Huge Ajax's Arc

Chapter 291 of 619

The code hung on the hall wall by the carved leaf, ink dry, twelve marks beside twelve names. Ajax had gone to his quarters to rest when a knock came. He opened the door. Chalam stood in the hall, staff in hand, his blue robe open at the chest. The wizard had spoken little since the signing. Now his dark eyes held something Ajax had not seen in him before. "You know what I'm here for?" Chalam said. Ajax leaned against the frame. Chalam read men the way Marco heard them, plain and without softening. He never asked for anything he did not mean. "You've been left out," Ajax said. He had kissed six men, then Tarron, then Asher. Not the scholar who cracked his staff on a binding to keep them alive. "Circumstantially," Ajax said. "Not deliberately." He gave a short laugh. "You were always at the far end of the table, reading the room." "So what should we do about that?" Chalam said. His voice went clipped, the way it did when a thing stayed unsettled. Ajax thought of the code nailed to the wall. Consent in all things. No man coerced, no working turned on a brother. What passed between men passed by choice or not at all. "The code," he said. "You have to say it. Say you want it." Chalam did not blink. "I want it." Ajax reached out. He ran a hand over the wizard's bare chest and left it there, flat against the skin. The staff leaned in the doorway. The satchel with its chalk and vials hung untouched at Chalam's belt. Then Chalam moved. Ajax had never seen him rush at anything. The wizard let his robe drop from his shoulders and kissed Ajax hard, one hand at the back of his neck. It lasted long. When they broke apart both men breathed heavy. "Worth it," Chalam said. He picked up his staff, gathered his robe, and walked back down the hall toward his room. Ajax stood in the doorway a moment. The last man was marked now. Every one of the thirteen had his kiss and his place, from the first sworn to the scholar to the wizard who had never asked until tonight. Fairness was done. No man could point at another and claim he stood outside. But the code on the wall was new, and untested. A written line held nothing until a man crossed it and the house answered. Ajax closed his door. Come spring the ships would land at the hidden dock, and silver would move through the gate. He had bound his men with kisses and paw-marks and equal shares. Whether that bond held when the first coin tempted a man, he did not yet know. He knew only that he had left no one behind him.