Lewis parks's Arc

Chapter 2 of 7

They ran from the scrap yard until the streets thinned and the air turned sour with river mud. Ember led. Lewis followed with the pillowcase bundled under one arm. She did not look back at the water pump, but he did, twice. The hooded man was gone from it. That was worse than seeing him. By the time they reached the docks, Lewis's lungs burned. Ember slowed to a walk. "The old man I told you about," she said. "He'll know who sent the one in the hood. He won't tell you. He barely tells me." The docks smelled of wet rope. At the end of the planks stood a fixture of cut crystal, faceted like a stack of blades, half sunk in the water. The old man crouched behind it. His coat was too big. His hands shook on a small black case with sharp corners. He saw Ember and his shoulders dropped a little. Then he saw Lewis and the case pulled in tight against his chest. "Who is he," the old man said. Not a question. A refusal. "My partner," Ember said. "Someone came for me at the yard. Hood up. You said one day they would. That day is today. I need the name." The old man shook his head. His eyes went to Lewis and stayed there. "I don't talk in front of strangers. I told you that the first time. I'll tell you that the last time." Behind him, taller than the old man himself, a great cut stone sat bolted to the dock, its colors shifting where the sun struck it. Lewis understood, looking at it, that things had been traded here for a long time, and that none of those trades had been clean. Lewis stepped back so the old man could see only Ember. He set the pillowcase down. He kept his voice low and even, the way he had learned to do with the matron after the smoke alarms. "I built a device that reads a person from a scrap of their skin or cloth. It needs a name to match against. Without a name it gives us nothing. With a name, we find who sent him before he finds her again." He did not look up. "You don't have to say it to me. Say it to her. I'll walk to the end of the dock." He walked. He counted twenty paces and stopped with his back turned. He heard the old man's voice, thin and fast, then quiet. When Ember came up behind him, she was holding a folded slip of paper. Her face was tight. "He gave me a name," she said. "Someone from the estates past the canal. He also said the hooded man already knows where the chapel is." She started walking. "We finish the forge piece tonight, or we don't finish it."