Huge Ajax's Arc

Chapter 192 of 619

Ajax pushed the door with his boot. It swung open on a room that smelled of cold ash and dried blood. The old woman lay on her side by the hearth. One hand still gripped a poker. Chalam knelt beside her, set his staff across his knees, and pressed two fingers to her wrist. "Cold since yesterday," he said. He opened his satchel and took out chalk and a pinch of powdered lodestone. He drew a short line on the floor beside her mouth and blew the powder across it. The line flared pale and went out. "She died fighting. Not poisoned. Not marked." Elara stepped past him and crouched at the old woman's other side. She laid her palm on the woman's forehead and closed her eyes. Her mouth tightened. "Something bit through her ribs from below. It came up through the floor." She opened her eyes and looked at Chalam. "She killed it before it finished her." "Then it is dead," Chalam said. He stood and set the staff's foot to the floorboards. The staff did not hum. He moved it across the room, board by board, and stopped at a square of planks near the back wall. "Here. It is dead. But the space under it is still open." Rowan crossed the room without sound and knelt at the planks. He ran a finger along the seam. "Cut clean. She kept it hidden." He pried a board up with his knife. The rest lifted with it. A hatch sat under them, iron ring set flush. Marco went to the shelf above the hearth. He pulled down a small tin box and opened it. Inside lay a folded square of hide and a stack of silver coin. He unfolded the hide on the table. A map. Coast lines drawn in a steady hand, a creek marked with three notches, and an X above a cave mouth two ridges east. "Treasure map," Marco said. "Her writing." Ajax looked at the map, then at the hatch. "Grayson. Asher. Bows on the door. Chalam with me at the hatch. Rowan, hold the map." Asher set an arrow to his string and moved to the doorway without a word. Grayson took the window. Ajax pulled the iron ring. The hatch lifted easy. A short ladder dropped into a cellar the size of a horse stall. Chalam's staff steadied and glowed low. He nodded. Ajax went down first. Dry earth floor. A shelf of jars. A wooden chest bound in strap iron. He worked the latch with his knife. The lid came up. Gold bars stacked in three rows. A pouch of cut coin. A second folded hide with a spiral drawn on it and no name. He climbed back up with the spiral hide in his teeth and the chest under his arm. "Safe," he said. "And we have a new road."