Ember flamethrower's Arc

Chapter 3 of 7

Ember was packing the black scrap back into her fanny pack when Lewis grabbed her wrist. He was at the broken window, glasses pushed up his nose, watching something past the weeds. She crossed the floor and looked. A second hooded figure walked the far side of the chapel, slow, head down, counting his steps along the wall. "Two now," Lewis whispered. "Oh man. They know the building." He pulled the skin reader off the small crystal notepad he'd been using as a worktable and shoved it in his bag. The reader's gray pulse blinked out against his shirt. "If they come in and find this, it's done. We're done. I can't build another one." Ember's first thought was to fight. She had three blades in her roll and knew the pews better than any stranger. Her second thought was the reader. The reader was the only thing in the room that could put a name to the cloth in her pocket. A name was the whole reason she had started running in the first place. She could not trade it for one good swing. "Back door," she said. "The one behind the pulpit. He's counting the front wall. He hasn't turned the corner yet." Lewis nodded once. She rolled her tools tight, slung the roll, and went first. They crossed the floor low. Ember eased the back door open a finger at a time. The hinge held. They slipped out into the alley and did not run until the chapel was two blocks behind them. They did not stop until they reached the abandoned market square. The stalls were stripped to frames. In the middle stood an old wedding setup somebody had left to rot, four clear poles holding up a shimmering tarp over a raised board. Faded flowers still clung to the base. Lewis ducked under the tarp and set his bag down on the board like it was a workbench. "Nobody comes here," he said. "Honestly, look at it. They forgot it." He pulled out the reader. The crystal woke and pulsed gray again. From a side pocket he lifted a small bright thing on a hook, a faceted heart that caught the light in hard flashes. "Power cell," he said. "I was saving it. Now's now." He clipped it to the reader and the gray steadied to a clean, even glow. Ember set the black scrap on the board between them. The chapel was gone to her now. So was the half-built forge piece behind the pew. She had traded a roof for a working machine and a hiding place no one had thought to watch. "Docks at first light," she said. "We find the old man. We get a name. We bring it back here and we feed it to your reader." Lewis pushed his glasses up and grinned, tired. "Inventor and partner," he said. "That's the deal." Ember nodded. The reader pulsed between them, waiting.