Huge Ajax's Arc

Chapter 343 of 619

The six cloths lay across the hall table when Ajax called his council. The goods were ready. The men who would guard them were not yet bound. Ajax had set the swearing for the morning before the thaw. Now he needed to decide how those hired men would swear, and what happened to a man who refused. Grayson stood with his arms crossed. His silver chain caught the fire. "Sworn men take the Code and the mark on the sole," he said. "That's for brothers. It won't fit the workers." "No," Ajax said. "The council is thirteen. That's closed. The workers are hired. They need a lesser oath." He looked at the four cloaks folded near the silver chains he had bought. "They already wear my chain for the winter. Let that be the oath. Silver chain, not gold. They swear silence on the gate, the canal, the house. They keep their wages and their bed. But they don't sit at the table." Tucker leaned against the wall, thumbs in his belt. "And the man who says no?" He knew the answer mattered. A refused worker walked out with everything in his head. "That's the sharp part," Aldric said. He opened the ledger. "A man who leaves takes what he saw. The cloth. The dock. The gate. Coin won't buy his silence forever." Marco had been quiet by the door. He watched the fire, not the men. "I can take it out of him," he said. Plain. No weight on it. "A man refuses, he keeps his coin and his goods. Walks to the gate. Before he passes it, I wipe Black Oak from him. He remembers a winter's work somewhere warm. Nothing else." The room went still. Grayson's jaw tightened. "That's the Keeper's collar," he said. "Magic on a man who didn't agree." "He agrees to the terms first," Ajax said. "Swear the silver chain and stay. Refuse and forget. He chooses which. No man is held." Tucker gave a short laugh, dry. "A man forgets what he never wanted to keep. That's not the collar. That's mercy with a clean edge." Marco nodded once. "His belongings go with him. His coin. Only the memory stays behind." Aldric wrote it as they spoke. "Then it holds," he said. "Sworn men, gold and mark. Hired men, silver chain and silence. A refusal loses no coin, only the road here." He looked up. "It's fair." Ajax weighed the room. Grayson wanted no magic on free men. Marco offered the only wall that would truly hold. Between them lay the choice. "We do it," Ajax said. "Silver chain to stay. Marco at the gate for those who leave." He set his hand flat on the folded cloth. "Tell all workers to be at the courtyard bonfire in plain clothes at midnight and to prepare themselves before they come." Black Oak would trade with its secrets kept. The law of the gate was written now, in silver and in silence.