Liberty

by Lindsay Buroker

  “You’re not planning something, are you?” he asked.

  “Planning to offer this back to Amelia—” Kali waved the journal, “—in exchange for the last chunk of flash gold.”

  “You think she knows where it is?” Cedar had been wondering if Cudgel Conrad had been working with a witch ever since he had discovered the invisibility powder. Maybe he’d had a relationship with Amelia.

  “If she doesn’t yet, she will. She’s persistent.”

  “What if she won’t give it to you? What if she threatens to blow it up first?”

  “Then I’ll promise to use her notes to make more of the stuff. Lots more. I’ll threaten to sell it to governments all over the world, since she seemed terrified of that.”

  “Do you think you can do that based on her notes?”

  “I don’t know. I’m not magical in any way, and I think that’s an element in making the flash gold, but she can’t possibly know what my father told me or what notes of his I have. For all she knows, I may have been lying to her before when I said I didn’t know anything about it. I could tell her I know a real witch that I could work with.”

  “So, your plan is to find her and lie to her,” Cedar said, listening for the baying of the hound over the gurgle of the stream.

  “I believe it’s called bluffing.”

  “We don’t have any idea where she went from here,” Cedar pointed out, remembering the skid marks on the dock. The flying contraption had landed there the day before, but he had no way to know where it had gone from there.

  “It’s a good thing I have a tracker then.” Kali gave him a pointed look.

  Cedar tried not to feel bleak, or that he wouldn’t be able to meet her expectations. He wanted to meet them. He owed her.

  “We’ll find her,” he said, though he had reservations about how well that would go, especially as he stepped out of the stream and turned them back toward the ridge and toward Dawson. He was very aware of the baying of the hound in the distance.

  Part 5

  Three black airships floated over Dawson and the Yukon River. Kali did not see the blue American craft anywhere. Had it been shot down? Had it fled? What exactly was going on in town?

  She and Cedar were looking down at Dawson from the top of the ridge, about two miles from where the massive landslide had happened. They hadn’t circled back to check in with Kéitlyudee or to see if the scavengers had found anything. It was too risky, especially in full daylight. She and Cedar had left the cabin as quickly as they could, and it had been about an hour since Kali had last heard the baying of the hound, but that didn’t mean that the Mounties weren’t still tracking them.

  She drummed her fingers against her pocket where she had tucked Amelia’s journal. Though pleased to have discovered it, if she couldn’t locate the woman before she destroyed the other chunk of flash gold, then Kali couldn’t try her bluff. She had to either find Amelia, or find the flash gold first. Unfortunately, she had no leads on either of them, and as amazing as Cedar was, he couldn’t track someone in the air, not unless Amelia was kind enough to bang against trees along the way again.

  “Those ships don’t have any government markings.” Cedar had been scrutinizing them since they’d come over the ridge. “I wonder if someone is trying to use force to take something from the city. Would gangsters or pirates be so brazen as to come in during the middle of the day?”

  “Any chance they’re Cudgel’s people?”

  Kali didn’t care that much about who was piloting the new airships or what they were doing. She had too many problems of her own that were keeping her mind spinning. If she found the flash gold Cudgel had stolen from her, she could use it to build something new that could take Cedar and her out of the area at a decent speed—another self-automated bicycle or perhaps a steamboat. She could also consider trading it. It was the only thing of value that she had left, but it was of tremendous value. They could get far with the proceeds from selling or trading it, and she might have enough money to buy parts for a new airship. As much as she dreaded the prospect of starting from scratch, she would do so if she had to. One way or another, she would fulfill her dream and fly around the world in her own aircraft.

  “That’s an interesting notion,” Cedar replied thoughtfully. “His organization was big. Just because he’s gone doesn’t mean there’s not some lieutenant that stepped forward and took charge. They did have that scam going in the area, scaring people into selling their successful claims cheaply. Maybe that was the first step of some bigger operation they were setting up.”

