Huge Ajax's Arc

Chapter 567 of 619

JD rode back from the Crossing two days later, the seer beside him on a gray horse. Ajax met them at the gate. The woman was thin, older than he expected, with sharp eyes that moved over the walls like she was counting stones. She did not dismount at once. She watched Ajax the way a hawk watches open ground. "She came," JD said. He set both hands on his saddle horn. "No charm. No house. Marco read her clean on the road." He looked at the woman. "She wants to know if the wall is real before she gets down." Ajax stepped closer. "Whoever hunts you cannot reach through my gate," he said. "Wages, a room, my men at your door. You bind yourself only if you want it." The seer studied him. "A house tried to bind me last winter," she said. "They wanted my sight and my silence. I ran three towns to lose them." She swung down from the horse. "You offer the same, but you say the choice is mine. I have heard that lie before." "Read me," Ajax said. "Ask Marco. Ask his brother here. I keep no seer against her will." She held his eyes a long moment. Then she nodded once. "Then I will stay. For now." Ajax turned to JD. "She needs her own room. Not the bunkhouse, not the barracks. A door she can shut." He knew a seer worked alone and would not sleep among fighters. "Chalam builds it." He brought her to the cliff chambers through the portal, with Chalam waiting. The training floor was warm now, the hearth lit for the two young wizards. Corin and the new wizard practiced their wards against the lodestone marks. The seer looked at the marks and went still. "Old work," she said. "Sleeping things under the sea." Chalam met her eyes and said nothing. "Cut her a room here," Ajax told him. "Away from the boys. Quiet stone." Chalam took his Verath bone staff and cut a chamber from the rock over the next two days. He carved a hearth into the wall and a shelf for her bowls and water. He warmed the other cliff rooms too, deepening the hearths, laying wool over the cold floors. The passage stopped feeling like a prison. "Done," Chalam said when he finished. His face was gray with strain. "The stone holds. She has her door." The seer walked her new room, touched the warm wall, and set a bowl of water on the shelf. She looked into it. "There is a ship past your farthest island," she said. "Ten days out. No one has seen it yet." She looked up at Ajax. "Your wizards cannot reach that far. I can." Ajax felt his cold chain against his chest. He had his seer. Now he could see past the reach of any maker who kept beating him to the doors.