Huge Ajax's Arc

Chapter 468 of 619

The gold letters still caught the hearthlight when the dryad came. Ajax had meant to hang the doors on the thirteen new bedrooms next. Instead a worker ran in from the gate, wide-eyed, and said a leaf-skinned woman waited outside with a bundle of green wood. Ajax knew her at once. The Leafgift Dryad had carved his tables and warned him of beasts for a year. He brought her into the Council Hall himself. She walked the round table slowly, bark-textured fingers trailing the wood. Her leaf dress rustled with each step. She stopped at the center and pressed her palm flat. "Your alliance is set here," she said. "But your seats are named for men. A hall belongs to no one until it is claimed for the house it serves." She lifted her hand. Under her palm, the wood had changed. A wolf paw stood carved in the center of the table, deep and clean, larger than the paws on the chairs. Ajax stared at it. "That is my mark." "It is the pact," she said. "My grove sees you now by this table, not by any man's name. If your Council falls to quarrel, the mark holds. It answers to the house, not to the loudest voice." Aldric came in then, ledger under his arm. He walked the table once and stopped at the paw. He touched the carved edge with one finger. "She cut it into the center," he said. "Not any single seat. The middle." "Is that a problem?" Ajax asked. "It is the opposite of a problem." Aldric met his eye. "You carved names in the chairs. A named seat is a claim, I told you. Every man reads what he holds and what his neighbor holds. That breeds envy." He tapped the paw. "This sits above all of them and belongs to none. The men answer to the mark. Not to a bigger chair." Ajax understood. His carved seat sat higher than the rest. It could make the others feel like servants. The paw in the center changed that. All thirteen chairs faced one mark. The mark was the house. "Then it stays," Ajax said. The dryad inclined her head. "There is a cost. Sworn leaders sleep where the mark can reach them. The new rooms are for your Council. Not for hired hands or bar men. The pact binds those who sit at this table." Ajax thought of his thirty fighters and his squad leaders in the crowded bunkhouse. "The barrack rooms go to the sworn leaders," he said. Aldric wrote it in the ledger without being asked. "Thirteen rooms. Thirteen leaders. The bunkhouse and barracks holds the rest." The dryad walked to the door. "I will begin work in the rooms, their furniture, and doorways" she said, and was gone to the first of them. Ajax laid his hand on the paw. The wood was warm. His brotherhood had a heart now that no single man could steal.