“You…named it?” Abraham asked.
“Sure. Why not? Look, I’m starting to think you don’t want me to give you this tech after all.”
“We do,” I said. “Please, continue.”
He rolled his eyes, then accepted another piece of popcorn from his marionette’s hand. “So, a few months back, an Epic died in Siberia. A squabble between two despots, kind of dramatic. An enterprising merchant was in the area, and managed to harvest one of the—”
“Rtich?” I said, perking up. “You managed to emulate Rtich?”
“Kid, you know far too much about all this for your own good.”
I ignored the comment. Rtich—pronounced something like “r’teech”—had been a powerful Epic. I’d been looking for something that would let us go toe-to-toe with Prof. We needed an edge, something he wouldn’t expect—
Megan elbowed me in the stomach. “Well? Gonna share?”
“Oh!” I said, noticing that Knighthawk had stopped his explanation. “Well, Rtich was a Russian Epic with a very eclectic set of abilities. She wasn’t technically a High Epic, but she was very powerful. Are we talking about her entire portfolio, Knighthawk?”
“Each motivator can only provide one ability,” he said.
“Well,” I said, standing, “then I assume in this case, you emulated her quicksilver globe. Why are we sitting here? Let’s go get it! I want to try it out.”
“Hey, Scotsman,” Knighthawk said, “will you get me a cola out of the fridge while you’re up?”
“Sure,” Cody said, pouring a fresh batch of popcorn into a bowl. He reached over and fished a cola from the fridge, the same brand that Tia had liked.
“Oh,” Knighthawk added, “and that bin of potato salad.”
“Potato salad and popcorn?” Cody asked. “You’re a weird dude, if you don’t mind me saying.” He walked over and slid the translucent bin across the table, cola on top. Then he plopped down beside Mizzy and put his feet—work boots—up on the table, leaning back in his chair and attacking his bowl of food like a man whose house had once been burned down by a particularly violent ear of corn.
I remained standing, hoping everyone else would join me. I didn’t want to sit around and talk about Epic powers. I wanted to use them. And this specific ability should prove to be as exciting as the spyril, but without the water, which I was totally up for. I might have been willing to let the depths consume me in order to save my friends, but that didn’t mean water and I liked one another. We had more of a truce.
“Well?” I urged.
Knighthawk’s mannequin popped open the bin of potato salad. There, sitting in the middle of the stuff, was a little black box. “It’s right here.”
“You keep your priceless super power devices,” Megan said flatly, “in the potato salad.”
“Do you know how many times people have broken in to rob me?” Knighthawk asked.
“Never successfully,” I said. “Everyone knows this place is impregnable.”
Knighthawk snorted. “Kid, we live in a world where people can literally walk through walls. No place is impregnable; I’m just good at telling lies. I mean, even you people managed to snitch a few things from me—though you’ll find that the ones Abraham grabbed are mostly useless. One creates the sound of a dog barking, and another makes fingernails grow faster—but not any stronger. Not every Epic power is amazing, though I’d like those two back anyway. They make good decoys.”
“Decoys?” Abraham asked, surprised.
“Sure, sure,” Knighthawk said. “Always got to leave a few things out so people feel like they’re grabbing something useful for their efforts. I have this whole routine—furious they’ve robbed me, swearing to get vengeance. Blah blah. Usually makes them leave me alone, happy to have gotten what they did. Anyway, across dozens of break-ins, you want to guess how many people thought to look in the potato salad bin?”
His mannequin dug the little box out and set it on the table—he’d packed it in a watertight bag, at least—and I sat back down to admire it, imagining the possibilities.
“How do you get the fairies inside something that small?” Cody asked, pointing at the device. “Doesn’t it crush their wee wings?”
We all pointedly ignored him.
“You mentioned another piece of technology?” Abraham said.
“Yeah,” Knighthawk said, “I’ve got an old crystal grower lying around here somewhere. Attach it to a pure crystal lattice, and you can grow new formations in seconds. That might be handy.”
“Uh,” Mizzy said, raising her hand. “Anyone else confused as to why, exactly, we’d want something like that? Sounds cool and all, but…crystals?”
“Well, you see,” Knighthawk said, “salt is a crystal.”
We all looked at him, stupefied.
“You are going to chase down Jonathan, right?” Knighthawk said. “And you’re aware he’s in Atlanta?”
