Kali let out a sigh of relief. He didunderstand.
“Intriguing, yes.” She wanted nothing morethan to hop down from the roof, sprint into the forest, and findthat woman. “Any chance you’d like to delay our trip to Sebastian’sclaim to go check on that smoke and question this woman if she’sstill alive?”
Cedar gazed into the woods, not toward thesmoke, but upriver, toward the claims. With one of the Cudgel’sallies nearby, he must feel the pull of his quest more than ever.But someone who had staked a claim was not going anywhere any timesoon.
Perhaps the same thoughts spun through hishead, for he sighed and said, “Yes, we should check the wreckage.If the woman recovers, she may come after you again.”
“Me? Are you sure she’s not after you?Perhaps she’s some ex-lover you irritated, and she’s been planningfor years to take her revenge.”
“I don’t irritate my lovers.” He hopped offthe roof.
“Just business partners?” Kali climbed downafter him and gave him a smile to let him know she was joking.
Cedar did not return it. Helooked…glum.
“Maybe there’ll be a bounty on her head, andit’ll be worth the side trip,” Kali said.
Cedar grunted and pointed at the SAB. “Therewon’t be a trail to the crash site. Think that can maneuver throughthe forest?”
“It’d probably get stuck in the snow orundergrowth,” Kali admitted, feeling a twinge of envy for theflyer. If she had an air-based vehicle, she wouldn’t have to worryabout such pesky things. Someday, she promised herself, thinking ofher airship design, though she was already wondering if the flyermight inspire modifications.
“Let’s walk then.” Cedar shouldered hispacksack, and they set out.
A branch swung back and smacked Kali in theface. She grunted and scraped spruce needles out of her hair. They,along with twigs, leaves, and sap, already provided her braid withmore decorations than a totem pole.
“I know I mentioned this before,” Kali said,“But you could cut some of this undergrowth with yoursword.”
“One does not use a high quality, importedJapanese katana to whack weeds,” Cedar said.
“It came all the way from the Orient? Youmust have paid a fortune for it. Perhaps, to justify thatsubstantial investment, you should use it for more than slicingpeople’s heads off.”
He slanted her a dark look over his shoulder.“I got it from Jiro, one of my early mentors. We were hunting afellow who’d massacred a family in Florida when Jiro got shot inthe leg. He said I wasn’t experienced enough to go after the man onmy own; I was sixteen and figured I knew plenty. I left him to adoc and tracked the cutthroat all through the swamps. Nearly lost aleg to an alligator, but I got my man. Jiro said he’d been wrong,and I was ready to hunt on my own. He retired and gave me thekatana to put to good use.”
Kali knew Cedar had traveled, but she had notrealized how much. Even though a sane person would probably not beexcited by stories of swamps and alligators, her heart ached withlonging to see such places.
“Alligator tussle, huh?” she said. “Must haveleft a giant scar.”
“Yup.”
“Can I see it some time?”
“Reckon so.” Cedar glanced back, hisexpression lighter this time. A glint in his eyes suggested herinterest pleased him. Men always liked to show off war wounds.
Kali dodged another branch whipping back inthe wake of his passage and resolved to stay farther behind. Smokethickened the air, though, promising they were close. She had tosquash an urge to lean to the side or bounce up and down so shecould see around Cedar. At one point, she tried to slip past him,but he blocked her with a gentle nudge. Being protective, washe?
Flames came into view, licking bark andnibbling spruce needles high up in trees. Broken branches hung fromseveral trunks, but metal glinting on the forest floor drew Kali’sgaze downward.
She could not muster caution, and she dartedpast Cedar, this time evading his protective grasp.
Less wreckage than she expected scattered theforest floor. The vehicle’s wings drew her eye first. The fall hadmangled them, warping the framework and tearing holes in themembrane. Kali rubbed the unique mesh between her fingers. Thoughcool and sleek like metal, it had a lightweight, sinuous natureunlike any alloy she knew about. She wished she could talk to themaker, discover what exactly this was and how to make it. Already,she could think of dozens of uses for it.
She slipped her knife out and cut a sample totake home.
