Huge Ajax's Arc

Chapter 394 of 619

The bars sat weighed and marked in the deep vault. Half for Marcus to carry north. Ajax stood over them with Aldric and Tucker, and a new worry rose in him. Sending gold was one thing. Trusting it to a man eight days at sea was another. He set his hand on the nearest crate. "Chalam finds the ship if it strays. But once Marcus lands, we're blind. He buys the steel and grain, or he doesn't. Who up there do we trust to hold him to the list?" Aldric opened his ledger and did not soften it. "No one," he said. "You have no man in the merchant city. Marcus walks into the red quay house alone with your gold. He buys well, or he keeps the coin and sails somewhere you can't reach." He tapped the page. "A rogue captain doesn't run home. He runs east." Tucker leaned on the wall. His chains caught the lamplight. "So we don't send him alone," he said. "You send me." Ajax looked at him. Tucker had bound Marcus with desire, not fear, holding back intimacy until the captain returned. That leash worked from shore. It might snap eight days out. "You're my Master of Port," Ajax said. "I can't spare you." "You can't spare the gold neither." Tucker grinned, but it faded fast. "Marcus wants me. That's the hook, and it only pulls if I'm the one waiting. Put me on the deck beside him, the hook's in his hand the whole voyage. He won't run with me watching the coin and warming his bunk." He shrugged. "And I know quay masters. I can smell a cheat before he counts." Aldric shut the ledger. "He's right on the sums," he said. "Tucker knows buyers. He knows Marcus. One man to hold the captain and one head to hold the price, in the same body." He paused. "But if the ship is lost, you lose your trade man too." Ajax weighed it. Aldric saw the gold. Tucker saw the man carrying it. Both were true, same as before. But this time the risk cut into his own house, not a hired sailor's neck. He made the call. "Tucker sails with Marcus. You carry the list and the gold. You buy steel, grain, wool at the red quay house, and you hold Marcus to it." He turned to Aldric. "You take Master of Port while he's gone. Run the bar. Keep the captains talking." Tucker nodded once. "Marcus finds out I'm coming north, he'll sail happy." "Then tell him tonight," Ajax said. "You leave when the ship's loaded." Aldric wrote the change into the ledger. The problem had a shape now. Gold north with two men, not one. A trader who could not run because his reason to come home stood at his shoulder. Black Oak would arm itself, and the coin would come back clean.