Huge Ajax's Arc

Chapter 489 of 619

The next morning Ajax found Marco at the gate, ready to ride back to the Crossing. Marcus's oath held, and the trade route was safe for another year. But one thread still hung loose. Tucker ran the bar at Silvermoor now, eight days north across the sea. Marcus sailed there every run. Ajax had watched the two of them circle each other for a season without ever hearing the truth of it. Before he trusted his captain and his Master of Port and Trade to the same small town, he wanted to know what stood between them. He called Marco back inside the hall. "One more read," Ajax said. "Tucker and Marcus. Tell me what's real there." Marco leaned against the table. He wore his blue shirt open, the short gold chain bright at his throat. He had crossed the sea road twice a moon for a year and read lies the whole way. He did not rush. "I don't need to read them for that," he said. "I've watched it." "Then say it." "Marcus wants him. Has since the first voyage." Marco tipped his head. "Tucker wanted him back. But Tucker never gives a man the whole thing at once. He hands out a piece, then waits." A dry warmth touched his mouth. "He kept Marcus wanting so the ship would come home fast. It worked. Now the wanting is real on both sides. That's the trouble with playing it long. Sometimes you catch what you were fishing for." Ajax turned that over. "Does it hold my route or break it?" "Holds it," Marco said. "A captain who wants to reach a town sails harder. A bar keeper who wants his captain pours a better cup and keeps him talking." He straightened. "You bound Marcus with silver. You don't need to. Tucker binds him better, and Tucker's already sworn to you." Ajax weighed it against the risk. Two men sharing a bed in a town he could not watch. If it soured, both posts would sour with it. But Marco had never read a man wrong, and Ajax had built his whole house on knowing which threads held. This one held. "Then I leave them to it," Ajax said. "Marcus sails, Tucker keeps the bar. I don't put my hand between them." Marco pushed off the table. "That's the right call. Men work harder for what they chose than what you gave them." He looked at Ajax a beat longer than the words needed. "You know that better than most." Ajax walked him to the gate and watched him mount for the Crossing road. The oath was renewed. The captain was steady. The bar keeper held him without a chain. His men were scattered across eight days of sea, but every knot was tied, and each one held by choice. Ajax turned back toward the hall. The route north was closed and safe, and his brotherhood ran itself in his absence now, the way he had always meant it to.