Ezra Poole's Arc

Chapter 1 of 2

Ezra Poole wanted her workshop to fly, but tonight it was sinking. Water bubbled up through the deck seams of her floating scrapyard, a patchwork of salvaged panels and scavenged beams she had bolted together herself. She bailed with a dented bucket, two strokes a second, and the water kept rising. Her whole plan lived on this raft. Every pump, every coil, every blueprint for the airborne forge she meant to build sat in the hold, soaking. She had sketched that forge for three years, ever since the Royal Academy threw her out and barred her from guild docks. An airborne forge needed no dock. No guild could padlock a building in the sky. But none of it mattered if the raft went down before sunrise. Ezra dropped the bucket and found the leak. A seam had split along the keel plate, below the waterline. Bailing was useless. She needed to seal it from inside, now. Her clockwork raven landed on the pipe above her, gears ticking under its black feathers. She had rebuilt the bird from a dead one years ago. It tilted its brass-ringed eye at the spreading water and clacked its beak. "I know," Ezra said. "Fetch the torch. The big one." The raven flew to the toolwall and gripped the welding torch in its claws. It could barely lift the thing. Ezra caught it as the bird dropped it, then dragged a scrap panel to the split seam. Water poured over her boots. Her apron, already burned stiff with old equations, soaked through at the hem. She held the panel against the leak and lit the torch. The flame hissed where it met the wet metal. She welded fast, one hand bracing the panel, the other steering the flame along the crack. Steam stung her eyes. The water had reached her knees. If the flame died, so did everything. The seam closed. The flow slowed, then stopped. Ezra killed the torch and listened. No new bubbling. The raft held. She sat back in the water and laughed once, out of breath. The raven dropped onto her shoulder. Then she felt it. The raft tilted. The patched seam held, but the weight of the water already inside had settled wrong. One corner of the workshop sagged low, and tools slid across the deck. The raft would not sink now. But it would not float level either. Across the water, a lantern lit up in the round window of a dwelling built from an old pressure tank. A figure stood watching her tilted workshop. Ezra did not know yet if that neighbor would help her or report her. She needed to drain the hold and relevel the raft before dawn. And she needed to do it before whoever held that lantern decided what she was.