Liberty (Flash Gold, #5) (8 page)

“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 squinted 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.