Liberty

by Lindsay Buroker

  “Let’s see where she went,” Kali said, though another bout of nerves afflicted her belly. Maybe they could find Amelia’s hideout, then swing back to town for some supplies to build a few weapons. How they would do that without getting arrested, she didn’t know, but she feared she would need more than fists and a hammer to defeat Amelia again.

  A distant boom sounded as Kali and Cedar walked through the woods, searching for broken branches and locations where the craft had knocked leaves and needles to the ground. Three more followed the first in rapid succession.

  “I don’t know who that was in the black ship,” Kali said, “but if they’re distracting the soldiers, then I’m pleased to take advantage of that.”

  Cedar frowned thoughtfully, but pointed at another broken branch and did not answer. Kali didn’t know if he was too busy tracking to worry about the airship or if he knew something she didn’t.

  “I’m surprised she risked flying down here,” Kali said as they passed through a copse of trees growing closely together, and spotted a trunk with a fresh gouge in the side. “She must have dented up her contraption with all the pruning she did.”

  “She might have taken off running—and flying—as soon as she set that explosion. She couldn’t have known if the city would send retribution. She’s lucky those rocks didn’t tumble all the way down the hills and damage buildings on the outskirts of town.”

  “If she was worried about retribution, she should have flown all the way to Mexico. Maybe she already did.” Kali wondered if they were on a pointless mission. If Amelia’s goal had been to destroy the last of the flash gold and she had done that, why would she have stuck around? Of course, she hadn’t destroyed the last of the flash gold, had she? Somewhere, the chunk that Cudgel had hidden remained.

  “That’ll make the tracking more challenging,” Cedar said, “but it won’t be the first time I’ve followed someone across the world.”

  Yes, he had tracked Cudgel through numerous countries. Kali couldn’t imagine having the patience for that. Even though Amelia had wronged her grievously, it wasn’t as if she had killed someone close to Kali. How much of her life would she be willing to devote to this notion of retribution?

  More booms drifted to her ears, cannons firing on the other side of the ridge. Whatever was going on, those had to be more than warning shots. It sounded like the ships were working up to an all-out battle. That was odd. Why would an American ship pick a fight with pirates over Canadian ground? True, it had seemed that the soldiers were working with the Mounties, but she assumed that was because they’d wanted Cedar, nothing else.

  “Water up ahead,” Cedar said after they had walked another mile and the booms had grown even more distant.

  “There are a lot of ponds around. I remember catching frogs with my mother in this area when I was a girl.”

  “What did you do with the frogs?” His eyebrows arched as he asked the question. What, did he assume that her mother had used them for some witchery?

  “First we fried them, then we ate them.”

  “Oh.”

  “If you’re imagining ingredients for witches’ brews, you’re thinking of newts.”

  “What’s the difference?”

  “Frogs taste better. Nobody would waste a frog on a potion.”

  “Miss Kali, why do I suspect you’re teasing me?”

  “Because you usually deserve it?” She swatted him on the back. In truth, she had no idea if her mother had ever done anything with a newt. She was fairly certain that came out of English folklore.

  He grumbled something under his breath as he led her to the edge of a pond. From the way he peered left and right and across it, she worried that he had lost the trail. It had been a while since they had seen any broken branches, and the water would have given Amelia a clear opportunity to head higher up into the sky if she wished. Maybe she’d reached this point and decided she didn’t need to worry about staying under cover anymore.

  A single rickety dock stretched into the water on the far end of the pond. Judging by the amount of moss carpeting the top of it, nobody had maintained it for decades. Kali was surprised someone hadn’t filed a mining claim back here and taken over what might have been an old homestead or trapper’s cabin, but she supposed it was the running water of the rivers that drew the prospectors with their pans and sluices.

  Cedar followed the edge of the pond, heading toward the dock. If there had been a trail here once, it had long since been overgrown. They stepped around ferns, over mossy logs, and through mud, and Kali grimaced every time the earth sucked at her boots. She paused to tie her laces more tightly.