  Movement in the sky west of the city drew Kali’s eyes. Her breath caught. A flying machine with large, mesh butterfly wings flapped over the river, heading in the direction of Dawson. Kali had seen that machine before.

  She gripped Cedar’s arm. “It’s her.”

  “Going to visit town?” he asked. “Or to visit the other airships?”

  “If those are Cudgel’s people… remember that invisibility powder?”

  “Oh, I remember it well.”

  “When we first discovered it, I wondered if some witch might have made it.”

  Cedar nodded. “As did I.”

  “What if she’s been working with Cudgel’s people all along?” Kali asked.

  “Would she have known him all along?” he asked skeptically. “I think Cudgel may have had that invisibility powder for years, since he was powerful good at eluding me, no matter what country I tracked him to. There were times when I was sure I had him, and he disappeared on me.”

  “I don’t know where she lived before coming here, but maybe someone else made the powder for Cudgel before, and he had the recipe, and somehow he and Amelia met when he came to Dawson. She could have been here all summer, biding her time until she was ready to find me and destroy the flash gold.”

  Kali ground her teeth, glaring as the one-person flying machine bobbed through the air like a bumblebee drunk on pollen. Despite the haphazard flight, it covered the distance quickly, soft puffs of black smoke wafting from the vent behind its rider. It wasn’t heading toward the city but toward one of the black airships. On the deck, someone came to the railing and waved to her, inviting her to land on the open deck.

  “Wonder how Cudgel found her,” Cedar asked. “And why would she work for him to start with? She was mighty righteous when she was lecturing you about the evils of flash gold and saying she wanted to destroy the stuff for the good of the world.”

  “I don’t know. She was righteous.”

  “Cudgel was about as righteous as cow chips.”

  The flying contraption bobbed its way between the deck and the envelope of the largest of the three airships, the skis coming down to allow it to land. Kali wished she could see the faces of the people on the deck, so she would know for sure who they were dealing with, but it was impossible from so far below. She wouldn’t necessarily recognize some gangster anyway. What she really wished was that she could see Amelia’s face. Even though she had no doubt that she was the pilot, Kali wanted to look her in the eyes, to glare at her for the attacks the woman had launched at her. Unfair attacks. Kali had never done anything to her except in self-defense.

  “Cedar,” Kali said quietly. “I want to get onto that ship. I want to know who she’s meeting with and what they’re discussing.” Her heart gave a little lurch as a new thought occurred to her. “What if Cudgel made a deal with her, the powder for the flash gold? What if she’s there right now to pick it up?” Her words tumbled out quickly, as this vision filled her mind, flooding her with a feeling of urgency. What if she and Cedar were already too late to do anything? What if Amelia picked up the flash gold, flew off to some mountaintop, and blew it up?

  “I know it’s important to you, Kali,” Cedar said slowly, “but don’t you think it would be safer to leave her and the flash gold be and to hightail out of town before those Mounties catch up with us? You can start over, build another airship, one that runs on mundane coal, the same as those ones. Wouldn’
t that be acceptable?”

  Kali scowled. It was a perfectly reasonable argument—and she admitted that trying to gain access to the airships of a bunch of armed gangsters wouldn’t be wise, especially when those gangsters were loitering within a mile of Mountie Headquarters—but she didn’t want to be reasonable. She wanted to punish Amelia for taking so much from her, and she wanted the last of the flash gold. Finding the journal had been a boon, and maybe one day, she could seek out someone to help her craft more flash gold, using the notes as a guide. But she didn’t know if that was possible yet. What if her father had been the one who’d held the true secret, and what if he had died with it in his head, never revealing it fully to anyone, Amelia included?

  Cedar was watching her. His expression wasn’t stubborn, and she sensed that he wasn’t committed to changing her path, just that he was offering alternatives, alternatives that would help them to escape Dawson and live out the week.

  She groped for a reasonable argument with which to respond. “If the law’s going to follow us all over the world, having an airship powered by flash gold would help us stay out of their reach.”

