Huge Ajax's Arc

Chapter 118 of 619

Ajax laid the problem out at the fire that night. The port house sat empty for a week, but the Keeper would send a rider once he learned a name was gone from his list. Tucker's brothel was a soft target, and the walls at the shelf still needed hands. Two men could hold the door at the port and swing a hammer here between shifts. "I need two," Ajax said. "Fit. Armed. Quiet. Not known to your regulars." Tucker leaned on his knee. His chains caught the firelight. "I know a yard boss who owes me. He'll point us at men who don't talk." "Take Marco. He listens for what a mouth won't say." Marco looked up from cleaning his blade. He set it on the cloth. "Two men. Not four?" "Two. More than that draws eyes." They rode out before dawn and reached the port by midmorning. Tucker took Marco through the back lanes, past the fish stalls, to a warehouse where a man in a canvas apron was stacking crates. Tucker said a name. The man jerked his chin toward the shed. Four men waited inside. Tucker looked them over and named two — a broad one with a broken nose and a lean one with a knife scar along his jaw. Marco stood at the wall and closed his eyes. After a minute Marco opened them. He gave Ajax's sign — clean. "Neither one's carrying a debt to anyone but his landlord," Marco said quiet, in Tucker's ear. "Broken nose fought soldiers up north. Scar was a mason before he was a bruiser. He knows stone." Tucker smiled. "Mason. That's luck." He named the wage. He named the terms — night watch at the house, day work at a build two hours out, no questions asked about the build, no talk in the taverns. Both men nodded before he finished. The broken-nosed one asked when they started. Tucker said now. They rode back with the two men trailing on hired horses. Halfway to the shelf, Marco eased his mount beside Ajax. "The mason keeps thinking about a vault," Marco said. "He built one for a merchant in the port last year. Iron door. Stone walls a foot thick." Ajax kept his eyes on the road. "How long?" "He said in his head, four weeks with two men and stone on hand." Ajax nodded once. That was the piece he had been missing. Two rooms at the back for men to sleep. A vault behind them for the collars, the candle, the ledger, and whatever else came off the next fight. At the walls, Ajax set the broken-nosed man on watch and took the mason around the back of the shelf to walk the ground. He pointed at the cliff face where Chalam's stone met bare rock. "Two rooms here," Ajax said. "A vault behind them. Iron door. You can do it?" The mason ran his hand along the cliff. "I can do it." Ajax told him to start at sunrise.