A shadow fell over her shoulder, and Kalijumped. But it was only Cedar, rifle at the ready, guarding herback.
Still crouching, she surveyed the rest of thewreckage. “Where’s the furnace, the boiler, and the entire bottomof the flyer?”
“Where’s the woman?” Cedar asked.
“Yes, that’s a useful question too. Maybe thebottom half broke off from the top and landed somewhere else?”
He left her side and scouted the crash site.Only a few seconds passed before he stopped, pointed at the ground,and said, “No.”
Kali joined him. A pair of long, thindepressions gouged the spruce needles, mud, and snow. They headedinland in a straight line.
“These are the same width and depth of thelines behind the hill outside Dawson,” Cedar said, “except thosewere short and didn’t continue into the forest.”
The smell of freshly cut wood mingled withthe smoke, and Kali spotted broken branches on either side of thetracks. Some had been snapped, but other larger ones were sawnoff.
“Brilliant,” Kali breathed. “The lower halfmust be a ground vehicle that can work without the top half.” Shehad a hard time tearing her gaze from the tracks. Even the hewnbranches impressed her-the vehicle must have some sort offast-working saw created for brush clearing. She hadn’t thought toadd that to her bicycle. “Cedar, I think I’m in love.”
“With the vehicle or the woman who wants tokill you?”
“The vehicle, one hundred percent. Thewoman… It depends on if she’s the person who made the vehicle ornot.”
“I doubt she’ll prove lovable if she worksfor one of the gangster’s trying to collect the secrets in yourhead.”
Kali sniffed. “Nobody like that would workfor a gangster.”
“You seem certain about a great number ofthings for someone so young and untraveled.”
“What great number of things?” sheasked, annoyed to be reminded she had been so few places. Thatwould change one day soon.
“The motives of villains. The fact thattracking is so easy a hound can do it.”
Ah, so that comment still rankled him. It hadbeen unfair of her, but she had trouble admitting when she waswrong. “That’s only two things.”
“If we mean to track her down before dark, wecan’t loiter.” Cedar strode up the center of the broad trail.
“What are you doing?” Kali blurted.
“Walking?”
“Up the middle of the trail? If I waswounded, and I thought someone was following me, I’d booby trap themost obvious route. We might get hurt if we presume it’s safe toamble up the hill after her.”
“You have an alternative proposition?” Histone held a struggling-for-patience edge.
He probably didn’t appreciate her telling himhow to track. But this person was dangerous, maybe far moredangerous than the usual thugs he hunted down. He might needher help.
“Maybe we can guess where she’s going andavoid the tracks.”
Cedar waited, arms folded over his chest.
“She may have transportation,” Kali said,“but clearing the undergrowth will slow her, and we did shoot her,so she’ll need to stop to tend that wound soon.”
“Likely.”
“Do you have a map?” she asked.
Wordlessly, Cedar removed his packsack andwithdrew a compass and map.
Kali unfolded the latter. Her people hadcamped up and down these rivers when she was growing up, and sheknew the area well, but she wanted to see the overheard viewpointsince their attacker would have been w
atching the world fromabove.
“Maybe this ridge.” Kali tapped a stony grayterrain feature on the hand-colored map. “There are caves up there.Should be about three miles from here. I know a trail that heads upthere. It’s out of our way, but it should be faster than cuttingthrough the brush, especially since someone won’t deign to use hisfancy pig sticker-”
“Katana,” Cedar said.
“Right, since someone won’t use his katanafor brush clearing, it’ll be better to go the long way. It’ll putus up on top of the ridge where we can look down from above andmaybe sneak up behind her.”
She caught Cedar gazing into the woods again,not toward the ridge or the direction of the tracks, but toward theriver and the claims.
Kali returned the map. “This won’t take long.We’ll capture her and still make it up to Sebastian’s claim beforeit gets dark.”
“Hm,” was all Cedar said.
Late afternoon sun played tag with theclouds, though it did little to melt the snow on top of the ridge.Kali and Cedar knelt in a shadowy hallow, hidden from anyonelooking up from below. She scanned the hillside with a collapsiblespyglass, hoping to catch the smoke puffs of a steam engine. Ifthey were out there, the forest cloaked them.
