Ember had been working a bent dagger back into shape when she noticed the hooded man for the third day in a row. He stood half-hidden behind the crystal bush at the edge of the scrap yard, watching her hammer. She was twelve and had slept under a tarp at this corner of the yard since she could remember. The old man near the docks had told her, hands shaking, that her parents died the night she was born. Nobody had come looking for her since. Until, maybe, now. She kept her head down and kept hammering. The dagger glowed pink against her anvil, a flat slab of stone she had dragged here at seven. Around her, piles of broken crystal chips sparkled in jagged heaps, blue and violet and pale rose, the leftovers of every weapon she had salvaged. The hooded man shifted his weight. He had a knife on his belt. Ember slid her good file into her fanny pack and counted exits. Two. One blocked by him. "Hey." She spun, hammer up. A boy stood three feet behind her, blond hair sticking out in every direction, glasses too big for his face. He raised both hands. "Whoa. Oh man. Sorry." He glanced past her at the bush. "That guy's been there an hour. I watched from the wall. He's waiting for you to walk to the water pump." Ember did not lower the hammer. "Who are you." "Lewis. Lewis Parks. Orphanage on Creston. Look, honestly, I came because I heard a girl out here builds knives from junk and I want to talk business. But that can wait." He pulled something from his pocket, a tangle of wire and a cracked lens. "This pings metal within ten feet. Cheap version. I made it last week. Your guy is carrying three blades. One up his sleeve." Lewis met her eyes. "You need to leave now. I know a back way through the chip piles. I came in that way." She believed him because he was already moving, and because the hooded man had taken one step out from the bush. Ember grabbed her tool roll and followed Lewis low between the rubble, glass crunching under her shoes. They squeezed through a gap in the rear fence she had never noticed. Behind them, she heard the man kick over her anvil stone. She did not look back. Two streets away, Lewis crouched against a wall and finally caught his breath. "Okay," he said. "That guy knew where you sleep. Someone sent him." Ember pressed her palm to the crystal at her throat. Somebody, after twelve years, was finally looking. She just did not know yet if they wanted her to live. "I need to find out who," she said. Lewis nodded once. "Inventor and investor. Partners. I'm in."

Two streets from the scrap yard, Ember and Lewis ducked into the shell of an abandoned chapel. Lewis had stashed a half-built forge piece behind the back pew weeks ago, and he swore the roof still held. Ember dropped her tool roll on the floor and pulled out what she had grabbed off the fence on the way out. A scrap of black cloth. Frayed at the edges. It had snagged on the wire when the hooded man kicked through her corner. She set it on the floor between them. It was the only piece of him they had. "Okay," Lewis said. "So who in this city hires a man with three blades." Ember stared at the cloth. She had lived in Copperjaw her whole life and knew the names of every dock worker, every fence, every drunk who slept under the bridge. She did not know one name that mattered here. The people who paid for killers did not stand at the water pump. They did not sit at the chip stalls. They moved somewhere she had never been allowed to look. Lewis dug through his bag and pulled out a tangle of crystal and wire shaped like a lopsided star. "Skin reader," he said. "I built it for the orphanage. It pulls a trace off cloth and matches it to a person if you've got a sample to compare." He held it over the black scrap. The crystal flickered, then steadied to a dull gray. "It works. Sort of. Problem is I don't have anyone to compare him to. I'd need a list. Names. A place to start." Ember thought of the old man at the docks, the shaking hands, the way he had looked behind himself before he spoke. She thought of the gardens past the canal where the rich houses sat behind crystal walls that grew like trees, branches knit so tight you couldn't see through. People said the men who ran the worst trades in Copperjaw lived behind those walls. No one she knew had ever been past the gate. No one she knew had ever come back out with a name. "I don't have a list," she said. "I don't know one person who could give me one." Lewis lowered the reader. He did not argue. He just sat with it on his lap and watched the gray crystal pulse. Ember picked up the black scrap and turned it over. No mark. No thread color. No smell but dust. A piece of a man, and nothing to tie it to. She folded the cloth and pushed it into her fanny pack. "Then we find someone who knows the gate," she said. "The old man at the docks knew something. He was scared of it. Scared means he knows who to be scared of." Lewis nodded once and started packing his reader. They had no lead. They had a direction. It would have to be enough to start.

