Ember flamethrower's Arc

Chapter 4 of 7

They reached the docks before the sun cleared the water. Ember crouched behind a coil of rope and watched the planks. Lewis crouched beside her, the reader heavy in his bag. She had pictured the old man standing in plain sight. He was not. The boards were empty except for gulls and a fisherman hauling crates. "He's here somewhere," Ember whispered. "He has to be." Lewis pointed past the last slip. A small wooden shed stood at the end of the pier, gabled roof, door cracked an inch. Beside it grew a bush of clustered crystal berries, pink and red, picked clean on the side facing the door. Someone ate from it. Someone who did not leave. Ember started forward and stopped. Last time the old man had shaken so hard he could barely speak. If she walked up with three blades on her hip he would bolt, and she would lose the only name she had a chance at. She sat down on the planks instead. She unbuckled her tool roll and laid it flat. She took out each blade and set them in a line behind her, handles toward the shed, points toward her own back. Then she pulled the Prismbloom branch she had snapped off that morning and set it in front of her on the wood. Its canopy caught the early light and threw small blue sparks across the planks. "What are you doing?" Lewis whispered. "Showing him," Ember said. "Stay back. Two of us is worse." Lewis nodded and slid behind a stack of crates. Ember kept her hands open on her knees. She did not look at the shed. She looked at the water. She counted gulls. She counted to a hundred and started again. The door of the shed did not move. Then it did. An inch. Two. She heard a slow breath behind her. She did not turn. "You were the girl," the old man said. His voice was thin and close. "The one I told. By the pump." Ember kept her eyes on the water. "I came back," she said. "I just want one name. The people who sent the man after me. One name and I'm gone." The boards creaked. He shuffled closer. He looked at the blades pointed away from him, then at the branch, then at her. "You leave the blades there," he said. "You walk with me behind the shed. I say it once." Ember stood, hands still open, and left the roll on the planks. Behind the shed he said the name. He said it fast, the way he had the first time, and then he said a street past the canal where the man with that name kept a house. Ember repeated both back to him until he nodded. He went into the shed and shut the door. Ember collected her blades, found Lewis behind the crates, and held up two fingers. "Name," she said. "And an address." Lewis grinned and touched the reader through his bag. They had something to feed it now.