“Do you see the tracks?” she murmured. “Ifshe drove in a straight line, she would have come out aboutthere.”
Her alternate route up had taken an hour. Hadthe woman already come through and gone? Or was she hiding in acave?
A creek meandered down into the valley, andKali checked up and down the shoreline. It seemed a likely placefor an injured person to stop for water and to attend a wound. Thetrees hid much, though, and even from the high ground, she couldnot see everything.
Cedar tapped her shoulder and pointed. Sheshifted the spyglass, thinking he had spotted their opponent. Hewas pointing out a doe and her fawn, down from the hills todrink.
“Cute,” Kali said, though she was moreinterested in finding the woman. They would have to go down thereand… She could feel Cedar’s gaze upon her. She lowered thespyglass. “What?”
He lifted his eyebrows, and she had a feelingshe had missed something.
“You were pointing at the deer weren’tyou?” she asked. “I didn’t miss… Oh. Mama probably wouldn’t beroaming around down there with her baby if a human was nearby.”
“Especially a human driving a noisy,steam-powered contraption.”
“You don’t think she made it this farup?”
He did not answer, and Kali did not ask theother obvious question, whether he thought they had wasted timedetouring out of the way.
“She was wounded,” Kali said. “Maybe shecouldn’t continue this far.”
“What’s next?” Cedar asked.
Kali chewed on the inside of her cheek. Hewas letting her take the lead, maybe being nice…maybe giving herthe rope to hang herself. She had asked for it, though, hadn’t she?After stopping him earlier, she could not bring herself to ask himto take over now.
“How about we follow the creek back downtoward the crash site?” Kali suggested. “Maybe we’ll find she camepart way up to the ridge and stopped to deal with her injury. Ifshe turned a different direction, we’ll probably still come acrossher tracks.”
Cedar held out a hand, palm up. Yes, she wasstill the leader.
As they traipsed downhill, picking a tediouspath between trees and through undergrowth, Kali grew aware of thepassing minutes. Every time the sun poked through the clouds, hershadow grew longer and thinner where it stretched across the forestfloor.
Where were those cursed tracks?
Now and then an animal would startle in theunderbrush, and she’d jerk her rifle that way, half-expecting theiropponent to jump out at them. Each time Kali would chastiseherself-if anything, that woman would lob grenades at them from adistance, not attack at close range-but she remained on edgenonetheless.
“Kali.” Cedar pointed toward a muddy stretchof land to their right. The parallel tracks of the woman’sdevice.
Kali jogged to the spot. “Huh. Good eye. Iwasn’t expecting them this far over.” She turned to get herbearings. The ridge stood over a mile away now, meaning they werealmost halfway back to the wreckage. She sighed. Prudence bedamned. She had wasted a lot of time trying to second-guess thewoman. “They’re paralleling the ridge now, aren’t they?”
“Appears so.”
She gave him a flat look. “I know what you’redoing. You’re hoping I’ll be proved wrong, that tracking isn’t aseasy as I claimed.”
“Shall we follow them?” Cedar asked. “Or doyou still fear booby traps?”
“Follow,” Kali said, eyes narrowed. “Butlet’s keep our eyes open.”
“As you wish.”
The tracks only ran parallel to the ridge fora quarter of a mile. Then they surprised Kali by angling backtoward the main river and the route she and Cedar had been on whenthey were attacked.
Her heart lurched. “We’re heading back towardthe cabin.” And the SAB.
What if the woman, deeming her own transporttoo damaged to keep, stole Kali’s vehicle? While they were not sofar from Dawson that they could not walk, she hated the idea oflosing her latest invention. She had so many refinements she wantedto make. For one, a brush cutter was a brilliant idea. And shecould add an-
“Kali!” Cedar grabbed her arm.
She tumbled back against him. “What isit?”
Nothing stirred in the brush, and birdschattered in a nearby thicket. When she detected nothingout-of-place in their surroundings, she searched his face. He waspeering at the tracks a few feet in front of them.
“What’s that black rectangle?” he asked.