Ember was packing the black scrap back into her fanny pack when Lewis grabbed her wrist. He was at the broken window, glasses pushed up his nose, watching something past the weeds. She crossed the floor and looked. A second hooded figure walked the far side of the chapel, slow, head down, counting his steps along the wall. "Two now," Lewis whispered. "Oh man. They know the building." He pulled the skin reader off the small crystal notepad he'd been using as a worktable and shoved it in his bag. The reader's gray pulse blinked out against his shirt. "If they come in and find this, it's done. We're done. I can't build another one." Ember's first thought was to fight. She had three blades in her roll and knew the pews better than any stranger. Her second thought was the reader. The reader was the only thing in the room that could put a name to the cloth in her pocket. A name was the whole reason she had started running in the first place. She could not trade it for one good swing. "Back door," she said. "The one behind the pulpit. He's counting the front wall. He hasn't turned the corner yet." Lewis nodded once. She rolled her tools tight, slung the roll, and went first. They crossed the floor low. Ember eased the back door open a finger at a time. The hinge held. They slipped out into the alley and did not run until the chapel was two blocks behind them. They did not stop until they reached the abandoned market square. The stalls were stripped to frames. In the middle stood an old wedding setup somebody had left to rot, four clear poles holding up a shimmering tarp over a raised board. Faded flowers still clung to the base. Lewis ducked under the tarp and set his bag down on the board like it was a workbench. "Nobody comes here," he said. "Honestly, look at it. They forgot it." He pulled out the reader. The crystal woke and pulsed gray again. From a side pocket he lifted a small bright thing on a hook, a faceted heart that caught the light in hard flashes. "Power cell," he said. "I was saving it. Now's now." He clipped it to the reader and the gray steadied to a clean, even glow. Ember set the black scrap on the board between them. The chapel was gone to her now. So was the half-built forge piece behind the pew. She had traded a roof for a working machine and a hiding place no one had thought to watch. "Docks at first light," she said. "We find the old man. We get a name. We bring it back here and we feed it to your reader." Lewis pushed his glasses up and grinned, tired. "Inventor and partner," he said. "That's the deal." Ember nodded. The reader pulsed between them, waiting.

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.

By midday they had crossed the canal. Lewis walked half a step behind Ember, the reader bag tight under his arm. The street the old man named ended at a tall crystal wall. Behind the wall stood a small house with faceted walls and a peaked roof that threw stabs of light into the road. Two men in dark coats stood at the gate. A third walked the wall. Ember crouched behind a low hedge and counted them again. She had a name now. She needed a face, or a paper, or anything Lewis could feed the reader. She could not get any of those from across the street. "We can't walk up," Lewis whispered. "They'd grab us before the gate." Ember scanned the wall for a gap. There was none. The house sat alone on cleared ground. No alley, no cart, no crate to hide behind. She had pictured a window she could climb. There was no window low enough. She sat back on her heels. "Then we don't walk up," she said. "We watch. We wait for someone to come out carrying something." Lewis nodded, but his eyes kept sliding past her shoulder. "Ember." He pointed. Across the road, a stand of tall crystal shards rose from a patch of weeds, pink and blue and green, taller than a man. A black crow sat on the tallest shard. It was looking at them. Not past them. At them. Ember's stomach dropped. She grabbed Lewis's sleeve and pulled him back along the hedge. They ran two streets before she let him stop. A man stepped out of a doorway in front of them. Purple cloak, black gloves, a wand in his right hand. The crow landed on his shoulder. "Sedrick Great," he said. "My bird has watched you three days. You are walking into a house that will kill you both. Sit down." Ember reached for a blade. A second voice cut in behind her. "Don't." An old man in a leather apron stood in an open shop door, gray hair spiked up, goggles shoved on his forehead. "Grit Thornwick. I build things. That house has a guard on every wall and a dog you can't see. You go in like this, you don't come out. Inside. Both of you. Now." Ember looked at Lewis. Lewis looked at the gate two streets back. They went inside. Grit's shop smelled of oil and burnt metal. Half a flying machine filled the back wall, propellers strapped to a frame, scorch marks along the floor. Grit shut the door and slid a bolt. Sedrick set the crow on a bench. "You wanted the man in that house," Sedrick said. "So do I. Different reasons. Same door." "I help you reach him," Grit said. "You help me finish that machine. Fair trade." Ember sat on a crate. She had failed to get near the house. She had been seen. But she was not grabbed, and she was not alone. She nodded once. Lewis set the reader on the bench. The deal was made.

