Huge Ajax's Arc

Chapter 12 of 619

Ajax stood at the tide line with the sea running over the paw mark again. He needed to know who had cut that stone and whether the man was still coming back. He turned to Chalam. "You have more than powder in that satchel. Read it. Tell me whose foundation this is." Chalam did not move. "The dry working cost me. A deeper read will cost more." He looked at the water. "But the stone remembers who bound it. I can pull that if you want it." "I want it." Chalam knelt at the tide line. He took a vial from his satchel, the second of three, and thumbed the stopper. He poured a thread of pale oil onto the wet rock. He set the base of the staff against the oil and spoke a longer phrase this time. The staff hummed under his hand. The water pulled back farther than any tide. A whole run of foundation showed, ten paces of cut block stepping out into the shelf. At the far end, the stone stopped at a square pit sunk into the seabed. Something inside it caught the brand's light. Chalam's jaw locked. "It's a binding seat. Old. Someone laid this to hold a god in place, not to build a house on. The paw is the mason's mark. He is not here. He has not been here in a long time." "Dead?" Ajax said. "Gone. The seat is empty of him. It is not empty of what he left." Ajax looked at his men. "Shirts off. Chains off. Anything gold stays on the dry rock. Marco. Tucker. Asher. With me." Marco pulled his shirt over his head and dropped it. He unclipped the bracelet and set it on his shirt with care. Tucker unhooked both chains and coiled them on a stone. He grinned once at Ajax, then went quiet. Asher stripped his shirt and lifted the chain off his neck. He held it a moment in his palm. "I need this back," Asher said. "You'll have it back," Ajax said. Ajax kept his father's chain on. No one spoke about it. They walked the dry foundation out to the pit. Chalam's working held. The four of them stepped down into the seat. It was full of packed silt and shell. Ajax pushed his hands in and felt edges. He lifted out a flat iron plate marked with the same paw. Under it, wrapped in cloth gone black, lay a stack of gold bars, four iron rings the size of a man's neck, and a bundle of cut coin. Marco pulled up the rings and held one. "These are collars." "For what," Tucker said. "For whatever they put down here," Chalam said. "Come out. Now." They climbed out with the treasure in their arms. Chalam pulled the staff up. The sea slammed back over the pit. Ajax set the iron plate on the dry rock beside his father's chain. He had gold enough to hire walls. He had four collars meant for something the mason had buried. He knew what the shelf was for now, and it was not a warhouse.