  “Are we still following signs of Amelia, or are you just taking me on a nature walk?” she asked.

  “Going on a nature walk with you would be nice. A typical courting activity, don’t you think?” Cedar glanced toward the side of a tree, but Kali didn’t see any broken branches on it.

  “I don’t know that the typical woman wants to have her boots sucked off her feet by mud while she’s being courted.”

  “Good thing I’ve fallen for an atypical woman.” He tossed her a wink before stepping through some reeds and out onto dry land in front of the dock.

  She gave his back the squinty eye, but he wasn’t looking. He strode out onto the dock. The mossy boards creaked and groaned, so Kali waited, not certain it wouldn’t give way under their combined weight. She wasn’t all that certain it would support his uncombined weight.

  While he crouched to examine something, she studied their surroundings. They were four or five miles from Dawson, and she could no longer hear the cannons firing. A few mosquitoes buzzed around the water, and birds chirped in the trees. It seemed peaceful, but her senses itched a bit. It was probably her imagination, but she had the feeling that someone was watching her. Her fingers twitched toward the pocket where she usually kept a couple of smoke nuts, before remembering it was empty. She sighed.

  “She was here,” Cedar said quietly, rejoining her.

  “On the dock?”

  “There are ski-shaped indentations in the moss.” He walked slowly around the area, peering into knee-high grass.

  “You think she landed it here, but then later left?”

  Cedar pointed at the earth. “I know she did. This way.”

  Once again, Kali followed him. She didn’t see whatever he had seen but trusted that he’d spotted some crushed piece of grass or faint mark in the earth. “If she left, what are we looking for? Her picnic spot?”

  “Maybe she quaffed a celebratory beer after blowing up your cave.”

  Kali scowled, though she secretly admitted to being relieved that the flying contraption wasn’t sitting there on the dock. Even though tracking Amelia had been her idea, she didn’t feel they were ready to face her unless Cedar could sneak up and catch her by surprise.

  He picked a path through the grass and trees, and Kali noticed a few spots where the grass did, indeed, appear to be trampled. She couldn’t have said whether human feet or animal feet had done it, but then she caught a faint hint of wood smoke in the air. The remains of a campfire? Maybe Amelia was out here, after all.

  The wall of a log cabin came into view through the trees. It was as old and moss-covered as the dock, but that didn’t mean someone couldn’t be squatting in it. Kali reached out, catching Cedar’s arm.

  “Should we go directly up to it?” she whispered. “If it was me, I would have laid booby traps.”

  Cedar considered her for a moment, and Kali recalled the last time she had tried to outthink Amelia. It hadn’t gone well.

  A shadow fell upon the roof of the cabin. Kali expected clouds to have drifted in, but when she looked up, she jumped. The black-hulled airship was sailing past again. Had she mistaken what the sounds of those cannons firing had signified? Had this new craft joined in the search for her and Cedar?

  “That’s a different one,” Cedar said, his tone puzzled.

  “A different ship? It’s not—” She squinte
d up at it, studying it more closely. All she had seen on her first glance was the black hull, but he was right. The ducted fans were slightly farther back, and the hull was longer. She should have noticed that right away. “You’re right. Who are those people, where are they coming from, and what’s going on here?”

  “I’m just your tracker, not your crystal ball.”

  “Hm, maybe I should have performed my jailbreak on someone less limited.”

  “I did see a man in there who could whistle Dixie with just his nose.”

  “I definitely should have gotten him.”

  Cedar squeezed her shoulder. “I’ll get off the path and circle around to the back of the cabin, take a look through one of the windows.”

  “Are we splitting up because you’re afraid I’ll make noise and ruin your stealthy approach, or because you think you’ll need rescuing from some devious trap she’s set?”

  “More that second thing than the first,” he said dryly, and made that same hat-tipping gesture, though he still wasn’t wearing a hat.

  Kali stepped into the shadows beneath a tree. The second airship had disappeared from view, and she forced herself to focus on the cabin. Whatever was going on in town, she doubted it had anything to do with her. Out here was another story.

