Liberty (Flash Gold, #5) (17 page)

She looked after him in
confusion as he sprinted in the direction of the battle. They had
just put two of the gangster airships out of commission. Surely,
this was the time for them to slip away, find a rope and escape
over the side before Commissioner Steele found the opportunity to
target them again.

Ignoring Cedar’s order,
as usual, Kali crept after him. He had disappeared from view around
the navigation cabin, though she could still see people fighting
through the broken windows. She crept to the corner, careful not to
draw attention to herself. The closest thing to a weapon she had
was Amelia’s satchel. She poked into it as she advanced, wondering
if she might have missed anything else in the bottom.

Something cool and metal
lay nestled in the corner. She jerked her hand back, remembering
those scorpion balls.

Yells and gunshots made
her look around the corner, worried Cedar had thrown himself into
trouble for some reason. She groaned when she spotted him. He had
squared off in the middle of the chaos against a huge bear of a man
with tattoos on his cheeks. The thug wielded a club and a dagger
and stood over a downed Mountie officer. Kali glimpsed a mustache
and thought it might be Commissioner Steele. He was curled up,
blood leaking through his fingers where he gripped his side. His
weapons were nowhere nearby, and the rest of his men had been
driven back by the superior numbers of the gangsters. Apparently,
the brutes hadn’t yet seen what was happening to their two other
ships. They still believed they had the advantage, and maybe in
this particular skirmish they did.

The thug tried to pound
his club down onto the officer, but Cedar caught it with his rifle,
which he held in both hands. He must have run out of ammunition if
he was resorting to using it as a staff. As tall as Cedar was, this
man was even taller—and bigger, with the fat on his arms not
slowing him down at all. Maybe he was the leader here, Cudgel’s
second-in-command. Whoever he was, he gave Cedar a hard time,
swiping at him with both weapons. Cedar was better at fashioning a
makeshift staff than Kali, but he struggled to hold his ground
under the big man’s assault. Worse, several gangsters flanked him,
some shooting at the Mounties but others looking like they were
thinking of shooting Cedar.

Kali shoved her hand back
into the satchel, pulling out the metal ball. It definitely looked
like one of the ones that had unfurled to unleash scorpions. She
thought about throwing it at the back of the thug’s head and hoping
for the best, but slid her fingers along the seams instead. There
had to be a switch, something that triggered the creatures to leap
out of their cocoons a couple of seconds after being released. Or
was that done simply by rolling the balls? Amelia had been careful
to roll them, not throw them.

An oomph sounded above
the noise of the skirmish. Cedar had landed a blow to his
opponent’s stomach with the butt of his rifle. He followed it up,
stepping in, right beside Steele as he thrust the rifle butt toward
the gangster thug’s chin. The big man jerked his head back in time
to avoid the blow, and he slashed at Cedar with his knife.

Kali found what seemed to
be a tiny button in one of the seams. She hesitated to push it.
What if she rolled the ball toward the thug’s boot, and he moved?
The device might bump into Steele instead—the man had climbed to
his hands and knees, but wasn’t moving out of the way quickly.
Blood dripped to the deck under him.

Cedar roared, deflecting
a blow from the club, then rammed his shoulder into his opponent.
The big man stumbled and tripped over Steele. As he toppled
backward, Kali pushed the button and rolled the ball toward the
gangster. The man hit the deck hard, but he didn’t stay there, not
with Cedar lunging after him.

Kali winced when the thug
rolled to his feet, certain the scorpion ball would roll right
between his legs. It might even hit Cedar.

The seams split open, and
the scorpion sprang out by the thug’s heel. The man had only made
it to one foot, with his knee still on the deck, and he raised his
club to defend against an overhead blow from Cedar. The scorpion
whirled toward him, leaped into the air, and stuck its stinger into
his calf.

If the man felt it, he
did not show it. He bellowed as he blocked Cedar’s attack, then
lunged to both feet again and whipped that club toward Cedar’s
temple. Cedar barely ducked in time. The thug charged in, his knife
leading. Cedar skittered to the side, knocking the blade away with
the barrel of his rifle. The thug raised both of his weapons, but
he paused, a confused expression coming over his face.

