Huge Ajax's Arc

Chapter 505 of 619

The keeper's word gave Ajax a thread. A boy at the harbor took coin from the red trader and passed it to Ajax's men. Find the boy, and the thread led back to the trader who bought his keepers. Ajax could not read a face across the sea. But Marco could read one across a table. He called Marco to the yard before the tide turned. "You come with me," Ajax said. "North to Silvermoor's harbor. I need your ears at my side." Marco set down his cup. He had ridden in from the Crossing that morning, dust still on his jeans. He looked tired, but he did not argue. "You want the boy," he said. "I hear him if he lies. I hear him if he's afraid." He rolled his sleeve down over his gold bracelet. "Fear talks louder than lies. He'll be full of it." They sailed two days and made the harbor at dusk. Ajax kept to a corner of the dock while Marco walked the wet planks. Sailors moved crates. Boys ran errands for coin. Marco watched them the way he watched traders at the gate—still, unhurried, letting each face pass. Ajax knew the look. Marco was listening under the words. He found the boy by the ice cellar. Thin, quick-handed, no more than fourteen. He carried a sack for a captain and never met a grown man's eye. Marco crossed to him and crouched, easy, like an uncle. He spoke low. Ajax could not hear the words. He saw the boy go stiff, then go loose. Marco stood and came back. "That's him. He didn't lie once. He was too scared to lie." He glanced at the boy, who had not run. "A man in a red coat pays him. The boy walks the docks and offers your keepers silver. If they say yes, he tells the red man which ship, which post." Ajax kept his voice flat. "Where does he pass the coin?" "A house past the harbor wall. The red man's runner sits there and waits." Marco tapped his own chest. "The boy thinks of it clear. He's seen the runner's face. I've got it now." Ajax looked at the boy across the planks. He had come to find one child and he had found the door behind him. "Does he know we hunt his master?" "No," Marco said. "He knows I asked and I was kind. That's all." He met Ajax's eye. "Leave him. He's more use walking than gone. He leads us to the runner. The runner leads us to the coat." Ajax nodded slow. He had set out to find the boy, and the boy stood before him, sworn to nothing, bought by a stranger, useful now to Ajax instead. He gripped Marco's shoulder. "Then we don't touch him. We follow the coin he carries." He turned toward the harbor wall and the house behind it. "Tomorrow we find the runner."