Lewis parks's Arc

Chapter 4 of 7

They worked at the canopy until the sky turned gray, then packed and moved before the footsteps could circle back. Ember led them to the docks by a side path. She stopped at the far end of the pier and pointed. A small wooden shed leaned against the last piling, its planks weathered, its gabled roof low. "He hides there," she said. "When strangers come close, he goes inside and shuts the door." Lewis understood the problem at once. If they walked up together, the man would bolt before they got a word out. Lewis crouched behind a crate and thought. The old man had been frightened of him last time too. He had only spoken when Lewis stepped away. The same trick would not work twice on its own. The man needed a reason to believe Lewis meant no harm before Lewis was even in sight. Something in Ember's hand. Something small. Something that said: he is letting me carry this for him. Lewis dug through his pillowcase. He passed over the skin reader and the notepad. At the bottom his fingers closed on a cluster of crystal berries he had clipped from a bush near the orphanage wall, kept for the sugar in the rind. He held it up. The berries caught the early light and threw soft red spots on his hand. "Give him this," Lewis said. "Tell him I'm staying back. Tell him he can keep it." Ember looked at the berries, then at him. "Food," she said. "Good." She took the cluster and tucked it against her palm. Lewis stayed behind the crate. Ember walked the planks alone. She stopped six feet from the shed and set the berry cluster on the boards. She said something Lewis could not hear. Then she stepped back and sat down cross-legged. For a long minute nothing moved. Then the shed door cracked open. A thin hand reached out and pulled the berries inside. The door stayed open an inch. Ember spoke low for a while. The old man spoke back, in pieces. Lewis watched her shoulders. They did not tighten. At one point she took out a scrap of paper and wrote something on it, slow, the way you write down an address you do not want to get wrong. She folded the paper. She stood. The shed door clicked shut. She came back to the crate and showed Lewis the paper without opening it. "Name and house," she said. "Past the canal. The crystal-walled ones." Her voice was flat, but her hand on the paper was not steady. "He said don't go at night." Lewis nodded. They had what they came for. The pursuer was still out there, circling, and now they knew the door he had come from. For the first time Lewis felt the partnership pointing forward instead of running. They had a name. They had an address. The next move was theirs to plan.