Huge Ajax's Arc

Chapter 357 of 619

The captain's sail had slipped south, but his last words stayed with Ajax. Others would come now. Some would trade. Some would ask after the gate. Ajax stood at the bar in the bathhouse where the traders drank, and he decided he would learn to read them before they read him. Marco could hear a man's thoughts. Tucker could pull a man's tongue loose with a cup. Between the two of them, Ajax could know a captain's true price before the man named it. He called Marco and Tucker to the bar. Marco came in with his sleeves rolled, the gold bracelet on his wrist he never removed. "You want me to listen at the dock," Marco said. It was not a question. "When a captain drinks here," Ajax said, "I want his floor price, not his first offer. And I want to know if he means us harm." Tucker set three cups down. "I can seat them," he said. "Warm baths, full cups. A man talks when he's soft." He turned a chain in the light. "Marco listens under the talk. You get the whole man." Marco frowned. "The Code says no working on a brother. Captains aren't brothers." "Captains aren't brothers," Ajax agreed. "Read them all you want." Aldric came from the workhouse with a ledger under his arm. He set it on the bar and opened it. "If you mean to trade like this," he said, "you need something they can't get elsewhere." He tapped the page. "Coats and needles won't hold them once every port copies you. You need a name for your drink. Your beer. Your wine." Ajax looked at him. "We buy ale from the port." "Buy it once," Aldric said. "Then learn to make it. A house that pours its own beer and wine gives captains a reason to dock here and nowhere else. They stay two nights instead of one. They talk more." He closed the ledger. "And Black Oak stops paying the port for what it drinks." Tucker grinned. "Men trade harder drunk on your wine than on someone else's." Ajax turned it over. A dock that made its own drink. A bar where Marco heard every captain's mind and Tucker loosened every captain's mouth. It fit. "Who teaches us to make it?" Aldric said the grove kept old brewing texts, and Chalam knew a fruit-grower two valleys off who fermented his own. "Then we learn," Ajax said. "Marco works the bar with Tucker. Every captain who docks, I want his price and his purpose before he leaves. And Aldric finds me the brewing books." Marco nodded once. Tucker refilled the cups. The plan was set: Black Oak would pour its own beer and wine, and behind the pour, Ajax would read every man who came for trade. His house would no longer wait to be found. It would draw ships in and know each one before it sailed.