Huge Ajax's Arc

Chapter 127 of 619

Ajax came back to the room where the rider slept tied to the chair. Chalam sat on the stool with his staff across his knees. Marco stood by the window, his own face still, the ring off his finger and closed in his fist. Ajax shut the door. "We do it now," Ajax said. "Then we ride." Chalam set the staff aside and opened his satchel. He laid out chalk, a pinch of lodestone, and a small vial. He looked at Marco. "Hold him under while I work. I need his head quiet." Marco moved to the chair and put two fingers on the rider's temple. "He's under. Go." Chalam drew a short line of chalk on the rider's brow. He tipped a drop from the vial onto the line and spoke three words Ajax did not try to catch. The chalk darkened. The rider's mouth loosened. Chalam waited, then wiped the brow clean with his sleeve. "Done," Chalam said. "He won't know our faces. He won't know this house. He'll wake thinking he rode in, got drunk, and passed out at a brothel.” "Good," Ajax said. "Leave him coin in the pocket so the story holds." Tucker came in with his vest buckled and a lamp in his hand. "Horses are ready in the alley. Cody's watching the street." "The wards," Ajax said to Chalam. "Pull them." Chalam went to the front room. He set his palm on the doorframe where he had marked it that morning. He said one word. The air in the room settled like a held breath let out. He moved to the window and did the same. The illusion of empty rooms fell away. Lamplight showed through the glass again. "It’s just a lucrative male brothel now.” Chalam said. Ajax turned to Tucker. "Open the doors downstairs. Tell your girls and your boys the bar is theirs again tonight. Anyone from the port walks in, they drink and they talk and they see nothing strange." "They'll see a full room," Tucker said. "That's better cover than an empty one." He went down the stairs. Ajax heard the bolt slide and the front doors open. Voices came up from the street inside a minute. Marco lifted the sleeping rider and carried him down the back stairs. They laid him in the alley behind a stack of barrels with a few coins in his coat. He would wake by morning and walk off with a headache and no story worth telling. Ajax mounted first. Chalam and Marco swung up behind him. Tucker stood in the doorway of his brothel with a bottle in his hand and lifted it once. Ajax nodded and turned his horse toward the coast road. The walls were two days east. The Keeper would learn her rider had failed before the sun was up. The team rode off together.