Huge Ajax's Arc

Chapter 524 of 619

The charmed chains told Ajax when a man turned, but not which man. Betrayal reached him as a cold pull on his father's gold chain, no name behind it. Ten new keepers sworn, thirty scattered across the sea, and one traitor somewhere among them. Ajax needed the charm to point, not just to warn. He called Chalam to the yard at dawn. Chalam came with his staff and his satchel, robe open at the chest, boots wet from the sea path. He set the satchel on the stone and pulled out the pressed chalk and the powdered lodestone. "The charm binds each chain to the house," he said. "It feels a broken oath. It does not name the man. That is a different working." "Then build the different working," Ajax said. "When one turns, I want to know who." Chalam did not soften it. "I can tie each chain to a mark. Chalk sign, one for each keeper. When a chain sours, the mark burns black on this cloth." He drew a square of oiled linen from the satchel. "You watch the cloth. The black square tells you the man." He paused. "It will hold across the sea. But it costs me a day of clear thought after." Ajax knew the risk. He had seen Chalam broken once, staff cracked, two weeks lost at an inn. "You're sure it won't crack the staff." "No," Chalam said. "I read a binding once that I was sure about. The staff cracked anyway." He looked at Ajax straight. "This is smaller. I think it holds. I will not swear it." "Do it." Chalam laid the linen flat and marked it with chalk, ten squares in two rows. He crushed lodestone into each square and named the keepers as he worked, low and steady. He opened the first numbered vial and let one drop fall on each mark. The chalk pulled the drop in and held. He did not open the second vial or the third. He worked in order and stopped where the working ended. By the last square his hand shook and his voice dragged. He capped the vial. "It's set," he said. "Touch your chain to the cloth." Ajax pressed his father's gold chain to the linen. The squares warmed once, then went cold. Chalam sat back on the stone, eyes half shut, the clear thought already draining from him. "Feed a false coin to one keeper," Chalam said, thick now. "Test it before you trust it." Ajax sent Marco north with a marked purse for the second island's keeper, the man who had once stayed silent from fear. Three days later the keeper took the coin. The linen's third square burned black in Ajax's hand. He had his answer. The charm named the traitor now, and Ajax knew which chain to cut across eight days of water. But Chalam sat two days blind in his room, and the working had cost the house its eyes.