Huge Ajax's Arc

Chapter 344 of 619

At midnight the workers gathered in the courtyard. The bonfire threw heat and light against the walls. Ajax had set the swearing for this hour. The flat silver chains lay coiled on a plank beside him, one for each man. He watched them come in from the bunkhouse and the port house, and he saw at once they had not come plain. They came shirtless. Their chests and strong arms shone with oil. They stood near the fire and turned so the light caught them. Two of them flexed, comparing the swell of their shoulders. A big one from the port raised an arm and squeezed his own bicep, grinning at the man beside him. Ajax frowned. He had told them to prepare themselves. He had meant their minds, not their bodies. This was Tucker's teaching. Tucker had trained them to stand and be looked at, to draw the eye. Now they turned it on each other before the oath. Aldric stood at Ajax's shoulder with the ledger open. He watched the flexing men without expression. Aldric dipped his pen. "Let them earn a closed mouth by wearing a chain. The oil washes off." Ajax stepped into the firelight. The flexing stopped. He lifted the first silver chain from the plank. "You came to be looked at," he said. "Fine. Be looked at. But the chain is not for the arm. It's for the tongue." He held the chain up so the firelight caught it and made it glint. “Wear this and you speak of nothing. Not the gate. Not the canal. Not the dock or the house. You keep your wage and your bed. Refuse, and you walk out with your coin and remember none of it." He called them one by one. The big port man came first, rubbed with oil. Ajax laid the chain over his head and set it against his chest. "You swear silence," Ajax said. "On Black Oak and all in it." "I swear," the man said. One after another they came and bent their heads. Ajax hung each chain and heard each oath. Aldric marked every name in the ledger as the chain went on. The oil no longer mattered. What mattered was the word each man gave. One worker held back. He stood at the fire's edge and did not step forward. "I'll not swear to a place I can't speak of," he said. "Give me my coin. I'll go." Ajax nodded. "Then Marco waits at the gate." He set the man's chain back on the plank. "Your coin and your goods leave with you. Only Black Oak stays behind." The man walked toward the gate. The rest wore silver. Aldric closed the ledger. Every remaining worker was bound to silence now, and Black Oak could open its dock to ships without fear of loose tongues. As the worker walked with his things through the gate, he did not look at Marco but ten steps later he remembered nothing of his time at Black Oak and it would stay that way.