Huge Ajax's Arc

Chapter 506 of 619

At dawn Ajax watched the boy leave the ice cellar with a captain's sack over his shoulder. Marco stood beside him in the shade of a stack of crates, jeans still dusty from the road, gold bracelet catching the early light. "He carries coin today," Marco said. "I heard it in him last night. He's to pass it before noon." He kept his eyes on the thin shape moving down the wet planks. "Fear runs through him the whole time. Easy to follow." They trailed the boy at a slow distance. He wound past the harbor wall and stopped at a low stone house with a single door. He knocked twice, then once. The door opened a hand's width. A man's arm reached out and took the sack. Marco went still. "That's the runner," he said. "The face the boy carries. Same man." The boy hurried off. Ajax let him go. He crossed to the door himself and knocked twice, then once, the way the boy had. Marco stood at his shoulder. The door opened, and a heavy man in a gray tunic looked out. His eyes went to Ajax's bare chest, the gold chain, the blade at his hip. He tried to shut the door. Ajax put his boot in the gap. "You take coin for a man in a red coat," Ajax said. "I've silver. More than he pays you." He held up a fat purse and let it swing. The runner's eyes went to the purse, then to Marco. Marco met his gaze, calm, unhurried. "He wants it," Marco said. "He's afraid of the red man, but greed's louder." He tilted his head. "Ask him where the coat sits." Ajax pressed the purse into the man's hand. "Where do I find him?" The runner licked his lips. "East. Past the Crossing. He keeps a room over a dye shop in the city there. Comes to the harbor twice a moon to hear my word." He glanced at Marco, then back. "That's all I know. I swear it." Marco gave a small nod. "True. Every word." Ajax closed the man's fingers around the silver. "Then you work for me now. You take the red man's coin same as before. You tell him nothing changed." He leaned close. "My man will read you each time. Lie once and I'll know." The runner nodded fast. Ajax stepped back and let the door swing shut. Marco walked with him toward the water. "You turned his own runner," he said. "Now the coat pays a man who answers to you." Ajax looked east, past the harbor, toward the city beyond the Crossing where a lean trader in a red coat had bought his keepers. He had followed a boy's coin to a house, and the house had given him the road. "We know where he sits now," Ajax said. "Next we take him."