  The shutters had been torn off the cabin’s front window, and it did not look to have ever held glass. Oilskin perhaps. It was too dark in the cabin, and she was too far away to see anything inside. It seemed like it had been abandoned and taken over by animals, and yet, she still had that sense of being watched, maybe doubly so now that Cedar had left her side. She knew he wasn’t far, but she could not see him sneaking around the perimeter of the cabin, and it made her feel alone.

  A breeze started up, whispering through the trees. A branch knocked against another branch. At least that’s what she thought it was, but the noise continued, steady and regular. It sounded like it was coming from behind the cabin somewhere. Or maybe inside the cabin?

  She was tempted to sneak forward and investigate—if Amelia had left behind some new mechanical construct, Kali definitely wanted to see it. Wisdom dominated over curiosity, at least for the moment, and she did not go exploring. She would wait until Cedar returned before poking her nose into the cabin. Better to face booby traps together. She did, however, scoot a few trees to the side, so she could see the side of the cabin with the front door.

  A clank-thunk came from the cabin, and a shadow moved across the window. Kali almost called out a warning to Cedar, but he would have heard the noise too. He was probably already investigating it. From her position, she could see the walk up to the front door, and he hadn’t approached it yet, but he could be poking along the far wall. Either way, she didn’t think it was a good idea to start shouting. Just in case they weren’t truly alone out here.

  As she watched the door, it creaked open, the sound making her think of some sarcophagus lid being raised in an ancient crypt.

  “You’ve read too many of your father’s books,” she whispered to herself. Crypts. There wasn’t a crypt within a thousand miles.

  Nevertheless, the door opened, seemingly of its own accord. Kali shifted farther behind a tree, so she wouldn’t be visible if Amelia walked out. But it wasn’t a human being that strode through the doorway. A large mechanical construct with eight legs skittered out. At least four feet tall and even wider, it had to tilt at an angle to escape through the doorway, and half of those legs curled around the doorjamb, propelling the body along.

  The spider-like thing paused in the grass in front of the cabin, quivering as if with pent-up steam. It rotated toward Kali and hissed, emitting a poof of black smoke from a vent on the back of its metal carapace.

  The creature reminded her of the mechanical guard dogs she had made the year before. Those had been powered by flash gold and had a hint of intelligence thanks to the magical substance. Since Amelia hated flash gold and these were emitting smoke, they must be powered by more mundane means, but Kali remembered encountering her flying—and shooting—butterflies. They’d definitely had some intelligence, enough to relentlessly pursue their prey. Amelia had admitted to having arcane power that she could imbue into her creations. And as the creature started toward her, all eight legs working in sync, Kali knew that this construct was not entirely mundane.

  The legs moved efficiently and quickly, the creature displaying no doubt about its route. And that route was heading straight toward Kali. There weren’t any pincers it could use to grab her, but it did have protrusions not unlike rifle barrels on the front of its body, and she feared the security creature was about to target her.

  “Cedar?” she called, risking breaking the silence—if Amelia was here, she must know they were too. “If you’re done exploring, I could use a little help.”

  As the creature continued toward her tree, Kali looked back toward the dock. She would prefer to find a way to eliminate the threat, but if she had to, she might escape into the pond. Whatever fuel burned in the firebox in its belly, it shouldn’t be able to continue to burn if doused with water.

  A bang split the air, and a bullet tore a piece of bark off the side of her tree. Kali flinched. Time to move. The spider didn’t fire recklessly—it was shifting its route so that it could get a better angle around the tree.

  Kali left her hiding spot, sprinting for a stout aspen closer to the pond. Not certain how accurate that construct was, she zigzagged her path. It clanked and hissed behind her, then fired again. Kali turned her run into a dive, scrambling for cover behind the aspen. Roots dug into her back as she rolled over them, but she barely noticed. A bullet tore off another chunk of bark less than a foot from her head.

