Huge Ajax's Arc

Chapter 299 of 619

The ship sailed with eleven needles. Ajax stood in the vault and looked at the Verath carcass, half stripped. The tooth would run dry. He needed a good that would not, something merchants would come back for season after season. He called Tarron from the shed. Tarron came in with wool dust on his sleeves. He was the woolwright Ajax had hired to clothe the house, an old shepherd who read fleece like a page and answered in flat, short lines. He looked at the green hides and shook his head. "Common leather," he said. "But this beast is not common." He knelt by the carcass and ran a thumb over a strip of hide near the spine. "Feel this. Thick as boot sole, but it bends. No frost gets through it." Ajax bent and touched it. The hide was warm to the hand, and stiff, and it moved like cloth. "You can make coats of this?" "Coats. Boots. Vests that turn a blade and hold the cold out." Tarron stood. "One hide clothes a man for life. It does not wear through. A buyer wears it and wants the next one." Aldric came from the library and heard the last of it. He had grey in his hair and ink on his fingers, and he weighed things before he spoke. "There is more hide than tooth," he said. "Twelve needles, and they are gone. But the beast is broad. Enough skin for forty garments, maybe more." He set a hand on the carcass. "And no one else on the coast has a Verath. The coat becomes the mark, like the needle." "Renewable?" Ajax asked. "One beast is not," Aldric said. "But the skill is. Tarron knows the cut. If we find another Verath, we make more. The tooth cannot be copied. The craft can." Rowan came in with a coil of dried gut over his shoulder. He had tracked the first Verath from four-toed prints in the north woods. "There are more up north," he said. "I found sign a week ago. Fresh. Two, maybe three." He set the gut down. "We hunt them, we do not run out." Grayson stood at the vault door with his arms crossed. He had ridden beside Ajax from the first day and did not waste words. "Coats sell," he said. "Needles bring the buyer once. Coats bring him every winter." He looked at Ajax. "Make the coats." Tucker leaned in the doorway, gold chains catching the lamp. "A rich man does not want one coat," he said. "He wants the coat no one else has." He grinned. "We are the only door with the beast behind it." Ajax looked at the hide in his hand. The tooth would run dry, but the north held more beasts, and Tarron held the craft. He handed the strip to Tarron. "Cut coats. Different styles," he said. "Boots and vests too. We sell hide and tooth both, and we hunt more when the thaw comes." Tarron nodded once and carried the hide to his shed.