Huge Ajax's Arc

Chapter 309 of 619

Bran's house stood finished by the herb strip. Two days later a cart rolled up the coast road, and Grayson brought Bran's sister through the gate one at a time, as ordered. Elara named her to the ward so the iron would not burn her. Ajax watched from the hall door. The girl was thin and pale from her long fever, no more than fifteen, and she gripped a cloth bundle to her chest. She stared at the walls, the shirtless sworn men, the blades at every belt. She stood very still, like a rabbit that hopes it has not been seen. Bran hugged her hard. But when he set her down and went back to the loft to carry her chest, she was left alone in the yard. Kael passed with a bow. Torren rolled a barrel by. The dock workers stared. Every man here was rough and armed, and none of them was a place a girl could stand. She backed toward the house wall and pressed against it. Ajax saw it plain. He had built her a roof but no ground to walk on. He crossed the yard, but before he reached her, Elara stepped in from the herb garden. She still wore dirt on her hands from the beds. She did not look at Ajax. She knelt to the girl's level, which no man in the yard would have done. "You're Bran's sister," Elara said. Plain, not soft. "I'm the one who broke your fever with the leaf tea." The girl's eyes came up. "That was you." "That was me." Elara took the cloth bundle without asking and looked inside. Dried herbs, a few roots. "You know plants." "Our mother taught me. Before." The girl's voice was thin but it did not shake now. "Then you'll work with me," Elara said. "The garden's mine. I need hands that know a weed from a cure. These men can swing a blade and nothing else." She stood and held out one hand. The girl looked at it. Then she took it, and the fear went out of her shoulders. Ajax stopped where he was. Elara led the girl to the west wall, to the rows of green she had planted. She showed her the fever draughts, the wound wash, the beds that needed weeding. The girl bent to the soil and her hands moved sure. She had found her ground. Elara looked back at Ajax once. "She'll sleep in her loft and work in my garden," she said. "That's settled. Don't put a blade in her hand and don't let your men crowd her." "Done," Ajax said. He meant it. He had given Bran a house and roots, but Elara had given the girl a place inside the walls that was hers. Now Bran had no reason left to leave, and Black Oak held one more soul who belonged.