Huge Ajax's Arc

Chapter 514 of 619

Ajax led Marco and Chalam down the stair and out through the trade door. Marcus waited at the boat with the false casks. They rowed to the ship and cleared the harbor before the woman's guards stirred. Ajax had spared her and wiped her mind. But five houses still ruled the north quarter, and the woman had said their number plainly. Five hands, one head. Ajax needed to know how to handle the five before they sent smarter men south. "She named five houses," Ajax said, once the shore fell behind them. "I broke one hand. Four remain, and the head above them." Chalam sat on a crate, satchel across his knees. He did not soften it. "Kill the four and you start a war. Five houses hold the northern city. Cut one and the others close ranks. You'd face all of them at once." Ajax gripped the rail. "Then I don't cut them." "No," Chalam said. "You make them each look elsewhere. A house fears its rivals more than it fears you. If each of the five believes another stole the fur trade, they turn on each other instead of on your dock." Marco leaned against the mast, arms crossed. His gold bracelet caught the light. He had read the woman's mind an hour ago, and he read Ajax now. "He wants them all dead in one night," Marco said, dry. "Five deaths, one hand. It's a clean thought. It also brings the whole north down on Silvermoor." Ajax turned. "You have a better one." "I do." Marco pushed off the mast. "I sat in that room. She answered to five, but she trusted none of them. Each house watches the others. Give them something to watch." He glanced at Chalam. "He can scry a house mark. He found the red coat's mark once. He can find the other four." Chalam nodded once. "I can read a mark from a charmed chain. I have the woman's red thread. It carries her house sign." Ajax weighed it. Assassins in the night would end five hands but wake five houses. This would end nothing yet turn the five against themselves. He chose the slower blade. "Do it," Ajax said. "Read her thread. Name the four houses she feared. Then we send each one word that another moved on the fur road first. Let them fight for a route they can't find." Chalam opened his satchel and set the red thread on the crate. He touched chalk and lodestone to it and spoke low. The thread glowed, then showed a mark, then three more beside it. Four house signs, clear. "Four houses," Chalam said. "I have them all." Marco smiled without heat. "No assassins. No war. Just five rivals who each think the others cheated them." Ajax looked north across the water. He had his answer to the five. Not one death, but four false trails that would keep the north quarter blind and quarreling while Silvermoor sold on. The head above them still had a name he did not know. That was the next hunt.