Huge Ajax's Arc

Chapter 110 of 619

The stable smelled of horse and cold stone. The woman still sat at the table in the house across the yard, mouth slack under Marco's hold. Ajax wiped his father's blade on a rag and slid it back into the sheath. One task left inside these walls before the ride to the coast. Take what could be taken. Leave nothing the Keeper's people could use. "Strip the house," Ajax said. "Coin, paper, anything with a spiral. Then we ride." Grayson and Tucker moved to the shelves. Chalam stepped past the sleeping men at the stools and set his staff against the wall. Elara knelt by the woman and checked her pulse, then looked up at Marco. "Wipe her," Ajax said. "Us. The raid. The seat. Leave her the milk and the morning." Marco set his hand on the woman's brow. His eyes went half shut. "Give me a minute." "Take it." Asher came in from the stable with straw on his boots. He watched Marco work and did not speak. Ajax remembered the terms. Asher rode at the back. Asher stayed away from Marco. But the new moon had passed days ago on the road and no one had marked it. Ajax filed that away for later. "Done," Marco said. He stepped back. The woman's face softened. Her hand twitched toward a cup that was not there. Tucker pulled a purse from behind a beam. Grayson found a folded map in a chest and passed it to Ajax without opening it. Chalam ran his fingers along the mantel and stopped. "Here," Chalam said. He pried up a short floorboard by the hearth. Three items lay tucked under it beside a small bag of coin. A ring of dull iron with a spiral cut into the band. A stub of black candle wrapped in wire. A folded square of cloth stitched with a single silver thread. Chalam held his hand over each in turn. "All three carry a working. The ring speaks to collars. The candle calls a name when lit. The cloth I do not know yet. It is not hostile." "Wrap them," Ajax said. "Chalk and lodestone, same as the last one. Nobody wears anything until you name it." Chalam took the items into his satchel. Tucker showed Ajax the purse. Silver, some gold, enough to pay wages through winter twice over. Asher spoke from the door. "Rider on the north track. One horse. Coming slow." Ajax looked at the woman. She would wake with her morning intact. She would tell the rider she had fed the seat at dawn. By the time he found the pit sealed under the stable, they would be a day gone. "Out," Ajax said. "Horses. Now." They left the house as they had found it, except for what mattered. Ajax pulled the door closed behind him and swung up. Six riders, three new workings in the satchel, one heavy purse. The coast waited two days east.