It took Kali a few seconds to find theobject. There, mostly buried beneath needles and leaves, laysomething flat and dark, the size of poker card.
“Back up,” she said.
When they had gone ten meters, she grabbed arock and tossed it at the object. Her projectile clipped thecorner. A boom thundered through the forest, and rock and dirt flewtwenty feet into the air, pelting branches overhead and landing allabout. Kali lifted an arm as shards rained down upon her andCedar.
“There’s my booby trap.” Kali had no reasonto be smug, not when she would have blundered onto it if Cedar hadnot stopped her, but being proven right about her hunch mollifiedher. The woman was someone to employ protectivemeasures.
“And now the owner knows exactly where weare,” Cedar said, an eyebrow arched.
“Oh.” Yes, that sound had probably beenaudible for miles. Kali closed her eyes. Idiot. “Guess we couldhave gone around it without detonating it.”
“Likely.”
She would have given him a lengthy glower,but she was worried about her bicycle. With an eye toward thetrail, she strode forward again. They passed-and avoided-three morebooby traps before reaching the cabin.
“There’s the SAB!” Kali blurted, relievedwhen it came into sight.
She kept herself from running over to checkit since the tracks led straight toward it. She and Cedar steppedcarefully, searching for hazardous deposits on the ground. Theyfound nothing more treacherous than a pile of bear dung, but Kalilingered a few feet from her vehicle without going close enough totouch it.
“Let’s be optimistic,” she finally said.“Maybe she knew we were after her and went straight through.” Shepointed to the tracks, which continued past the bicycle and backdown the road she and Cedar had followed up the river. It madesense that the woman would need to return to town to have her woundtreated.
“She stopped here.” Cedar pointed to theground next to the bicycle. “The tracks are deeper where thevehicle came to rest.”
Kali groaned. She spent the next fifteenminutes inspecting the SAB, checking all the spots she would boobytrap if her goal were to incapacitate someone’s steam vehicle.
Cedar spent the time leaning against a tree,cleaning beneath his fingernails with a knife. “Shall I set upcamp?” he asked at one point.
“No, but I wouldn’t mind something to
eat, ifyou’re offering,” Kali said, her voice echoing oddly since she hadher head stuck in the furnace. The fire had burned out while sheand Cedar were roaming the hills. When he did not respond to hercomment, she withdrew her head and looked at him. “Oh, was thatsarcasm?”
His eyebrow twitched. “Possibly.”
He had to be getting impatient with this sidetrip. Might he be wondering why he had bothered to take her along?Aside from providing a mode of transport, what had she done toassist him? Even the transportation was of dubious worth. He wouldbe closer to Wilder’s claim by now if he had walked up thetrail.
Maybe they would catch this woman and findout she was some sort of super villain with a huge bounty on herhead, and that would make this detour worthwhile.
Kali climbed on top of the SAB seat. Thoughthe bicycle was a broad, sturdy contraption, it wobbled under herweight, and she kept a hand on the smokestack for balance. Shepeered inside it. And froze.
“What the blazes is that?”
“What?” Cedar strode over.
Something dark and lumpy nestled inside thesmokestack. It lacked the clean lines of the booby trap from thetrail and did not appear mechanical-or explosive-but Kali stared atit for a long moment before reaching an arm inside. Her fingerscame up a foot short. Her own body blocked the daylight when sheleaned in farther, and the bicycle seat wobbled beneath hertoes.
“I need help,” she said. “Can you hold me, soI can lean in farther?” She must sound ridiculous with her headstuffed in the smokestack.
Hands squeezed her waist, and she squawkedwhen Cedar lifted her off the seat so her feet dangled in the air.His firm grip had the steadiness of steel, though, leaving her moresecure than when she had been relying on her own balance. Thanks tohis height, Cedar could also boost her entire body above thesmokestack without trouble.
“Thanks,” she called, her voice supremelymuffled now. “I appreciate your strength and-” She inhaled soot andbroke into a coughing fit. The stuffy, hot environs pressed in fromall sides, and she could see nothing. Lingering smoke made her eyestear.
“My strength and what?” Cedar asked, hisvoice distant to her ensconced ears.
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