Huge Ajax's Arc

Chapter 499 of 619

The first keeper sailed south on the morning tide. Aldric's roster named him: a hired sword set over Silvermoor's grain store. Ajax stood at the gate with JD at his shoulder and waited for the man to come up from the dock. This was the test of the whole plan. One reader at one door, catching a lie before it cost a town. The keeper came through with his sea bag on his back. JD watched him walk, saying nothing, gold chain bright on his bare chest. He held out a hand and the man took it. A moment passed. JD gave Ajax two fingers against his own thigh, low and quiet. Clean. Ajax sent the keeper to eat and rest before his run back north. The second man was clean too. The third. By the fourth keeper, Ajax had let himself believe the gate held. Then Chalam came into the yard, staff in hand, robe open at the chest. He'd been marking the towns with his rings, tracking each from his satchel of chalk and lodestone. He walked straight to Ajax and did not soften it. "The fifth keeper is coming in on Marcus's boat," Chalam said. "He's silver-chained already. Sworn to hold the island. But the chain's charmed." Ajax turned from the gate. "Charmed how?" "Someone worked the silver to hide him." Chalam's voice went flat. "When JD reads him, he'll read clean. The charm feeds a false face over the man's mind. I found it in my stone this morning. Too late to stop the tide." JD looked between them. "If the silver hides him, my gift's blind." "Yes," Chalam said. "That's why I came fast." Ajax felt the plan crack under him. A gate that read every man was worth nothing if a charm could pass a traitor through it. "Can you break the charm?" "I can strip it. Chalk and lodestone at the door, before he speaks." Chalam opened his satchel. "But if I strip it and he's clean, I've shamed a sworn man for nothing." "Strip it," Ajax said. "Every keeper who comes through, you clear the silver first. Then JD reads him." The boat docked at dusk. The fifth keeper climbed the path, chain bright at his throat. Chalam met him at the gate and pressed powdered lodestone to the silver. He spoke three words. The chain dulled. JD took the man's hand. This time JD did not give two fingers. He gave one, sharp against his leg. A lie. Ajax had the man taken and held. Chalam read his mind clean once the charm was gone: a merchant house had bought him at the harbor, meaning to learn the canal. "He'd have read clean at your door," Chalam said. "Now he doesn't." Ajax set his hand on the roster. The gate held again. But now every keeper crossed two readers, not one, and no charmed silver would pass them.