“Cody,” Tia said, walking by with a sheaf of papers, “do you even know what a caber is?”
“A tree,” he said. “We used them to build show houses. It’s where the word cabaret came from, lass.” He said it with such a straight face that I had trouble determining if he was sincere or not.
“You’re a buffoon,” Tia said, sitting down at the table, which was spread with various detailed maps that I hadn’t been able to make sense of. They appeared to be city plans and schematics, dating from before the Annexation.
“Thank you,” Cody said, tipping his camo baseball cap toward her.
“It wasn’t a compliment.”
“Oh, you didn’t mean it as one, lass,” Cody said. “But the word buffoon, it comes from the word buff, meaning strong and handsome, which in turn—”
“Aren’t you supposed to be helping David learn the tensors?” she interrupted. “And not bothering me.”
“It’s all right,” Cody said. “I can do both. I’m a man of many talents.”
“None of which involve remaining silent, unfortunately,” Tia muttered, leaning down and making a few notations on her map.
I smiled, though even after a week with them I wasn’t certain what to make of the Reckoners. I’d imagined each pod of them as an elite special forces group, tightly knit and intensely loyal to one another.
There was some of that in this group; even Tia and Cody’s banter was generally good-natured. However, there was also a lot of individuality to them. They each kind of … did their own thing. Prof didn’t seem so much a leader as a middle manager. Abraham worked on the technology, Tia the research, Megan information gathering, and Cody odd jobs—filling in the spaces with mayonnaise, as he liked to call it. Whatever that meant.
It was bizarre to see them as people. A part of me was actually disappointed. My gods were regular humans who squabbled, laughed, got on one another’s nerves, and—in Abraham’s case—snored when they slept. Loudly.
“Now, that’s the right look of concentration,” Cody said. “Nice work, lad. Y’all’ve got to keep a keen mind. Focused. Like Sir William himself. Soul of a warrior.” He took a bite of his sandwich.
I hadn’t been focused on my tensor, but I didn’t let on to that fact. Instead I raised my hand, doing as I’d been instructed. The thin glove I wore had lines of metal along the front of each finger. The lines joined in a pattern at the palm and all glowed softly green.
As I concentrated my hand began to vibrate softly, as if someone were playing music with a lot of bass somewhere nearby. It was hard to focus with that strange pulsation running up my arm.
I raised my hand toward the chunk of metal; it was the remnant of a section of pipe. Now, apparently, I needed to push the vibrations away from me. Whatever that meant. The technology hooked right into my nerves using sensors inside the glove, interpreting electrical impulses from my brain. So Abraham had explained.
Cody had said it was magic, and had told me not to ask any questions lest I “anger the wee daemons inside who make the gloves work and our coffee taste good.”
I still hadn’t managed to make the tensors do anything, though I felt I was getting close. I had to remain focused, keep my hands steady, and push the vibrations out. Like blowing a ring of smoke, Abraham had said. Or like using your body warmth in a hug—without the arms. That had been Tia’s explanation. Everyone thought of it their own way, I guess.
My hand started to shake more vigorously.
“Steady,” Cody said. “Don’t lose control, lad.”
I stiffened my muscles.
“Whoa. Not too stiff,” Cody said. “Secure, strong, but calm. Like you’re caressing a beautiful woman, remember?”
That made me think of Megan.
I lost control, and a green wave of smoky energy burst from my hand and flew out in front of me. It missed the pipe completely, but vaporized the metal leg of the chair it sat on. Dust showered down and the chair went lopsided, dumping the pipe to the floor with a clang.
“Sparks,” Cody said. “Remind me to never let you caress me, lad.”
“I thought you told him to think of a beautiful woman,” Tia said.
“Yeah,” Cody replied. “And if that’s how he treats one of them, I don’t want to know what he’d do to an ugly Scotsman.”
“I did it!” I exclaimed, pointing at the powdered metal that was the remains of the chair leg.
“Yeah, but you missed.”
“Doesn’t matter,” I said. “I finally made it work!” I hesitated. “It wasn’t like blowing smoke. It was like … like singing. From my hand.”