Huge Ajax's Arc

Chapter 115 of 619

Tucker sat on a stone by the fire. Ajax stood over him. The four hired men had moved off toward the stream at Grayson's nod. Grayson leaned by the wall, hand near his hilt. "Talk," Ajax said again. Tucker rubbed his mustache. "The house at the port. It's mine. Has been six years, before I ever heard your name." Ajax waited. "It's a brothel," Tucker said. "Small. Clean. Four rooms upstairs, a bar downstairs. I take a cut. The two men I sent up here are on my roll. The other two came with them for the ride." "A brothel." "A brothel." Tucker looked up. No smile. "I didn't tell you because a man building a warhouse doesn't always want a whorehouse on his ledger. I meant to keep it separate." "Then why send men from it here?" "Because I got word at the port a week back. A rider came through asking after the house. Wore no collar I could see, but he asked the right questions in the wrong order." Tucker's voice stayed flat. "I thought the Keeper had put a hand on my place. I wanted my two loyal men gone before he leaned on them. Sending them here served both of us." Ajax watched his face. Tucker met his eyes and did not slide off them. "You think the house is turned?" "I don't know. That's the honest word. I'll ride down and find out once the walls are up." Ajax looked at Grayson. Grayson gave a small nod. Ajax looked at Marco, who had come to the fire and was reading Tucker under the ring's cover. "He's telling it straight," Marco said. Ajax breathed out. The knot in his chest loosened. A brothel he could live with. A hired crew he had not chosen was a smaller thing than a Keeper's man inside his walls. "Stand up," Ajax said. Tucker stood. "The house is your business. Keep it your business. The men who ride for you on my walls answer to me while they're here. You collect what they owe you now, in front of me, so there's no debt between them and you when they take my orders." Tucker whistled the four back. He named a sum to each. Two paid him in coin from their belts. One paid in a folded strip of leather that clinked. The fourth, the sleeping one, dug silver from a boot. Tucker pocketed it and looked at Ajax. "Clean." "Clean," Ajax said. He turned to the four. "You eat, you work, you keep watch. You take orders from me and Grayson. Anyone rides up asking after this shelf, you come to me first. Understood." They nodded. Ajax walked to the wall and put his hand on the stone. His warhouse. Four new men in it, hired but known. The Keeper still to come. But the walls stood, and the man beside him was still his.