Damian FINUCANE's Arc

Chapter 16 of 57

They stopped in a stand of pines past the fortress fields. The horns had faded. Damian shoved the tall man against a trunk and kept the knife close. "The name," he said. "Now." The tall man wiped his mouth. "Tom Clarke Parker," he said. "That's your killer. The masked man. That's his true name." Damian froze. A name was only sound. The man could invent anything to buy another breath. He had no way to test it. He looked at Rolo. "He could be lying. Any name saves his neck." Rolo crouched by the man's boots. She studied his hands, then his face, the way she read tracks on the road. "Then we make lying cost him," she said. She drew her knife and set it flat against his cheek. "You threw for a circus once. So did I. A thrower never forgets a name he's worked beside." She leaned close. "Describe him. Every mark. If your mouth trips, I know you're inventing." The tall man swallowed. "Ginger hair. Blue eyes. Average height, thin as a reed. Olive skin. He listens to music before he kills. Always the same tune." His words came fast and even. No pause to build a lie. "He lost a woman years back. It broke something in him. That's why he takes the coin." Damian remembered the grove. The masked man had hummed low before the first cut. He had thought it a taunt. He looked at Rolo. She gave a short nod. "He's not building it," she said. "The details lock together. A liar hunts for each new piece. He isn't hunting. He knows this man." Damian pressed further. "The scar you gave orders about. Where does he carry a wound?" "Left shoulder," the tall man said. "Where your blue blade opened him. He favors the right arm now." Damian had struck that shoulder himself. He had never spoken of it. The man could only know if he had seen the wound, or the one who bore it. The name held. Tom Clarke Parker was real, and the tall man's story matched what Damian had lived. "He's confirmed," Damian said. His voice went flat. "Now the one who paid." The tall man shook his head. "A name I never learned. Only a place. A tower of glass in the city, sheer sides, floors of hired men in fine coats. Beyond Juice sits at its base. Ask there. That's all I have." Rolo took the rope from her belt and bound his wrists. "We keep him," she told Damian. "A living witness beats a name we can't prove." Damian looked east, then toward the far city. He had a true name now. Tom Clarke Parker. The masked man who scarred his mother had a face and a wound and a history. But the man who bought the killing sat in a glass tower Damian had never seen. The hunt was no longer for a shadow. It had an address, and a longer road ahead.