Huge Ajax's Arc

Chapter 128 of 619

They rode two days east and reached the shelf at dusk. The walls stood as Chalam had left them, gray stone raised from the cliff face. Cody met them at the gate with a lamp. The mason was still at work in the back, shaping a doorframe by torchlight. Ajax dismounted and looked up at the walls. They held one side. The rest was open sky and sea. He called the team into the half-finished front room. Chalam leaned on his new staff. Tucker set his hat on a barrel. Marco stood by the door. Grayson took the wall. Elara sat on a stone and rubbed her wrist where the gold band caught the lamp. "We hold this ground now," Ajax said. "The Keeper knows her rider failed. She'll come or she'll send. Either way we need proper walls before she finds us. Not stone raised in a night. Walls that stand." "The mason can lay the seaward line in a week if we quarry from the cliff," Tucker said. "Two weeks for the gate. He'll want more silver and more hands." "Hire the hands," Ajax said. "Cody vets them. Marco reads them before they sleep inside our line. Anyone with a collar mark or a spiral token, we know before dawn." "Done," Marco said. Ajax turned to Chalam. "The candle." Chalam opened his satchel and set the black stub on the barrel. He did not touch it with a bare hand. "It calls a woman. I read her once. I could not see her face. Whoever she is, she comes when the wick burns." "Could be the Keeper," Tucker said. "Could be," Chalam said. "Could be worse." Ajax looked at the candle. He had crossed six names. The Keeper was the last hand still moving against him. If he lit the wick here, inside walls he could seal, with Chalam's vials full and Marco's ring at his belt, he chose the ground. "Light it," Ajax said. "Tonight. Inside the vault when the mason closes the door. We trap whoever comes." Chalam did not answer at once. He set his palm flat on the barrel beside the candle. "If it's her, my staff will hold her one breath. Marco holds her mind one more. After that she's yours." "One breath is enough," Ajax said. Tucker picked up his hat. "I'll tell the mason to seal the vault tonight and leave the inner door on a bar we work from outside." "Do it," Ajax said. Grayson pushed off the wall. "You told me first this time." "I told you first," Ajax said. Grayson nodded once and went out to walk the line. Elara stood. "I'll shroud the vault door from the yard. One casting. After that I'm empty till moonrise." "That's all I need," Ajax said. He picked up the candle in a fold of cloth and carried it toward the vault.