Huge Ajax's Arc

Chapter 490 of 619

Ten days after Marco rode for the Crossing, Ajax's caller ring warmed against his hand. Tucker's voice reached him from Silvermoor, eight days north across the sea. The bar was full every night. Captains crowded the six rented rooms. But traders kept asking for beds Tucker could not give them. The lodge was turning silver away. Ajax sat with Aldric in the hall and laid the question out. "Tucker says the rooms are full. He wants to open the three we held back. Maybe build more." Aldric had governed ledgers all his life. Grey ran through his hair now. He set down his quill and spoke plain, the way he always did. "Held rooms mean higher prices for the best ones. Open them all and the price drops. Build more and you pull masons off the wall repairs." He tapped the ledger. "You have eleven whole homes. Six rent. Two we keep. Three empty on purpose." "And if the empty three cost me a trader who sails on?" "Then he tells another trader Silvermoor is busy," Aldric said. "Busy draws more men than empty ever did." Ajax turned the ring on his finger. Tucker still ran the bar there. Tucker still answered to him. But Tucker wanted the rooms open now, and Tucker read a room better than any man Ajax knew. He pressed the ring and asked for him again. "Tell me straight," Ajax said. "Do you need the beds, or do you want the silver?" Tucker's answer came dry and slow, the way he handed out truth in pieces. "Bit of both." A pause. "Three men asked for rooms last night. I gave them wine and a story instead. Two booked the good rooms at double when they thought those might go too." Another pause. "Scarcity works. But I'm turning away four traders a week. That's coin walking to the port." Ajax weighed the two men against each other. Aldric wanted the town lean and hungry. Tucker wanted it full and loud. Both had held their posts a year without a lie between them. "Here's the call," Ajax said. "Open one of the three. Not all. Keep two dark so the best rooms stay dear. Bran repairs one home a week, no faster—the wall comes first. When we have twelve whole rooms, we rent nine and hold three." Aldric nodded once. "That holds." Through the ring, Tucker laughed low. "Middle road. Should've guessed." Then, quieter, "It'll fill by the second tide. I'll pour the story thick." Ajax cut the call and set the ring on the table. Silvermoor would grow, but slow, a bed at a time, the wall always first. The port across the sea now ran on his word carried through gold, and it ran without him standing in the yard. He had built a thing that answered to him and no one else, even from eight days away.