[tilbury] now what? | conrad

January 2005, Morning
Tilbury Shipyards

Having had a girlfriend for all twenty-two hours, Isaac had learned two things: snogging was great, and girls were freaking expensive. He didn’t have to be a master of arithmetic to know that his pitiful savings from working the summer at Hippies Hotcakes weren't enough. Magnolia said it was “fine” and they could “split stuff”, but he felt weird about it. Like he had to do something to fix the problem (that wasn't that big of a problem in the first place). And for some unholy reason, the only solution that seemed reasonable was the one thing he probably shouldn’t have been doing: one last job for Duncan.

It was far from the first handoff Isaac had been part of, but it was the first time he asked for a bigger cut. More sickles obviously meant more risk. Duncan told him to just get the job done, and he’d give him better stuff next break. Isaac took that as the “get lost” that it was, but he was still going to do the job. Hood off—so he didn’t look like the miscreant he was—Isaac headed into the dockyard before the morning mist had finished clearing. He walked toward the handoff spot, some place off the main road, hidden enough that there would be a moment of privacy.

Seeing the dockworker he recognized, Isaac approached, slid his backpack off his shoulder, and offered the other wizard a nod.

@Conrad Sturm

This was Conrad’s fourth dockyard, if he counted the summer he’d worked for his father’s friend Uwe, and his fifth, if he counted the three days he’d spent in Rotterdam on the way to England. It was by far the homiest, by which he meant it had the same grimy, seen-better-days atmosphere as where he’d grown up, the same suspicious lowlifes hanging around, the same stink of fish and oil and salt. He kept expecting Uwe to come stomping up the dock and yell at him to get back to work.

In the interest of looking like he was working, and not looking like a suspicious lowlife, Conrad was rinsing off a bunch of stained crates behind a shed, waiting for Duncan with forced nonchalance. Honestly, he wasn’t looking forward to telling him that there had been no duffel of stolen rare potion ingredients hidden behind the secret panel in the hold of the Valerie like there was supposed to be. He didn’t know Duncan that well, but he’d been hoping that he wouldn’t have to learn the hard way what Duncan was like when something went wrong, because Duncan was a jerk even when things were going right.

He hoped Duncan was the kind of gangster that would just beat Conrad up in an alleyway (or, more likely, tell somebody else to beat Conrad up in an alleyway) because no way could Conrad cover this loss out of pocket. He already owed money to pretty much everybody in his life.

With this in mind, he was having a hard time forcing his nonchalance; every noise or flicker of movement was setting him on edge. He was twitchy to start with – his dad used to say he looked like a rabbit when he was nervous – but his ears were starting to ache at being constantly pricked, and his eyes were dry. Finally someone came over. Not Duncan – clearly there’d been some change of plan – but that skinny kid Conrad had met last time. Conrad kicked the current crate to the side and turned away from his task, but didn’t put his wand away yet. “I don’t have nothing,” he said. “There wasn’t nothing on the boat. So tell Duncan his source is shit.”

“Uh, what?” Isaac asked, his arm going slack as the backpack he’d been ready to trade nearly touched the ground. The stuff wasn’t there, this guy didn’t have it, and Isaac knew this whole day was about to go to the dogs. “Are you sure?” he asked—as if the dockworker hadn’t already checked—and peered over his shoulder at all the boats. Isaac didn’t know what boat it was supposed to be on, let alone where on that boat it was hidden. And even if he had, there wasn’t a chance he could sneak on board and check for himself. He’d have to trust this man, and that wasn’t going to work.

“I can’t tell him that shit, check again,” he almost threw in a please, but that was entirely out of character for the teenager. They were both on the hook for this, so admitting desperation wasn’t going to help. Isaac still had his backpack full of sickles, so at least he hadn’t screwed up his end of the deal. Still, he assumed Duncan would not be pleased when he returned with money and not ingredients. Imagining the way Duncan was likely to react, Isaac ran his hand over his face, looking upward and away from the other wizard. “Well, fuck.”

Are you sure? “Sure,” repeated Conrad, narrowing his eyes. The nerve of this kid, wanting him to go check again, like he didn’t have eyes or know how to use them. Short of taking the entire boat apart plank by plank, yeah, he was sure. He watched nervously as the kid’s eyes flickered past Conrad toward the marina, like he was thinking about going and looking himself, so he added offensively, “You don’t go in there. Workers only.”

This had the obvious shortcoming of making Conrad the obvious choice to go back and look again. “I look already,” he said testily. “You want I should take the boat apart?”

At last, he seemed to have gotten the point across that their scheduled trade-off would not take place as planned. His trading partner swore and looked away. Conrad gave one of his crates an impotent, ill-tempered kick – he’d half been hoping that he was stressing out over nothing and that this kid would say something reassuring like ‘No worries, it happens’ and that he would still get paid, and he didn’t take disappointment well.

“So,” he said after a moment, trying not to sound too obviously like it mattered to him, “How long you worked with Duncan? You know what he does, if that happens?”

“You want I should take the boat apart?” "Yeah, maybe, shit" Isaac said quietly enough not to be overheard, but with the exasperation of someone who wanted to be shouting. He dropped his hands to his sides and began to pace. "Long enough," Isaac answered crossly and stopped pacing next to the crate the other wizard had just kicked. He paused, took a breath, and tried to figure out a plan.

Nope, they were still screwed.

"Not specifically, but it's not going to be a happy conversation." And Isaac realized it wasn't even going to be the both of them having it with Duncan. Isaac was the middle man, Isaac was the one who brought things back to Duncan. "How many sickles do you have?" Isaac didn't know how much the stuff they were supposed to have was worth, but he imagined Duncan would want his money if nothing else.

"I am sure as fuck not paying for this by myself."