Huge Ajax's Arc

Chapter 386 of 619

Aldric brought the three men to the courtyard fire at midnight. He carried the ledger under one arm and a coil of silver chains in his fist. "The cooper and two hands," he said. "They built the new cellar. They walked the hallway." He set the chains on the stone bench beside the flames. "Marco read them clean this morning. No false hearts." Ajax stood by the fire, shirtless, his father's gold chain bright on his chest. The night was cold enough to raise steam off the men's breath. He looked each one over the way he looked over any man he meant to keep. Good biceps and chests. Working hands. They had cut his stone and lined his walls. Now they knew the way to his wine and his dock. "You've seen the hallway," Ajax said. "You've seen the door. That knowledge is worth silver to a captain at the port." He picked up the first chain. "So I'll give you silver instead. Wages, food, a roof. In return you swear to name nothing you've seen inside these walls." The three men glanced at one another. The cooper spoke first. "And if we won't swear?" "Then you leave tonight with your pay," Ajax said. "But you won't carry the memory out the gate. My wizard will take it. You'll wake on the road with coin and no notion how you earned it." The cooper studied the fire. Then he pulled off his shirt and stepped forward. "I'll swear." The other two followed, stripping to the waist in the cold. Ajax laid the first silver chain over the cooper's neck. "Swear you'll name no gate, no canal, no ship, no cellar. Not drunk, not paid, not threatened." "I swear it," the cooper said. Ajax bound the second man, then the third. Each spoke the words with his hand on his own chest. The silver caught the firelight and lay flat against their skin. Aldric stood at the edge of the fire and marked each name in the ledger as the oath left his mouth. When the third chain settled, Aldric closed the book. "Three sworn. That's the last of the cellar hands." He looked up at Ajax. "Every mouth inside these walls is bound now. No open tongue left to sell you." Ajax watched the three men stand in the firelight, chained and quiet. His wine was safe. His dock was safe. The northern route stayed hidden behind the canal and the gate. "Bunks in the divided half," Ajax said. "Vat work at dawn under Grayson." He turned from the fire. Sixteen vats now, both cellars full, and no man left who could point a captain to his door. When the next ship came, Black Oak would fill its hold and stand tall before the merchant houses. The house he had built in the wild lands answered to him alone, and no one else.