Huge Ajax's Arc

Chapter 579 of 619

The iron disc sat sealed in its niche, but Ajax could not rest. A key that opened bindings meant a maker who cut it. He wanted a name. At dawn he climbed the invisible stairs to the training floor, where Chalam sat over his satchel, grinding paste on a flat stone. "I need to know who made it," Ajax said. "Not just what it does." Chalam did not look up. "A working can pull the maker's hand from the metal. Every craftsman leaves a mark on what he cuts." He set down his bone staff. "It costs. A day of clear thought, maybe two. And I'd have to break the chalk seal to touch it." "The hum comes back if you break the seal." "For as long as I hold it. Yes." Chalam finally met his eyes. "You'll want to stand at the far wall." Ajax stepped back. Chalam cracked the chalk paste and lifted the disc bare-handed. The hum returned at once, crawling up Ajax's gold chain. Chalam's jaw tightened. He passed the staff over the iron and spoke three low words. The staff shivered. A picture formed in the air above the metal, thin as smoke: a hand cutting a spiral, working by candlelight. Not old. The hand was young. "That's not a dead man's work," Ajax said. "That's fresh." "Cut within the year." Chalam's voice went clipped. He dropped the disc into the chalk and sealed it again. The hum died. He breathed out slow. "The maker who reaches every site before me. He's alive. And he's still cutting keys." Ajax pressed his palm to the cold stone. "Then a working tells me the hand. I need to know the lock. Where it opens." "I can't read that from the key alone." Chalam rubbed his temple. His eyes had gone unfocused, the price already landing. "The seer can. She reaches farther than my staff. Show her the disc. She may find the door it fits." Ajax sent for her. The seer came from her carved chamber, the one Chalam had cut for her in the cliff rooms. She had stayed under Ajax's roof for a season now, sworn to nothing, free to leave. She knelt by the niche without being told and laid two fingers on the sealed chalk. Her breath caught. "A cave. Far north, past the burned quarter. A stone gate, still shut." She opened her eyes. "The lock is whole. No one has opened it. But the key was cut to fit it." "He made the key before he took the door," Ajax said. "He's planning to," the seer said. "Or someone he sold it to is." Ajax stood. He had the maker's hand and the door it opened. "Then we hold the key, and we watch that gate." He looked to Chalam, whose face had gone slack with the working's cost. "Rest. We ride north when you can think straight."