Huge Ajax's Arc

Chapter 446 of 619

The four of them stood inside the market gate, carts loaded with cloth and needles. Marco Valentino, who held Ajax's eastern gate at the Crossing, closed his eyes and read the crowd. Marco could hear thoughts and catch lies, a gift that had built Black Oak's trade from nothing. Now he turned it on the city itself. "They want cloth," Marco said. "Half of them are thinking coin. None of them are thinking about us." He opened his eyes. "No soldiers hunting foreign traders. No mark on the gate for men like you." Ajax nodded. "Then we sell." Tucker Hoskins moved before Ajax finished. Tucker worked a room the way most men breathed. He set his cart beside a stall heavy with silver plate, leaned on it, and started talking. He bought a cup of wine from a passing girl and drank half. Within an hour three traders stood at his cart, fingering the needles. "Bone," Tucker told them. "They don't rust. They don't sour a wound." He let the words sit. "No other cart in this market has them." A lean trader in a red coat picked one up. He named a price. Marco caught Ajax's eye and shook his head once. The offer was low, and the man knew it. Ajax stepped in. "Twice that," Ajax said. "You'll sell them to a healer for four times what I'm asking." The trader argued. Marco listened to what the man would not say. When the trader claimed no healer would pay, Marco tapped the cart twice. Truth. Ajax dropped his price a hair, and the man bought the whole lot. Silver changed hands. It was northern silver worth more here than at the port. By dusk both carts were empty. Ajax counted the coin in a quiet corner. Triple the port's price, as he had hoped. But Tucker was not done. He had walked the stalls while the selling closed, and he came back with his own load. "They've got things worth carrying home," Tucker said. He unfolded a cloth. Inside lay fine spice, worked glass, dyes in small sealed jars. "Cheap here. Rare at the port. Rare up north, too." He grinned. "We fill the carts going back and sell twice." Chalam Othworld set his staff against the cart and looked over the goods. Chalam spoke plainly, as he always did. "The dyes are true. The spice is dry and sound. No working on any of it." He looked at Ajax. "This road runs both ways now." Ajax understood. He had come to sell. He was leaving with a route that carried goods east and west, coin at both ends, in a city no lord ruled. His brotherhood would not just hold a wall. It would feed itself on trade no port could touch. "Buy it all," Ajax said. "We ride home at first light. Then we come back with a full load." They loaded the carts by lamplight and slept behind the walls of a nameless city, richer than they had come.