Huge Ajax's Arc

Chapter 318 of 619

The worked goods sat on the hall table for two days. Ajax kept looking at the row of teeth, oil, and hide. Ships would come at thaw and buy what he had. Then they would leave. He wanted them to stay. He called Grayson, Tucker, Aldric, and Chalam to the table to hear the thing he had turned over all night. "We build a shop by the port," Ajax said. "A place we own. Rent the rest to traders who want to sell near the water." He set his hand flat on the table. "The first of many." Tucker leaned back and thumbed one of his gold chains. He had sold Ajax's goods to ship masters for a year. He knew the port better than any of them. "You want a shop at the port," he said. He let it sit. "You'll pay port tax there. Port rules. Port eyes on your face." He shook his head slow. "Everything we did to hide the gate, gone." Aldric spoke next, precise as a ledger line. "A shop needs stock through the season. We have three goods and a beast that runs out." He turned a needle in his fingers. "You'd build a room you can't keep full." Ajax looked to Chalam. The wizard rarely softened a thing. "How long until thaw?" Ajax asked. "How long do I have to raise it?" "Three weeks," Chalam said. "Maybe less. The stream ran open at the mouth this morning. First ships follow the melt." He did not add hope to it. "Not enough days to build stone by the water and hide what you are." Grayson had said nothing. He picked up the finished glove and pulled it on, the way he tested every made thing. He flexed his hand, then took it off and set it down. "No," he said. "You built here so no one owns you. A shop at the port hands them your throat." He looked at Ajax straight. "Bring the ships to our dock. Don't crawl to theirs." Ajax felt the plan give way under the four of them. Not one saw the shop. They saw the cost. He turned it over once more and found Grayson was right. He had spent a year closing every door into Black Oak. A shop at the port pried them all open again. "No shop," Ajax said. He pushed the goods to the center of the table. "We keep the dock. We keep the gate hidden. The traders come to us." He looked at Tucker. "When the melt opens the water, every master you promised comes through the canal, not a rented stall." Tucker nodded, easy again. "That I can sell." Ajax had given up the port shop before it took a single stone. The choice cost him nothing but the wanting. What it saved was the wall he had bled to raise. He would grow his house by pulling the coast to his door, not by planting himself at another man's.