Huge Ajax's Arc

Chapter 470 of 619

The islands could wait. Ajax needed to know what men said about them first. He found JD at the bar, drying cups, the silver chain bright under his half-buttoned shirt. Marco's brother had held the bar three seasons now, reading lies in captains' faces the way Marco read them on the road. "You ride with me tomorrow," Ajax told him. "Beyond the Crossing. I want your ears." JD set down the cup. He did not ask why. "Marco knows that road better." "Marco holds the gate. You come." They rode east at dawn with Tucker and Chalam. Past the Crossing gate the road ran into open country. Ajax kept them off the main track. He wanted talk, not counting eyes. By midday they reached a trading camp where drovers watered their beasts and swapped goods. Tucker went in first. He bought a round for a table of drovers and let them do the talking. Ajax and JD sat close, saying little. Chalam stayed back with the horses, his staff hidden under a cloak. A drover with a burned face bragged about a run he'd made north to the harbor. Ajax leaned in. "You ever sail past it? The islands out from the harbor mouth?" The man spat. "Nobody sails there. Cursed water." JD caught Ajax's eye and gave him nothing. The man believed it. Then a younger drover spoke up. "My cousin crewed a ship that put in there last spring. Said the walled town's still standing. Empty. People left when the fire came off the mainland." He grinned. "Said there's grain stores nobody's touched." Ajax kept his face still. "Your cousin lie much?" "Not about grain." Under the table, JD tapped Ajax's knee twice. Truth. The boy believed his cousin, and the cousin had not lied to him. Tucker bought another round and steered the talk to weather and prices. He got more without asking. A northern merchant house had started asking about the islands too. They wanted the second island, the walled one, for a storehouse port closer than the harbor. Ajax rose and paid the barman. Outside, he pulled his men together by the horses. "The town's empty and standing," Ajax said. "Grain in it. And a merchant house wants it." "Then you're not the only one who read a burned house," Chalam said. JD nodded once. "The boy told it true. The rest was talk." Tucker wiped his mustache. "News travels. Somebody paid to spread that curse story. Keeps common men off the water." Ajax mounted. He had ridden out for word and come back with a race. The islands were real, empty, and wanted. If he did not move first, the merchant house would. "Home," Ajax said. "We sail before they do."