Huge Ajax's Arc

Chapter 597 of 619

The pilot wore Ajax's silver now. He stood at the tiller and read the water home, green for safe, calling each shoal before it reached the hull. Chalam watched him from the rail. "He holds the oath," the wizard said. "No charm, no lie. The reef stays ours." Ajax nodded. The road west was bound to Black Oak. Now he wanted the next door. Rowan sat on a crate, bow across his knees. He had said little since the reef. He spoke now. "The town's binding held. The pale thing's dead. But the water we passed smelled wrong two days out. Rot, off season." He looked at Ajax. "Something else is failing along this coast." Chalam went still. He set his staff to the deck and closed his eyes. "He's right," he said. "There's a mark to the north. Old. Weaker than the well. It's slipping." He opened his eyes. "I felt it clearest when we cleared the reef. It's close to breaking." Ajax weighed it. His crew was aboard, the passage his. "How long?" "Days," Chalam said. "Maybe less. I can't say without reading it near." Kael crossed the deck, knife already loose in his hand out of habit. "Then we don't sail home yet." He said it flat. Beside him Torren stood with arms folded, steady as a post. Torren had held the port treasury gate fourteen years before he swore to Ajax. He watched the north water now the way he once watched a dock. "If it breaks," Torren said, "it breaks toward the town we just left. And toward every gate that token opens." He touched the leather stamp at Ajax's belt with his eyes. "We fixed one well. We don't leave a worse door open behind it." Ajax turned to Marcus at the helm. "Can the ship take us north along this coast?" Marcus looked to the pilot, then the sky. "He reads the water, I hold the wheel. We can go." He said no more. Elara had come up from below. She wore the new band, the one that let her run to failing seals ahead of the crew. She stepped to Chalam and pressed her hand near his staff, feeling for the mark herself. "I have your blood, Ajax," she said. "I know the marks now. If it's slipping fast, I go first under the moon and hold the seam. You follow and close it." She looked tired already, but her voice did not waver. Ajax looked at his people. The reef bound, the coast opened, the crew ready. One task closed, another already pulling at them. "Set the course north," he said. "Pilot reads, Marcus holds. Elara runs ahead if it can't wait. We reach it first." The pilot called the next depth. Green water. Marcus turned the wheel. The boat came about and drove up the strange coast toward a door Ajax had not yet seen.