Grit cleared the bench with one sweep of his arm and laid out the flying machine's guts. Wings, gears, a copper crank, a frame that smelled of soot. He pointed at an empty socket near the wing joint. "Three-channel feeder. Forks the air pressure into the lift cells. Without it, this thing is a sled with feathers." Ember leaned in. The socket was a triple slot, narrow, with grooves cut at odd angles. She had never forged a part like it. Iron would crack. Brass would warp under the heat the engine threw. "I can't make this," she said. Lewis looked up from the reader. Grit scratched his beard. "Then the deal is bones. No flier, no roof for you two, no door into that house." Sedrick stood by the window, wand tapping his thigh. The crow watched Ember from the bench. "Solve it," Sedrick said. "Today." His voice was flat. Ember did not like the way the crow tilted its head. Lewis spoke fast. "What about the crystal? The bush ones, out back. Grit, you said you grew a branch into a hinge once." Grit's eyes lit. "Heat-treated. Held three days before it shattered." "We don't need three days," Lewis said. "We need one flight." Ember was already moving. She cut a forked branch from the crystal bush in the yard, three prongs, clean angles. Back at the forge she heated it slow, the way she heated blade steel, watching the color shift from pink to deep red. She shaped the prongs against the prism hammer. The crystal took the form and held. She slid the part into the socket. It clicked. Grit pulled the crank. The wings flexed once, twice, and bit the air. The whole frame lifted two inches off the floor before Grit cut it. He grinned. "Fixing to fly tomorrow." Then Sedrick raised his wand at Lewis's back. "You won't be on it," he said. "Either of you. Corvus told me enough. You'll talk to the man in that house, and then you'll talk about me." Ember did not think. The forge was still hot. She grabbed the pan she had used to bank the coals and threw it. It caught Sedrick across the jaw, coals and all. He staggered. Lewis shoved the wheeled cradle off the bench and rammed it into Sedrick's knees, pinning him to the wall. Ember was on him with a blade before the wand came up. It was over fast. The crow screamed once and flew at the window, then went still on the sill. Grit stared. Then he nodded, slow, and dragged a tarp from the corner. "I'll handle the body. You two saved my machine. We're square on that. Tomorrow we fly." Lewis was shaking. Ember put her hand over his on the bench. He did not pull away. Neither did she. The deal was still good. The man in the crystal house was still waiting. But the room was quieter now, and something between them had moved.

They flew at dusk. The flying machine carried Ember and Lewis over the canal in shaky lifts, the crystal feeder ticking under the engine. Grit had waved them off from his workshop roof with a hand pressed to his side. The wand had clipped him during the fight with Sedrick, deeper than he let on. He told them to go before he changed his mind. Ember looked back once and saw him sit down hard on the tiles. She did not see him stand again. The estate came up fast under them. A bloom tree stood at the front gate, its branches strung with thin crystal chimes that turned slow in the wind. Ember understood at once. The chimes were not for music. Each one held a sliver of mirror angled at the wall. Anything that crossed the lawn would throw a shard of light up to the windows. Lewis saw it too. He cut the engine early and they dropped onto the slate roof of the crystal house with a crack that split one wing. The machine slid, caught on a spire, and hung there bleeding gears. They climbed in through a skylight. Ember went first, blade out, the scrap of black cloth in her fanny pack. Lewis followed with the skin reader pressed to his chest. The hall inside the house was bright with lamps and empty of guards. That was wrong. Ember knew it was wrong. She kept walking anyway. She had not come this far to turn at a quiet hallway. The wealthy man sat at the end of a long room, alone, in a chair that faced the door. He was older than she had pictured. Thin hands. A face she almost knew. He did not stand. He said her mother's name first, and then her father's, and then her own, and her name in his mouth made her stop breathing. He said he was her grandfather. He said her parents had come to this house the night she was born to ask him for help and he had turned them away at the door. Men he paid had followed them home. He said he had spent twelve years deciding whether to find her, and now he had, and he was sorry, and none of it could be undone. Lewis raised the reader and pressed the black cloth to the plate. The screen lit with the old man's name. The same man in the chair. He had sent the hooded killer. He had sent Sedrick. He had been hunting his own granddaughter to finish what he started, then changed his mind too late to call the dogs back. Ember heard a door open behind her. Two hooded men came in fast. Lewis turned with the reader still in his hands and the first blade went through him below the ribs. He sat down on the rug like he was tired. He looked up at her over his glasses and said, oh man. Then he said her name. Then he stopped. Ember killed both men with the knife she had forged when she was nine. It did not take long. She walked to the chair. Her grandfather did not lift his hands. He said he had already taken poison before she landed on the roof. He said he wanted her to have the house and everything in it and the name that came with it. He died while she was still deciding whether to answer. She sat on the rug next to Lewis for a long time. Outside, the chimes in the bloom tree turned in the wind and threw small lights across the walls. She walked out at dawn through the front gate nobody guarded anymore. She left the flying machine on the roof and the reader in Lewis's hands and the man in his