Huge Ajax's Arc

Chapter 290 of 619

The kissing was done. Every man was marked, first to last. But fairness alone would not run a house through spring. Ajax called the Council of Twelve to the hall at dawn. They needed rules written down, a code every man could name, so no dispute could split them once the ships came and the silver flowed. Grayson sat at Ajax's right, arms crossed. "Say it plain," he said. "What are we deciding." "A code," Ajax said. "How we live. How we split. What breaks a man from the house." Tucker leaned back with a dry smile. "Codes are easy to write. Hard to keep. I've seen crews sworn on holy iron rob each other by summer." "Then we make it clear enough that no man can pretend he misread it," Ajax said. Aldric spread a fresh page on the carved table. He dipped his pen. "I'll set down what we agree," the scholar said. "Word for word. Then it cannot bend later." They worked through it line by line. Marco listened at the far end, quiet, reading the room the way he read men on the road. When Kael argued for a larger cut for fighters over craftsmen, Marco spoke without heat. "Tarron feeds us and clothes us. He risked the wall same as you. Equal shares held us together this far." Kael frowned but let it drop. Ajax marked the moment. Equal shares stayed after the tithe to Black Oak. Chalam raised the hardest question. "What of the workings." He tapped his satchel. "The rings, the vials, the vault. One man could ruin us with the wrong item." "No man touches a working without me or Grayson," Ajax said. "Aldric, write it. The vault answers to two keys, no fewer." Aldric wrote. Grayson gave a short nod. They argued the last point longest. What broke a man from the house. Tucker wanted room for mercy. Grayson wanted no room at all. Ajax let them run until both had said it twice, then cut it clean. "Coercion breaks a man," Ajax said. "Magic used on a brother. Theft from the vault. A blade drawn in the yard against one of us. Those cost the chain and the gate, forever. Everything else, we hear at the table." No one spoke against it. Even Tucker dipped his head. Aldric read the whole code aloud from the page. Equal shares. Two keys. Consent in all things. Disputes to the table. The four crimes that end a man. Twelve men listened to every word. "Say yes or say no," Ajax said. One by one, they said yes. Grayson last, blunt as ever. "Yes. Now hang it where they'll see it." Aldric signed the bottom and passed the pen. Each man made his mark beside his name. Ajax pressed his palm flat on the ink to dry it, then nailed the page to the hall wall by the carved leaf. Black Oak had its law now, agreed and signed. But a written code drew a line no man had tested yet, and Ajax knew the first man to break it would decide whether the code held or was only paper.