Huge Ajax's Arc

Chapter 340 of 619

Bran had laid the workhouse footings. But a house that made goods needed a place to hold them. Ajax stood in the half-built workhouse the next morning and saw the flaw. Cloth, needles, and cure piled on open benches. Ships would bring silver too. Coin, gold, and traded goods could not sit in the same room where men tanned hides and cut wool. Ajax called Chalam and Grayson to the gate to solve it. Grayson came first, silver chain on his bare chest, arms folded. He looked at the gatehouse wall inside the canal and did the math out loud. "You want a strong room here," he said. "Inside the gate. Stone thick enough that no man breaks it in a night." Chalam arrived with his staff and satchel. His blue robe hung open at the chest. His chest gleaming. He set a hand flat on the stone inside the canal gate and read it. "The wall holds," he said. "I can cut a room into it. A large one. One iron door." He paused. "This warehouse will be near the dock for trade goods." Ajax saw it plain. "The warehouse goes for storage inside the canal’s gate," he said. "Coin, gold, enchanted items and such we keep sealed in the original vault where only Grayson and I have access. Traded wares move out fast. Gold and coin stays locked behind us." Grayson nodded once. "Keeps the two apart," he said. "A trader who sees our goods never sees our silver." “Two days to cut the store room?" Ajax asked. "Two," Chalam said. "With the staff." He did not soften it. "Make it happen," Ajax said. They began that hour. Chalam set his staff to the gatehouse wall and cut stone in long clean blocks. Bran carried them out. By dusk the storage chamber ran deep into wall inside the canal gate built into the mountain side. Vello hung the iron door and set the lock with two locks, for Ajax and Tucker. Chalam retired to his room to rest. The next day the store room rose by the workhouse. Dry stone, a plain wooden bar across the door, shelves for cloth and cure. Ajax stood in the doorway between the workhouse and storage rooms and knew it would work. Gold behind iron in the gate. Wares near the water for ships to load. Storage for the workhouse needs. The workhouse could make goods now without mixing coin and craft. Ajax had a storage room, workhouse, and a store. What he lacked was stock to fill them before the first sail broke the water.