Atlanta. I settled back into my seat. Atlanta would be under the jurisdiction of the Coven, a loose affiliation of Epics who had basically promised not to bother one another. Occasionally one would help another murder a rival who tried to steal their city—which for Epics was practically like being best buddies.
But for all I knew of Epics, my knowledge of the world was spotty. The nature of Babilar, with its glowing fruit and surreal paints, had taken me completely by surprise. I was still at my core a sheltered kid who’d never left his home neighborhood before a few months ago.
“Atlanta,” Abraham said softly. “Or what is now Ildithia. Where is it currently?”
“Somewhere in eastern Kansas,” Knighthawk said.
Kansas? I thought, the comment jarring my memory. That’s right. Ildithia moves. But so far? I’d read about it moving, but had assumed it stayed in the same general region.
“Why is he there though?” Abraham asked. “What is there for Jonathan Phaedrus in the city of salt?”
“How should I know?” Knighthawk said. “I’m doing my best to avoid drawing the man’s attention. I watched where he went for self-preservation’s sake, but there’s no way in Calamity that I’m going to start poking him with a stick.”
Knighthawk’s mannequin set down the bowl. “I’m out of popcorn, which means it’s time to attach some strings to this little gift of mine. You can take the rtich and the crystal grower on the condition that you get out of here now, and you don’t contact me anymore. Don’t mention me to Jonathan; don’t even talk about me to one another, in case he overhears. He likes things done right. If he comes here for me, he’ll leave a smoldering hole and not much else.”
I looked toward Megan, who was staring at Knighthawk, unblinking, lips downturned. “You know we have the secret,” she said softly to him. “You know we’re close to answers. A real solution.”
“Which is why I’m helping you in the first place.”
“Halfway,” Megan accused him. “You’re willing to toss a grenade into the room, but you don’t want to look and see if it did the job or not. You know that something needs to change in this world, but you don’t want to have to change with it. You’re lazy.”
“I’m a realist,” Knighthawk said, his mannequin standing up. “I take the world as it is, and do what I can to survive in it. Even giving you these two devices will be dangerous for me; Jonathan will recognize my handiwork. Hopefully he’ll think you got them off an arms dealer.”
The mannequin walked to the fridge and removed a few other items, dropping some in a sack. He set one on the table for us; it looked like a tub of mayonnaise, but when he pried off the top, inside was another small device settled into the gooey condiment. The mannequin slung the sack by a strap over its arm, then walked over to lift Knighthawk from behind.
“I have other questions,” I said, rising.
“Too bad,” Knighthawk said.
“You have other technology you could give us,” Abraham said, pointing at the sack. “The ones you’ve given us are only what you think won’t get you in too much
trouble with Prof.”
“Good guess, and you’re right,” Knighthawk replied. “Get out. I’ll send a bill with a drone. If you survive, I expect it to be paid.”
“We’re trying to save the world, you know,” Mizzy said. “That includes you.”
Knighthawk snorted. “You realize that half the people who come to me are trying to save the world? Hell, I’ve worked with the Reckoners before, and you’re always trying to save the world. Looks pretty unsaved to me so far; in fact, looks a fair bit worse now that Jonathan has flipped.
“If I’d given you things for free all along, I’d have gone bankrupt years ago, and you wouldn’t even have had the option of coming to try to rob me. So don’t climb up on a high horse and spit platitudes at me.”
And then the mannequin turned and walked out. I stood at my chair, feeling frustrated, and looked back at the others. “Did that exit feel abrupt to any of you?”
“Did you miss the part about him being a really weird dude?” Cody asked, nudging the potato salad bin with his foot.
“At least we got something,” Abraham said, turning one of the small boxes over in his hands. “This puts us in a far better position than where we began—and beyond that, we know where Jonathan has set up base.”
“Yeah,” I said, glancing at Megan, who seemed troubled. So she felt it too. We’d gotten some weapons, sure, but we’d missed an opportunity for answers.
“Grab that stuff,” I said. “Cody, search the fridge just in case. Then let’s get out of here.”
The group moved to do as instructed, and I found myself staring out the door and into the hallway. There were still too many questions.
“So…,” Megan said, joining me. “You want me to guide the rest of the team out?”
“Hmm?” I asked.