  “And you don’t think you can make some more using those notes?” He waved toward the pocket where she had stuck the journal.

  “I think someone with a witch’s talent will be needed, at the least. Not to mention that you actually need a massive chunk of regular gold to start with, and I don’t think either of us has the deed to the mother lode claim in our back pockets.”

  Cedar leaned around her and looked at her backside. “Looks like you’ve got a screwdriver in yours.”

  “Yes, and I’ll poke you with it if you don’t help me figure out a way onto that airship.”

  His eyebrows rose. So much for reasonable arguments.

  Kali took a deep breath. “No, you don’t have to help me. I’ll find my own way on. Maybe if I let myself get captured, they would—”

  “No.” This time, Cedar gripped her arm. “That’s not acceptable. Listen, if her flying contraption is still on the deck up there this evening, we can try to sneak aboard in the dark. I reckon I can wrangle up some rope and a grappling hook.”

  “I could get both from my workshop if it wasn’t under a mountain,” Kali grumbled.

  “We’ve got a couple of hours until dark. Why don’t we see if those scavengers have scavenged up anything?”

  “What about the Mounties?”

  Cedar looked toward the airships. “That group with the hound might still be tracking us, but I’ve a hunch that the Mounties close to Dawson were called back to deal with this new threat. We’re small potatoes compared to well-armed airships looming over the city. Might be the trackers just didn’t know about this trouble yet.”

  “You’re calling yourself a small potato? Cedar, you’re taller than a tree.”

  “A potato tree.” He waved in the direction of the landslide. “We’ll stay under cover, but let’s go take a look.”

  Kali nodded and walked beside him. “Thank you for helping me again.”

  “Reckon I owe you quite a bit of helping after that jailbreak.”

  “But you’d help me, anyway, right? I’m fairly certain helping the woman is a part of the courting process.”

  “Is it? I thought I just had to sit on a porch with you and bring lemonade to sip.”

  “Naw, sneaking onto enemy airships and avoiding the authorities is definitely included.”

  “Huh.” He wrapped his arm around her waist as they walked across a flat stretch of land. “I’ll have to find a book on manners and such and learn up on this a bit.”

  “You do that. Look up potatoes while you’re at it, because you should know they don’t grow on trees.”

  • • • • •

  Kali noticed two things when the landslide area came into view, the big crater partially filled with debris from the diggers. First, the men who had been crawling all over the area with their shovels were gone. Second, part of her cave entrance was visible.

  She almost broke into a sprint, but Cedar stopped her with a hand.

  “What do you see?” she asked—almost demanded—as she struggled to stomach a delay. Even though everything in the cave had probably been crushed, she couldn’t help but feel a surge of hope at seeing the mouth of it yawning open. With luck, that meant at least part of the inside had survived the explosion.

  “Nothing,” Cedar said, his gaze raking the long shadows that stretched across the hillside of boulders, dirt, and logs. He sniffed like a hound, as if the answer might lie in the wind. All Kali smelled were the scents of recently upturned earth and broken trees. “I wasn’t expecting nothing, were you?”

  “No, but I’m amenable to it. Why don’t you watch my back while I mosey over to the cave?”

  Cedar tapped the hilt of his revolver. “I don’t have a lot of weaponry to defend your back with if Mounties leap out of the trees.”

  “If my workshop is intact, I’ll make you some weaponry.”

  He snorted. “Come this way. We’ll take the circuitous route.”

  Though Kali itched to race across the landslide in the more direct route, she admitted that the area lay suspiciously quiet, strangely so given the activity of the morning. She followed Cedar through the trees without argument. Still, she craned her neck for glimpses into the cave, and she practically bounced as she walked, her weariness from a day full of tramping through the hills forgotten.

  Cedar stopped, and she almost ran into him.

  “Someone’s ahead,” he whispered so quietly that she almost missed it. “Stay here.”

