Huge Ajax's Arc

Chapter 310 of 619

The girl had a place in the garden now, but the walls held more than sworn men. Ships would come at thaw. Dock workers slept by the sea gate. Hired hunters filled the bunkhouse. Ajax counted the strangers and did not like the number. He called Grayson, Chalam, Tucker, and Aldric to the hall. "We have grown too fast," Ajax said. "Four hunters. Two dock men. Cody's masons. Men who did not swear the Code. One loose word at the port and the whole coast learns what we hide here." Grayson leaned on the table, arms crossed. "Then we watch them." "Marco can't listen to every man every hour," Ajax said. "He sleeps. He rides out. We need something that holds while he rests." Aldric spoke without looking up from his ledger. "You want a leash you cannot see." He set down his pen. "There is such a working. Old. A mark that warns its maker when the marked man speaks of forbidden things, or turns his blade against the house." Chalam went still. "I can cut that mark. Small. On the arm. It wakes only on treason or a loosed tongue." He met Ajax's eyes. "I would feel it. So would Grayson, if you named him." Tucker whistled low. "Marking men who work for coin. That's the Keeper's trick. Iron collars." He set his hands flat on the wood. "You saw where that leads." The word landed hard. Ajax had cut those collars off men. He had burned the woman who made them. "It is not a collar," Chalam said. "No control. Only warning." "It's the first step to one," Tucker said. "Mark the hired men now. Next winter you mark the sworn. Then you're her." Grayson said nothing. His jaw worked. He looked at the Code nailed to the wall behind Ajax. Magic used on brothers was one of the four crimes that meant expulsion. Aldric closed the ledger. "The hunters aren't brothers. But they eat at your bunkhouse and see your dock. Mark them, and the day comes you call a good man treasonous for a joke. That mark does not know the difference." Ajax looked at each man. Chalam offered the tool. Aldric named the cost. Tucker named the mirror. And Grayson, who swore to the gate and not to Ajax, watched the wall. "No," Ajax said. "No marks. Not on hired men. Not on sworn." He set his palm on the table. "We hold this house on choice. The day I brand a man to keep him, I have lost him already." Grayson nodded once. Tucker let out his breath. "Then we do it the hard way," Ajax said. "Every hired man swears the Code or leaves at thaw. No half men behind these walls. Aldric, write the oath. Tucker, tell the hunters the terms tonight. Only the Council wear the sworn sigil on their foot.” He had refused the leash. Now he had to bind them with something a man could break and still choose not to.