Huge Ajax's Arc

Chapter 90 of 619

Ajax went down the cellar stairs first. The steps were packed dirt. A tin cup sat by the seat with a film of milk gone sour at the bottom. The stone was the same as the others. Same seam. Same cold coming off it. He set his hand on it and felt nothing yet. He came back up. Tucker had the chest open on the table. Grayson stood at the front door with a blade across his knee. Marco sat on the bench eating bread the woman had left on the shelf. Chalam went through a satchel by the pallet. "Two magical items in the chest," Tucker said. He held up a small iron key with a spiral cut into the bow. "This one hums when I hold it near the collar on the floor. Opens something that isn't here." He set it down and picked up a folded square of cloth stitched with silver thread. "And this. Wraps around a wound. Chalam already looked." "It closes flesh," Chalam said. "Once. Then it's cloth." "Keep both," Ajax said. "The key goes to me. The cloth goes to Elara." Elara took the cloth without a word and folded it into her vest. She had not sat down since they came in. She watched the woman on the pallet the way a healer watches a fever. Tucker pulled the rest of the chest out on the table. A purse of silver. Two gold bars stamped clean. A ledger with names and numbers Ajax could not read yet. Three spiral tokens. A ring with no stone. "Split at the coast," Ajax said. "Ledger to me now." Grayson looked up from the door. "The road's quiet." "Then we sleep in turns and open the seat at first light." They ate what the woman had. Marco held the collared man's memory down through the night from the bench, and by the time the window went gray he was still sitting up. Chalam's vials caught the last of the moon. At dawn Ajax went down the stairs with his father's blade drawn and the pressed flowers from the dryad in his other hand. Chalam followed with the staff. Tucker took the top of the stairs. Grayson took the door. Asher took the yard. Ajax cut his palm and set the blood on the seam. The stone opened the way it had opened twice before. The thing under it lifted its head into the light. He drove the blade through its eye before it got the second arm free. Chalam burned the flowers on the seam. The pit went cold and closed. Ajax came up the stairs wiping the blade on his sleeve. "Third seat down," he said. He crossed the name off the list. Two left. "Load up. We ride." The ring on his finger was still cool. He had the day. He had the ledger. He had two more names, and a name he did not have yet at the top of both.