Huge Ajax's Arc

Chapter 52 of 619

Ajax came back up the stair with the sack and the map. The hall was quiet now. Marco stood near the broken gate with a torch. Chalam sat on the bottom step of the dais, one hand on his knee, the other on his staff. Elara had taken the chair itself. Her band still held the light. "Strip it," Ajax said. "Bodies first, then the rooms. Anything iron with a spiral, anything that reads like a name, bring to me." Grayson moved without a word. He crossed to the axeman Asher had killed and cut the belt loose. A short blade in a plain sheath. A ring of keys. A folded paper stuffed in the boot. He set the paper on the chair beside Elara and kept working. Tucker went for the guards at the gate. He knelt by the first and turned out the pockets like he was sorting laundry. Two silver coins. A whetstone. A token stamped with the spiral. He held the token up to the torch and whistled once, low. "That's four now," he said. "Whoever pays these men pays a lot of them." "Keep them." Tucker slipped the token into his vest and moved on. He worked fast and did not stop to talk. Ajax watched him for a breath and let him work. Asher came in from the second door with a bundle wrapped in oilcloth. He set it on the stone at Ajax's feet and stepped back the required pace. "Storeroom behind the door," he said. "This was on a shelf by itself." Ajax knelt and opened the cloth. Inside was a small iron rod, blunt at one end, notched at the other. He knew the shape. He had seen its brother struck against the stone at the coast. "A signal rod," Chalam said from the step. He did not get up. "Made to wake what sleeps under a seat. Yours would answer nothing now. The seat is sealed. But there are others." Ajax looked at the map in his shirt. Six marks. Six seats, maybe. He set the rod back in its cloth and wrapped it tight. Elara lifted the paper Grayson had left her. She unfolded it, read, and passed it down. A list of six names in a plain hand. One was crossed through. Ajax knew that name. It was the name Marco had pulled from the broker's mind. "The dead one at the port," Grayson said, reading over his shoulder. "They struck him off already." "Then five are still standing." Ajax rolled the list into the map. "And one of them holds the next seat." Tucker came back with a leather purse and dropped it heavy on the chair. "Silver. Enough for the winter twice." Ajax stood. He had come in for a name and a hatch. He was leaving with a rod, a list, four collars, and coin to build his warhouse through the snow. "Load the horses," he said. "West at dawn."