Calamity (Reckoners, #3)(41)
The delivery? Knighthawk asked. That’s what the mobiles said. I don’t know why they’d lie.
Sure enough, a caravan of trucks soon approached, laden with goods ordered from UTC’s trading network. I wasn’t certain if Terms herself would be in attendance and—though it pained me, since I wanted to see her powers work—I knew I probably shouldn’t try to catch a glimpse. I did, however, spot the same overseer from a few days ago, when we’d first entered.
“All right,” I said to the team. “I figure this is as good a place as any to get some information. We need intel on Larcener, if we’re going to have any shot at guessing his weakness. Go do what it is you do best.”
“Make stuff up?” Cody asked, rubbing his chin.
“So you admit it!” Mizzy said, pointing at him.
“Course I admit it, lass. I have seven PhDs. That kind of time spent learning makes a fellow very self-aware.” He hesitated. “Course, all seven are in Scottish literature and culture, from different schools. A lad’s got to be thorough in his approach to his expertise, you see.”
I shook my head, approaching the overseer. We wore different faces now, but the man didn’t care. He put us to work as easily as he had before, hauling crates from the UTC shipment. The team spread out, engaging the other workers, listening to gossip. I managed to get myself assigned to unloading crates from one of the trucks.
“This is a good place for intel,” Abraham said to me softly as he stepped up to get a crate. “But I can’t help thinking you have an ulterior motive, David. What are you up to?”
I smiled, slid the broken mobile from my pocket, and wrapped it in a dark cloth. I picked a specific crate, then wedged the slim mobile between the slats in the wood near one of the corners. As I’d hoped, it was practically invisible in there.
I handed the crate to Abraham and winked. “Put this with the others.”
He raised an eyebrow toward me, then peeked into the crate. He grinned immediately, then obeyed.
The rest of the afternoon was consumed by work, with us carrying boxes and chatting up the other workers. I didn’t learn much, as I was distracted by my plans, but I passed Abraham and Cody engaged in several relaxed conversations with other workers. Mizzy seemed to have the most talent for it.
It would have been nice to have Exel along. That man had been wide as a boat and as morbid as a…um…sinking boat, but he’d been good with people. And good with information.
Thinking about him made me sick. I had convinced myself Prof couldn’t be blamed, but sparks…I’d really liked Exel.
I forced myself to chat up one of the other workers. The older man had an accent that reminded me of my grandmother’s. As we walked to the warehouse—a different one this time than last—he seemed to know the city well. He didn’t know much about Larcener, though he did complain that the Epic didn’t rule strongly enough.
“In the old country,” the man explained, “they’d have made short work of a fellow like Larcener. He lets all the Epics in town run about—he’s like a grandfather without any sense to discipline his grandkids. A stronger hand, that’s what’s needed here. Police, rules, curfews. People complain about that kind of thing, but it’s where we get order. Society.”
We passed Cody, who was sharing a cigarette with another worker. Cody appeared to be loafing, but if you watched him you could see that he was carefully minding the locations of the other Reckoners. If you needed to know where someone was, Cody was the person you asked.
I found myself comfortably entering conversations with several other workers. I realized after some time that I was actually more at ease here than I’d been in Babilar, where the people were more open, the society less oppressive. I didn’t like what was being done to Ildithia; I didn’t like how scared the people were, how divided and brutal life here was proving to be. But I was accustomed to it.
Eventually, we accepted our grain rations and made our way to the hideout, sharing intel. Nobody knew Larcener’s weakness, though we hadn’t expected that it would simply be open knowledge. The problem was, nobody seemed to have seen Larcener either. He kept to himself, and there were a shockingly small number of rumors. Mostly about Epics whose powers he’d stolen, leaving them as common people.
I listened to it all with a growing sense of disappointment. It was evening by the time we arrived home, and Mizzy used her mobile to double-check the security sensors on the door. We piled into our narrow pencil box of a hideout and split our separate ways. Cody asked Abraham for the rtich, which he wanted to practice with. I still hadn’t been able to get it to do much; maybe he’d have more luck. Megan retreated to her room, Abraham went to tinker with some of the weapons, and Mizzy went to make a sandwich.
I settled down on the ground in the main room on the bottom floor, my back against the wall. The only light was from my mobile, which eventually dimmed. I’d always chided Prof for taking things too slowly, for being too careful. Yet here I was in Ildithia, and my entire planning meeting had amounted to “Yup, we sure do need to stop Prof. And find Larcener’s weakness. Anyone got any ideas? Nope? Oh well, good job anyway.”
Looking back, dealing with Steelheart seemed easy in comparison. I’d had ten years to prepare for that. I’d had Prof and Tia to work out the details of the plan.
What was I doing here?