Huge Ajax's Arc

Chapter 498 of 619

Ajax slept poorly and rose before the others. Aldric's words held in him. Three towns eight days out, all standing on hired oaths and gnome bronze. He found Aldric already at the round table, ledger open, tracing columns with one finger. Grey streaked his hair. His green tunic caught the morning light through the high slit. "You didn't drink much last night," Ajax said. "I was counting." Aldric didn't look up. "Silvermoor, the island, the second island. Each held by a keeper we pay and hope. JD reads the men we hire, but only at the moment we hire them." He tapped a line. "A keeper who turns after we swear him, we don't see coming." Ajax pulled out the chair beside him. "Then how do we hold them?" Aldric closed the book. "We can't watch three towns from here. But every keeper we set sailed south past this hall on his way out. Every one will sail back through it too, on the next supply run." He met Ajax's eye. "Bring them here first. JD reads each one before he takes the post. Not at a harbor tavern. Here. At the door." "They're already posted," Ajax said. "Then recall them one at a time. Marcus runs the tide anyway. Each keeper comes home, JD reads him clean, he sails back sworn twice over." Aldric spread his hands. "Or he reads dirty, and we replace him before he sells the canal to a merchant house." Ajax weighed it. JD sat at the bar most nights, Marco's brother, the second reader they'd sworn to catch lies. His gift worked once a man stood before him. Aldric was right. The towns didn't need thirteen brothers scattered across the sea. They needed a gate every keeper passed through, and a reader at that gate. "Every keeper comes to Black Oak," Ajax said. "JD reads him here. Clean men go back. Dirty men don't." "That's the shape of it." Aldric opened the ledger again and dipped his pen. "I'll write the roster. Nine keepers across three towns. We start with Silvermoor's two, since Tucker's men sit closest to your silver." Ajax called JD in from the yard. He came half-dressed, chest bare, gold chain across it. Ajax told him the plan plain. JD grinned. "So I hold the door and every man in your reach walks past me sooner or later." "One by one," Ajax said. "You read them cold and sober. Any lie, you tell me before they eat at my table." "That I can do." JD glanced at his brother's empty chair. "Marco taught me. I'll know before the man knows himself." Aldric slid the finished roster across the table. Nine names, an order, a tide for each. Ajax read it once and set his hand flat on it. The towns still stood eight days out. But now a road ran back to one gate, and one reader at that gate. He no longer held his reach on trust alone. He held it on JD's eye at the door.