Ember flamethrower's Arc

Chapter 2 of 7

Two streets from the scrap yard, Ember and Lewis ducked into the shell of an abandoned chapel. Lewis had stashed a half-built forge piece behind the back pew weeks ago, and he swore the roof still held. Ember dropped her tool roll on the floor and pulled out what she had grabbed off the fence on the way out. A scrap of black cloth. Frayed at the edges. It had snagged on the wire when the hooded man kicked through her corner. She set it on the floor between them. It was the only piece of him they had. "Okay," Lewis said. "So who in this city hires a man with three blades." Ember stared at the cloth. She had lived in Copperjaw her whole life and knew the names of every dock worker, every fence, every drunk who slept under the bridge. She did not know one name that mattered here. The people who paid for killers did not stand at the water pump. They did not sit at the chip stalls. They moved somewhere she had never been allowed to look. Lewis dug through his bag and pulled out a tangle of crystal and wire shaped like a lopsided star. "Skin reader," he said. "I built it for the orphanage. It pulls a trace off cloth and matches it to a person if you've got a sample to compare." He held it over the black scrap. The crystal flickered, then steadied to a dull gray. "It works. Sort of. Problem is I don't have anyone to compare him to. I'd need a list. Names. A place to start." Ember thought of the old man at the docks, the shaking hands, the way he had looked behind himself before he spoke. She thought of the gardens past the canal where the rich houses sat behind crystal walls that grew like trees, branches knit so tight you couldn't see through. People said the men who ran the worst trades in Copperjaw lived behind those walls. No one she knew had ever been past the gate. No one she knew had ever come back out with a name. "I don't have a list," she said. "I don't know one person who could give me one." Lewis lowered the reader. He did not argue. He just sat with it on his lap and watched the gray crystal pulse. Ember picked up the black scrap and turned it over. No mark. No thread color. No smell but dust. A piece of a man, and nothing to tie it to. She folded the cloth and pushed it into her fanny pack. "Then we find someone who knows the gate," she said. "The old man at the docks knew something. He was scared of it. Scared means he knows who to be scared of." Lewis nodded once and started packing his reader. They had no lead. They had a direction. It would have to be enough to start.