Cedar hefted his rifle,
clearly intending to take advantage of the man’s hesitation, but
before he could swing, the big brute toppled over backward. He
didn’t make a move to break his fall. No, he slammed down like a
day-old corpse. When he struck the deck on his back, Kali could see
his eyes, and they were frozen open. She swallowed. Maybe he
already
was
a corpse.

Cedar held his defensive
posture for a moment, but as soon as his enemy didn’t move to get
up, he dropped down and dug into a fallen man’s ammo pouches. He
rifled through them, finding bullets to fit his rifle. Even though
it only took him a few seconds to reload, the battle turned in
those seconds. Seeing their leader dropped demoralized the
gangsters—and some of them were noticing that the other two
airships had crashed or were on their way to crashing into the city
below. The soldiers and Mounties took charge of their faltering
enemies, pressing them back against the railing and shooting or
clubbing anyone who wouldn’t drop their weapons.

Commissioner Steele,
still gripping his bloody side, looked up at Cedar, who hadn’t gone
far. He stood with his rifle reloaded and met the Mountie’s eyes.
Kali tensed. There was nothing else she could do, but she hoped
that officer had seen what had happened, seen who saved him.

Cedar bent and offered
Steele a hand. The veteran Mountie was hard to read, his face not
even giving away the pain he must feel. Kali expected him to refuse
the offer, but after hesitating a few seconds, he accepted the
hand. Cedar pulled him up, offering him support while the soldiers
finished taking care of the gangsters.

“Kali?” Cedar called,
then nodded when he spotted her. “Think you can land this boat
without crashing it?”

“What makes you think I
would crash an airship?”

A scream of, “Look out!”
drifted up from the city below, the second airship smashing down
upon some hapless building, Kali supposed.

“No particular reason,”
Cedar said, his eyes twinkling.

Cedar closed his eyes, enjoying the late summer
sun beating upon his hat, the smell of spruce and pine in the air,
and the peaceful sound of a stream gurgling through the narrow
canyon and into a deep pool. Birds chirping in the tree furthered
the sensation of serenity. His horse tugged at the reins, wanting
to munch on a clump of grass, and Cedar gave the animal the freedom
to do so. They were in no hurry, and the knowledge that he could
return to the city without being shot at or imprisoned relaxed him
to the point that he contemplated a snooze.

“It looks like a drunken
donkey wrote this using his tail and charcoal filched from a fire
pit,” Kali groused, apparently not as relaxed as Cedar. She paced
along a rocky outcropping draped in lichens, alternately peering at
it and peering at the map she had acquired from Amelia.

“What does the writing of
a sober donkey look like?” Cedar asked.

“Something a lot more
comprehensible than this.”

“We’ve been absolved of
our supposed crimes, at least in Canada, everyone in the city
smiles and tilts their hats when we walk down the streets, the
mayor lent us his personal horses for this trip, and your Hän
helpers are cleaning up your airship and sewing the envelope.”

“What’s your point?”

“There’s no need to be
grumpy.” He tilted his head back, letting the sun warm his
face.

“Gratitude and horse
loans are temporary. The
Liberty
is designed to run on
flash gold, so I’ll have to completely rebuild the engine and add a
furnace and boiler if we don’t find it. Also, I’m not grumpy. I’m
just perturbed because your snake-kissing mortal enemy couldn’t
draw a decent map to his hiding spot.”

“Maybe he didn’t truly
want Amelia or anyone else to find it.”

“Then he shouldn’t have
drawn a map at all.”

“If I help you find the
flash gold, will you relax and enjoy the day with me?”

“If we find it, I’ll
strip naked and swing from the branches.”

Cedar lifted his
eyebrows. “I had no idea that’s how you relax and enjoy your days.
I figured wrenches and screwdrivers would be involved.”

“They typically are, but
I thought you might appreciate a show.”

“No need to change your
habits for me.” Cedar left his horse and wrapped an arm around her
shoulders. “Though if you wanted to be nude while wrenching and
screwdriving, I wouldn’t mind overly much.” He waggled his eyebrows
at her, then nodded toward the map. “You think it’s in these rocks
somewhere?”

