“And the programmer is quite capable of lying.” Thorin’s heavy footsteps echoed off the pavement behind me. In the dying light, the parking lot seemed extra quiet, extra empty. “You think Helen planted Kowalski on purpose? Had him feed us a bogus lead?”
“I think we need to find out for sure, either way.”
“How are you going to make him talk? You don’t have the Valkyries’ runes or the authority to use them if you did.”
I stopped, looked over my shoulder at him, and smiled. “Then we’ll have to play good cop, bad cop. Guess which one you get to be.”
Chapter 10
After we put Andy Kowalski to the test—Mjölnir in the fist of a thunder god could be mighty persuasive—he had admitted someone—a nameless, nondescript man—had paid him to exit the truck convoy and find an out-of-the-way place to hang out. The truck driver insisted he knew nothing more than that, and I was inclined to believe him. Helen had planted Kowalski there for us to find—a big, fat red herring. Why Embla and the Valkyries hadn’t pressed Kowalski further posed an even more problematic question. Why were they so eager to swallow Helen’s hook?
Satisfied with the results of our interrogation, Thorin and I set our sights on Portland. He whipped us away on another whirlwind journey, and we set down in Port of Portland’s dark parking lot adjacent to the commercial shipping terminals at the edge of the Columbia River. A frigid breeze blew in off the water, gathering my hair and twirling it around my face, poking chilly tendrils down the neck of my hoodie. The wind caught and dispersed diesel fumes and the faintly fishy, mildew, sour-milk odor of the river water that had collected in the crevices around the docks.
Thorin’s huge frame shielded me from the worst of the breeze, and despite the way the air currents tossed his own hair about, he seemed oblivious to the weather.
“Is imperviousness to the elements another one of your superpowers?”
“I’m aware of the cold.” A small smile curled at the corner of his mouth. “It simply doesn’t bother me.”
I turned my attention to the shipping terminal and studied the scene. “I don’t see any golems hanging around waiting for someone to give them a lift.”
He stared across the parking lot. “This once, I hoped we might get a break, that it might be that easy.”
“It’s a shame Kowalski was so useless. I can’t help feeling this is going to be a huge waste of time. We’re going to find out Helen’s already shipped these things to Russia or something. Wait and see.”
The Savannah, the only ship in port, loomed before us, a hulking feat of maritime engineering, and it more closely resembled a cityscape than an ocean vessel. Stacks of shipping containers rose from the deck like multicolored high-rise buildings, and the control tower housing the captain and crew loomed above it all like some nautical Empire State Building.
The Savannah floated next to a massive crane, an iron assemblage of beams and posts arranged in a way that formed a skeletal camel or one of those Imperial AT-AT walkers from Star Wars. An eighteen wheeler pulled up beneath the crane’s belly. The machine extended a long, ropy tongue and latched onto the truck’s cargo, a white metal container the same size and shape as the hundreds of others already loaded aboard the Savannah. The tongue retracted, hoisting the container up and forward along its belly and neck. When the container reached the end of its track, the crane’s cable extended again and deposited the box on the ship’s deck like a dog setting a newspaper at its owner’s feet.
“Do you think any of those containers belong to Helen?” I asked, although I doubted it.
“We’d be very, very lucky if they are.”
“What are we waiting for?”
The orange glow of the parking lot lights illuminated Thorin as he winked. “A sign from God.”
I snorted and rolled my eyes as he cinched his arms around me. My ears popped, and in a blink, we had moved from the Port of Portland parking lot into the shadows at the base of the tower housing the Savannah’s control center. Crew members in hard hats bustled about the ship’s deck, but the darkness kept us camouflaged.
“There must be thousands of those containers on this ship,” I whispered. “Where do we start?”
Thorin’s body heat radiated beside me, but the shadows concealed his expression and gestures. “Start with the closest one.” He stepped into the spotlights affixed to the ship’s towering bridge and motioned for me to follow. “Stay close. I don’t want to have to find you if we need to make an emergency exit.”
A rust-red container formed the foundation of the nearest stack. Thorin tugged the door latch, but the mechanism resisted. He motioned to a panel attached over the seam between the container’s two doors. “Locked. But not for long.”
He reached beneath the panel, and after a brief metallic crunch that sounded like the wadding of industrial-strength aluminum foil, the remnants of the padlock crumbled to the floor at our feet. “What grand prize is waiting for us behind door number one?” He tugged the latch again.
The door swung open on squeaky hinges, and I gritted my teeth. The squeal sounded like the trumpeting of alarms, but the rumble of the crane and the ship’s engines had probably drowned out the worst of it. When none of the ship’s workers came to investigate, I let out my pent-up breath.
“Tell us what they’ve won, Bob.” I waved, mimicking a game show host. Stepping forward, I raised my hand, allowing a soft glow to fill my palm and illuminate the scene. “A lifetime supply of...” I stooped and read the words stamped on the sides of the barrels packed inside the crate. “Soda ash. Hooray.”
Thorin grunted and shoved the door into place. “You ready for the next one?”
I eyed the countless stacks of containers. Hopelessness accumulated inside me like hourglass sand, abrasive and suffocating. “This could take all night.”
“It could, but we’ll do this in fast-forward mode and have it done before we know it.” He threw his arms around me. My ears popped, and we teleported to the ship’s far end, to an area fully stocked, loaded, and free from potential observation. We worked like a machine, utilizing my light and his strength and unnatural ability to cut through space. By the time the crane had shut down and the last box had settled into place, we had searched most of the ship, leaving a trail of crushed padlocks in our wake.
I’d hate to be the one who has to explain that in the morning.
Serving as Thorin’s personal flashlight had expended a good portion of my energy. I sagged on my feet but kept my complaints to myself. A horn blared out from the bridge, and the steady vibration beneath our feet intensified, as if the engines had woken from hibernation and their subtle snoring turned to gruff, hungry roars.
“Time to surrender,” Thorin said.
My shoulders slumped. “It’s what I expected all along. Why am I so disappointed?”
He hung his head. “I’m disappointed, too, Sunshine, but not defeated. Not yet. Let’s get a room, get you something to eat and some sleep, and then we’ll talk to Baldur. Maybe he can ramp up his information network again. Not that it isn’t ramped up already. In the morning, we’ll send someone back here to ask questions. If we can get our hands on the shipping records, we can see if there’s anything that looks like it’s had Helen’s touch on it.”
“It would be handy to have those ravens in our pockets right now.” Or one of those völva seers. I hadn’t had time to check the message board where I’d posted my vague solicitation, and if he’d checked the voicemail at his store, Thorin hadn’t indicated anyone had left a message for me. In fact, if someone had left me a message, he would have probably subjected me to an intense session of Who? What? When? Where? and Why? Not that I meant to keep it from him, but I preferred to give him the news when I had something useful to offer—something other than more speculation.
His jaw muscle worked as he stared into the darkness over my shoulder. “The cost of having those birds might break you, and that’s not something I’m willing to risk.”
“Could you kill Val without it bothering your conscience? Not that I’m asking you to.”
His gaze hardened, his expression settling into a cool mask. “Before our last fight, before Val revealed the truth of his identity, before he took my brother and threatened the security of my world, I would have said no, but now... I’ve done worse and lived with the guilt. I could kill him, Solina, but I couldn’t let the ravens go afterward. They know me too well, and I’m sure they’d never let me get close enough to Val to try.”
“Which leaves it up to me.”
Thorin looked at me. “You’re honestly considering it?”
