Huge Ajax's Arc

Chapter 395 of 619

The ship rode at the hidden dock, loaded and dark. Ajax stood on the stone with Aldric while Tucker checked the lines below. Only the first run's gold went aboard—thirty parts in a hundred, weighed and crated. The rest waited in the deep vault. Ajax had cut it that way on purpose. Test the road north before he trusted it with everything. Marcus climbed up from the deck to face them. He wore his loose vest open, the silver chain of his oath at his neck. He was hard to read, as always, but he met Ajax's eyes straight. "Bars are stowed low and dry," he said. "Tucker counted them twice." Ajax wanted more than the count. He wanted to know what waited up north before the gold left his sight. "You've sailed the merchant city before," he said. "Tell me how it went. The last sale." Marcus did not soften it. "I sold antiquities there once. Ran them past men who'd have hanged me for it. The red quay house pays in northern silver and asks nothing." He paused. "They take a tenth at the gate. After that, no questions. That's the whole city. Coin talks and names don't." Aldric opened his ledger against his arm. "What sells well there," he said. It was not a question. He wanted it plain. "Furs. Rare hide." Marcus counted on his fingers. "Worked steel. Grain moves slow but steady. Wine, if it's strange enough to talk about." He looked at the crates. "Your bars turn to coin at the quay. The coin buys anything on the water. Steel and grain go cheap up there. Cheaper than the port down here." Ajax turned to Aldric. "You hear it?" "I hear it," Aldric said. He wrote as he spoke. "Sell the bars to the red quay house. Buy steel and grain with the coin. His numbers match the captain we drank two winters back." He shut the book. "It holds." Tucker came up the stone then, wiping his hands. He set himself at Marcus's shoulder without a word, close, and Marcus's face eased for the first time. The hook was in the captain's hand now, warm beside him for eight days. Ajax set his palm on the top crate. "First run only," he said. "Thirty in a hundred. You sell it clean, you buy the steel and the grain, you come home. Do that, and next follows on the next run." Marcus nodded once. "We sail with the tide." Ajax stepped back and let them go. The lines dropped. The ship slid into the black canal toward the sea gate. He watched the mast shrink and knew the shape of it now—the price, the goods, the road. Not a guess anymore. A trade he could count on, if the ship came back.