“The written directions
mentioned a canyon and a rock face. The map at the bottom looks
like a picture of the moles on Cudgel’s butt. If those are terrain
features...”

“They were drawn by a
drunken donkey? Yes, they are messy.” Cedar lowered his arm. “I’ll
poke around in the rocks, see what I can find. After tracking the
scalawag for so long, I’ve a notion about how he thinks.” He
climbed up the lichen-covered rocks, wanting to peek in a few
crevices fifteen to twenty feet up.

“I’ve seen how he thinks
too. Don’t stick your fingers in any holes that might have snakes
in them.”

“I’ll endeavor not
to.”

As Cedar climbed, he
doubted he would find snakes in the crevices, as it would be hard
to keep them trapped and fed in such small niches, but he wouldn’t
be surprised if some booby trap or another awaited them. He placed
his hands carefully and lifted his eyes to each hole before
sticking his fingers into them. While he clambered up and down and
across the rock face, Kali used a stick to prod nooks on the ground
level, all the while muttering about donkey-tail writing.

The shadows lengthened as
the sun traveled across the sky, and Cedar’s fingers grew tired
from holding up his weight. He’d claimed to know how Cudgel had
thought, but that wasn’t helping him discover anything, and he had
searched each nook and cranny twice now.

“Are you sure the map is
pointing to
this
rock face?” he asked.

Kali had stopped
searching, too, and was glaring around her and flicking her stick
at anything close enough to succumb to her wrath. “Not sure about
anything. I told you, this scarcely looks like a map at all.”

“Yes, moles and butt
cheeks, I remember.”

Cedar shifted his weight
so he could turn and look out over the canyon. The trees blocked
much of the view—they were far enough from Dawson that nobody had
logged back here—but he could see the stream and pool through the
branches. The deep water of the pool sparkled in the afternoon
sunlight. He turned back toward the rocks, thinking to climb higher
for an even better view, when a jolt went through him. The sun was
too far down in the sky for any light to be reflecting on the
surface of that pool. He peered more carefully at the spot.

“Kali?” he said slowly.
“Does that pool seem to be shaped like a nice round set of cheeks
to you?”

“What?” She looked up at
him and then toward the water.

“I only ask because those
sparkles of light are moving, and they remind me a touch of the
flashes I’ve seen your gold make when it’s fired up.”

Before he finished
speaking, she charged out of sight. As Cedar climbed down, a big
splash came from the direction of the pond. Had she jumped right
in?

He jogged to the water,
reaching the edge as Kali’s head popped up, water streaming down
her face.

“It’s down here,” she
blurted. “I need a rope. It’s too heavy for me to haul out by
myself.”

“Lucky for you, I brought
one.”

“Reckon I’ll have to kiss
you later for your thoughtfulness.”

He tipped his hat in her
direction, then retrieved his rope and helped her haul out her
precious—and heavy—treasure. Cudgel had wrapped it in canvas,
perhaps aware of its ability to flash and send out lightning-like
streaks of energy, but enough of it had fallen away for some of
those streaks to escape. A good thing too. Even though he’d bragged
about knowing Cudgel’s mind, he wouldn’t have thought to look in
the water.

Back at the horses, Kali
hardly noticed that she was dripping and that her sodden clothes
stuck to her body. She clutched the block of gold in her hands and
wore a goofy grin as Cedar adjusted his saddlebags so the burden
wouldn’t bother the mare.

“This is it, Cedar,” she
breathed.

“A way to great fortune
and a life of ease?” he suggested.

“Don’t be foolish. A way
to power my airship. And she’ll be the fastest, most beautiful ship
in the sky. And, if we happen to run into any of those Pinkertons
that are still after you, they’ll never catch up with us.”

“I’m amenable to that.”
He plucked at her soggy sleeve. “I guess you’ll have to get naked
now. If only so you don’t freeze as the sun goes down.”

“I don’t plan to freeze
ever again. We’re going south.
Way
south.” Her grin grew
even wider, as she no doubt contemplated a winter that didn’t
involve snow or ice.

Seeing her so pleased
warmed his insides, especially given how seldom he had seen her so
clearly pleased.

“Mind if I collect that
kiss now?” he murmured, distracted from the saddlebags.