Lewis parks's Arc

Chapter 3 of 7

Ember moved fast off the docks. Lewis kept up. The slip of paper was folded in her fist. He wanted to ask the name on it, but her face said wait. They cut between two warehouses and stopped where the planks ended in gravel. That was when Lewis saw it. A long black strip of cloth was caught on a fence nail at chest height, snagged like someone had brushed past in a hurry. It was the same weight and color as the hood at the water pump. Lewis touched it. Still damp. "He came through here," Lewis said. "Recent." Ember pulled the cloth free and pushed it into his pillowcase. "For your reader. Later." She looked up the road, then back at the warehouses. "He's between us and the chapel. We can't go back there tonight." Her voice stayed flat, but her hand had gone tight on the strap of her bag. "We need somewhere he doesn't know. Somewhere we can still work." Lewis thought. The forge piece was at the chapel. The chapel was watched. But the work didn't have to stop. "The small stuff we can carry," he said. "Your files. My tools. We set up where he won't look." Ember nodded once. She led him along a back lane to a market square shut for the night. At the far end stood a wedding canopy left up from a fair, four crystal poles holding a shimmering tarp over a raised board. Curtains hung on three sides. From the road it looked like decoration. From inside, it was a roof and four walls of light. They ducked under. Ember dropped her bag and started laying tools out on the board. Lewis pulled a small crystal notepad from his pillowcase, the pages thin as glass, and began sketching the next bracket for the forge piece from memory. He drew fast. He drew the joint three ways until one of them was right. Ember watched over his shoulder and tapped the second sketch. "That one. I can bend that." From her bag she lifted a faceted heart of cut crystal on a short chain, their stored charge for the small forge. She hung it from the center pole. It caught the streetlight and threw color across the board. Footsteps passed the square. Slow. Lewis stopped breathing. The steps did not turn. They went on and faded. Ember waited a full minute before she spoke. "He walked the road we would have taken." She did not look pleased or relieved. She looked like someone counting. "He'll circle back." "Then we work tonight and move again before dawn," Lewis said. He tore the good sketch from the notepad and set it between them. Ember picked up a file. The hammer in her other hand caught the colored light from the heart above. They had lost the chapel. They had kept the work. For Lewis, that was the first time the partnership felt real, not as a plan, but as a thing already running.