's wheat shipment being delayed in Pisa."
Vincenzo scoffed. "Why would I do that?"
"Because it's true," Elias said. "And because Messer Vanni would pay five Florins for it."
"Why five?"
"Because he's desperate. He just lost a shipment of his own last week."
Vincenzo blinked. "…How do you know that?"
"I listen."
---
It worked.
Two days later, Vincenzo returned with an extra silver ring on his finger and a sheepish smile.
"You're a strange one, boy," he muttered. "Got any more rumours?"
"Maybe," Elias said. "But next time, we split the coin."
The man laughed. "Deal."
And just like that, Elias had his first information broker.
---
That night, Elias updated his mind map. A fresh line from Vincenzo now reached out to the merchant circle—he could spread ideas, false or true, for coin or advantage.
But more importantly: Elias had learned the market value of truth.
He began experimenting. Quietly feeding different people different rumours to see which spread faster, and which stuck. He discovered that:
Bad news travelled faster than good.
Stories with noble names were repeated more.
And servants were more reliable sources than merchants. Merchants embellished. Servants just reported.
Elias began calling it his "Threadwork." Each whisper was a thread. Each reaction is a knot. And if pulled just right…
Cities could bend.
---
By the winter solstice, he had a mental index of every major merchant family in Florence, their known enemies, and at least one piece of embarrassing gossip for each.
He never used them outright. Never threatened.
But now, when he smiled politely during visits, older men looked at him longer.
Too quiet, their eyes said.
Too observant.
Good.
Let them grow uneasy.
Let them think he was harmless.
Because power, Elias knew, was not in being feared.
It was in being underestimated.