Huge Ajax's Arc

Chapter 15 of 619

By morning Chalam sat up on his own. Elara had worked on him through the night, and the color was back in his mouth. He drank the last of her paste and pushed the cup away. His staff leaned against the wall beside him, quiet now. "I need my kit," Chalam said. He pulled the satchel across his lap. He took out the three numbered vials and set them in a row on the stone floor. Two were empty. One held a finger of clear liquid. "I can refill from the stream and the lodestone. A day for the first. Two for the second. The third I cannot make here." "Do the two," Ajax said. "Start now." Chalam nodded and went to work with chalk and powder on the flat stone by the door. Ajax left him to it. Outside, Tucker sat on a crate cleaning his nails with a knife. Marco and Asher stood by the windbreak. Ajax called them in. "We have gold and no steel worth the name," Ajax said. "Tucker's blade is short. Asher lost his edge on the pit iron. If the man on the road brings friends, we lose." "Southern Oak has a smith," Tucker said. "He knows me now. I can ride back with coin and come home with six blades." "He'll ask what six blades are for." "He'll ask. I'll lie." Tucker shrugged. "Or we ride two days east to the port. More steel there. Nobody asks anything." "Port," Marco said. "Southern Oak already has one man asking after our mark. Two visits from the same buyer and the story writes itself." Ajax weighed it. Two days east cost time. Southern Oak cost secrecy. "Port," Ajax said. "Tucker and Marco. Leave at dawn. Take gold, not bars. Buy plain steel and a whetstone. Nothing fine." Tucker folded the knife shut. Marco nodded once. Ajax turned to go check on Chalam and stopped. Elara was crouched by the iron collars where they lay stacked against the inner wall. She had one across her knees. Her palm hovered above the metal, and light ran from her fingers into the ring. "Do not," Ajax said. "I already have," Elara said. She did not look up. The light held steady, then faded. She set the collar down and wiped her hand on her pants. "They are made to hold something that is not a man. The weld drinks light. It pulled at me." "For a god," Chalam said from the floor. He had stopped his work and was watching her. "The seat outside is the chair. These are the leash. Six of them." "Six," Ajax said. "Six," Chalam said. "One for each limb the mason expected. Whoever built this knew the shape of the thing he meant to catch." Elara stood and stepped back from the pile. Her hand was red where the light had touched the iron. "Someone on the road knows your sign," she said. "And now we know what he is coming for."