  He shot her a warning look over his shoulder, as if he didn’t expect her to obey. Kali lifted her hands and pasted an innocent expression onto her face. She had no interest in following him and finding out who was lurking in the woods. As Cedar disappeared into the shadows ahead, she cast a longing look toward the cave. On the other hand, she had a great deal of interest in finding out if any of her belongings lurked inside there. Preferably in an uncrushed state.

  Admitting that someone might have laid a trap, she leaned against a tree and told herself to wait for Cedar to return. It would be wise to be patient. It wasn’t as if the cave would go anywhere tonight, right?

  Those reasonable arguments swayed her for almost an entire thirty seconds. Then she found herself crouching low and leaving the cover of the trees. She didn’t sprint straight for the cave—she wasn’t that reckless. She picked her way through the rocks, using the bumps and boulders of the destroyed landscape for cover, determined that if someone was lying in wait, that someone wouldn’t spot her.

  The twilight shadows made it difficult to see into the cave, and boulders still covered a large portion of the entrance. Though she paused and craned her neck several times along the way, she couldn’t see much until she was right in front of the opening. Even then, dark shadows in the back made it hard to tell how much of the cave remained standing. Many boulders filled the space, some piled all the way to the arched ceiling, but was that… She scooted closer, thinking she could pick out the bow of her airship, not as crushed as she had imagined.

  As she crept over the cave threshold, a throat cleared behind her.

  Kali jumped and spun about, reaching for her empty smoke-nut pocket before she realized that had been Cedar’s voice. He loomed in the shadows by the crater with two smaller figures beside him.

  “When I said, ‘Stay here,’ I was sure I pointed to the ground over there,” he said.

  A boyish giggle drifted up the slope.

  “Tadzi?” Kali asked. It had grown too dark to make out faces.

  “Yes, and Kéitlyudee,” Tadzi said. “We’ve been keeping the white men away.”

  “Really? Did the fan work? Did it make scary noises? And did you tell stories about sacred grounds being haunted?”

  “The fan sort of worked,” Kéitlyudee said, “but I think the men were more spooked by the Mounties showing up and by soldiers rappelling down from an airship than by moaning s
ounds coming from the woods.”

  “Ah.” Kali decided not to be disappointed. As long as the scavengers had been scared away before her cave had been looted… She looked over her shoulder, itching to see if that was the case. “Did you already check the cave? Did anything survive?”

  “It’s a mess,” Tadzi said.

  That didn’t answer her question.

  “The men were excited to unearth the cave,” Kéitlyudee said. “They hauled boulders out in a hurry, and I think some of them might have pilfered small items that they found, but nobody carried away anything sizable.”

  “Most likely, those scavengers were criminals or had questionable pasts themselves,” Cedar said.

  “I miss the days when I could sniff disdainfully at criminals,” Kali said, crawling over the boulders partially blocking the entrance. “Cedar, do you have a lantern?” she called back after she cracked her knuckles against a rock. Her own lanterns were surely flattened under the boulders.

  “Is providing light for you something listed in the courting book?” Cedar asked.

  “It better be.”

  “Courting?” Tadzi asked.

  Kali left Cedar to explain that as she patted her way to where she could make out the bow of the airship hull. Her fingers brushed boards, still intact boards. She felt her way along the hull. Not all of the boards were still intact, and she wagered the half-completed decking had been smashed to tarnation, but the overall frame seemed like it might be salvageable. She paused when the letters she had painted on the hull came into view, dinged and dusty, but still readable: Liberty. The name she had chosen for her ship.

  The engine and boiler had already been installed, so she had to clamber inside the framework to check on them. She squirmed into the dark hold, squeezing past broken boards and a boulder that had fallen through the deck. She hadn’t built much in the way of cabins or separate spaces yet, figuring that could all be completed once they were in the air, and it was a good thing, or the inside might not have been navigable at all.

  “Got your light here, Kali,” Cedar said from outside of the vessel.