Huge Ajax's Arc

Chapter 66 of 619

Renn's lips shook. Marco stepped in from the door and put two fingers on the back of Renn's neck, below the iron collar. He closed his eyes. "Faster than his mouth," Marco said. "Hold him a breath more." Chalam's staff cracked a second time. The split ran to his hand. "Do it." Marco went still. His jaw set. Ajax watched his face and saw him wince once, then again, as if pulling wire out of a wound. Renn's eyes rolled white. A thin line of blood ran from his nose onto the plank. "Four names," Marco said. He spoke each one slow so Ajax could hear it clean. Ajax lifted a stub of charcoal from the table and wrote each name beside the list. Four new marks. Five living, counting Renn. "Places?" Ajax said. "Not clean. He knows two. A woman east of the salt flats. A man in a stone house above a river bend. The others are only faces to him." "Enough," Ajax said. "Drop him." Chalam let the staff fall against his shoulder. Renn folded onto the plank. Marco stepped back and wiped his hand on his jeans. He looked at Ajax and gave a short nod. "Bind him with the other two," Ajax said. "Grayson, cord on the wrists and the knees." Grayson worked fast. Ajax knelt by the first man he had put down and cut the shirt off him with his father's blade. He rolled him. Nothing on the chest or back but a burn scar under one shoulder. He moved to the second and did the same. Clean skin. No mark. "Renn," Ajax said. He cut the shirt from Renn's shoulders and pulled it away from the iron collar. On the left side of his chest, under the collarbone, sat a spiral the size of a coin. Not ink. Burned into the skin. The lines were the same as the tokens and the doors. Marco crouched beside him. "The other two don't have it." "No," Ajax said. "They are hired. He is one of them." Chalam leaned on the cracked staff. Sweat ran down his open chest. "The mark is a claim. He belongs to the ones who set the collars. Kill him and they will feel it go." Ajax stood. He looked at the four fresh names on the paper. He looked at the spiral on Renn's chest. Then he looked at the collar of dark iron still locked around Renn's neck. "We don't kill him yet," Ajax said. "He rides with us. Collar stays on. If they feel him die, they scatter. If they feel him move, they come." Grayson tightened the last knot. "Bait." "Bait," Ajax said. He folded the list and put it in his coat. Four names. One live spiral. And now a leash they could pull.