  Though already eyeing the next tree on the way to the pond, she had time to notice that those bullets were slamming into the trees at roughly the same height, about three feet above the ground—the same level as the guns. Did that mean it couldn’t adjust them vertically? Only horizontally? In theory, that meant she could lie on the ground and it couldn’t hit her.

  The spider clanked inevitably toward her, not giving her much time to think. Though she didn’t know how wise it was to test her theory with her life, Kali dropped to all fours and crawled through the grass toward the next tree instead of running.

  The construct fired again. She flattened herself to the ground, and the bullet whizzed past, well above her head. Kali noted that, but did not stop until she had found cover behind a thick log sprawled through the grass. From there, she poked her head around the end, taking a second to study her foe. She might hide from it in the water, but it would be safer if she could figure a way to decommission the creature. She pulled out her wrench. Obviously, she would have to get closer to do anything with it.

  Two more shots burst from its barrels, skimming over the top of her log. It kept clanking inexorably toward her. If she could roll close to it, might she be able to loosen a few bolts and gain access to its innards? The problem was that it kept moving—it could probably trample her with those legs.

  Another shot fired, this one from somewhere behind the creature. A bullet clanged off the metal carapace, not doing any apparent damage. Cedar had appeared, crouching with his six-shooter at the corner of the cabin. He was favoring one leg—he must have run into some trouble of his own that had delayed him.

  “Are you all right?” Kali called.

  “Yes, but I’m not the one it’s shooting at.”

  The spider legs kept moving toward Kali’s log, but the body spun as if on a turntable, and for a moment, the twin gun barrels pointed toward the cabin, toward Cedar. It fired at him, and he leaped back around the corner, using the building for cover.

  “You are now,” Kali barked.

  She jumped up, thinking of racing forward and jumping onto the creature while it was distracted. Maybe she could cling on and disable it from above. But the body spun back toward her too soon. She leaped behind the nearest tree as more bullets fired.

  “I noticed,” Cedar yelled back
.

  The spruce Kali found herself behind had numerous branches thrusting out from all levels of the trunk. She stuck her wrench in her mouth and scrambled up the tree, using those branches like a ladder. She hoped she was right about the construct, that it couldn’t tilt those gun barrels up or down.

  It fired again, but she had already climbed above the level of the bullets. They thudded into the spruce, well below her legs.

  Kali paused when she reached about eight feet. She could barely see the creature through the needled branches, but that didn’t keep her from taunting it.

  “Come and get me if you can.” She needed it to get much closer before she could jump down onto it.

  “Are you supposed to taunt the security spiders?” Cedar called. He had climbed onto the roof of the cabin, and old shingles broke and littered the ground as he moved around, finding a position from which to fire.

  “I want it to get closer.”

  “Sounds suicidal.” He lined up a shot and fired twice, once toward the vent pipe and once toward a seam in the carapace.

  He must be aiming for what he thought might be vital targets, but Kali suspected he was wasting his bullets. He didn’t have any to waste. She knew; she’d grabbed the single box of revolver ammunition from his room and stuffed it into his pack.

  “I told you I wasn’t a typical girl.”

  The carapace rotated once again, but the spider did not fire toward the cabin. Maybe it knew it couldn’t reach Cedar at his present height. If so, the intelligence the thing possessed disturbed Kali.

  “Come and get me,” she told it again. Another five feet, and she could risk jumping down onto it.

  The spider sidled closer. She crawled out on a stout branch, now wishing she had chosen a less densely limbed tree to climb. Needles clawed at her hair and poked her face. She had to break twigs and smaller branches before she found a spot from which she might jump.

  Unfortunately, the construct did not come to the base of her tree as she had hoped. Instead it ambled to the log where she had hidden earlier. Its two front legs rose, planting themselves on the top of the log, and the back legs bent, lowering the spider’s big metal body. It took Kali a moment to realize what it was doing. She cursed as the tilt of the body changed, and the muzzles of those gun barrels lifted, pointing up the tree toward her.