Huge Ajax's Arc

Chapter 393 of 619

The deep vault held the northern silver, but silver alone armed no man. Ajax stood at the hatch the next morning with Aldric and Tucker. The crates below shone in the lamplight. He counted them and felt no easier. "This is dead weight," he said. "Coin buys nothing until we spend it. I need it turned into steel, salt, oats, wool. Goods to feed and arm this house through a war. Who can move this much without the whole coast asking questions?" Aldric opened his ledger. He did not soften it. "Not through the port," he said. "Not gold bars. A trader lifts one bar, he knows the man who paid him found a hoard. Then he talks." He tapped a line. "Bars are for kings and thieves. Coin is for merchants. We must break the gold down before we buy." "Break it how?" Ajax asked. Tucker leaned against the wall. His chains caught the lamplight, and he knew it. "The northern city," he said. "That's your answer. Marcus is already there or near it. Five merchant houses, no king, no questions once you pay the tenth at the gate." He grinned. "They take gold bars and hand back cut coin. It's what they do. Nobody up there blinks at a fortune." Aldric shut the ledger. "He's right," he said. "The city launders wealth the way a smith beats iron. Send bars north with the ship. They come home as coin and goods. Clean." Ajax turned it over. "How much do I risk?" "Half the bars," Aldric said. "Load them next voyage. Marcus sells them to the red quay house alongside the furs. He buys steel, oats, wool with the coin. Fills the hold going and coming." He paused. "But every bar you send is a bar you can't guard. And you trust it to a man eight days at sea." "Marcus wants to come home," Tucker said. His grin faded to something plainer. "I made sure of that. He'll count every coin twice and hurry back." Ajax weighed the two men. Aldric, who saw the danger in a bar of gold. Tucker, who saw the man who would carry it. Both true. He set his hand on a crate. "Then we do it," he said. "Half the bars north with Marcus. He sells to the red quay house. He buys steel and grain and wool with the coin and brings it home in the hold. Aldric, you weigh out the bars and mark the ledger. Tucker, you bind Marcus to the buy same as you bound him to the voyage. He carries a list, not a purse to spend as he likes." Aldric wrote. "It works," he said. "Coin comes home clean. Goods fill the ship. No man on the coast learns the size of your hoard." Ajax looked down the shaft at the crates. The dead weight had a road now. Gold north, goods south. Black Oak would not just hold silver. It would arm itself with it.