Liberty (Flash Gold, #5) (9 page)

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.

There wasn’t any time to
hesitate. Kali leaped from her perch.

The spider fired, bullets
cutting through the branches where she had been. She didn’t quite
make it to the construct with her leap, landing in front of it, but
she sprang forward before the gun barrels could fire again. She
scrambled onto the creature’s back, hooking one boot around the
vent. It would be too hot to grab onto—she could feel the heat
radiating through the carapace—and she balanced precariously.

That didn’t keep her from
locking her wrench around the first bolt she spotted. As she
started unscrewing it, the spider dropped down from the log. First,
it spun its body, firing as it went. Kali hoped Cedar was staying
back, but she couldn’t take the time to look at him. As it was, the
spinning made her stomach want to heave its contents.

The first bolt came
loose, and she let it fall to the ground as she attacked a second
one, trying to open up one of the panels so she might gain access.
Abruptly, the construct sank to the ground, its legs bending to
their maximum. Before she could guess at its new strategy, it
leaped into the air. Her boot slipped from around the vent pipe,
and she was almost thrown off like a cowboy on a bucking bronco.
She tried to straddle the creature, ignoring the heat burning
through her trousers, and gripping it with her knees. But it was
only her grip on the wrench, and its grip on a bolt, that kept her
from flying off.

As the creature leaped
around the log like a drunken rabbit, she moved onto a third bolt.
She almost had it off when the right-side legs went down as the
left-side legs thrust upward. In a feat she wouldn’t have guessed
possible, the spider rolled.

Kali squawked with
surprise and leaped away, just avoiding being crushed. Hope sparked
momentarily as she imagined the spider getting stuck on its back,
but it completed its roll by springing up onto its legs again. The
gun barrels rotated toward Kali. Like a tenacious dog in a pit
fight, she leaped atop it again before those weapons could target
her. Once more, she attacked the third bolt.

The construct’s guns
fired, and she glimpsed Cedar ducking behind a tree. Somewhere, he
had found an axe. That might do more damage to the spider than the
bullets—
if
she could get this panel open. Kali pried at
the edge as she worked on the fourth bolt.

With a great squealing of
metal, the panel came free. Kali flung it away, peering inside and
trying to identify something critical. Before she formulated a plan
of attack, Cedar sprinted over, the axe raised overhead. Even
though she trusted his aim, it was an alarming sight, and she
lurched backward, falling off the carapace.

Cedar slammed the axe
into the creature’s innards. Bolts, springs, and bits of metal and
wire flew like shrapnel released from one of her smoke nuts.

Kali jumped to her feet,
expecting the spider to spin toward him—or her—and continue firing.
But Cedar was relentless, bashing the heavy blade into its
workings. The construct clanked and jittered, trying to walk and
spitting black smoke into his face, but under the assault, it
eventually stopped moving. The legs shuddered, then bent, and the
spider collapsed.

Cedar slammed the axe
down several more times before stopping. He took a few deep breaths
as he leaned the tool on the log, then proceeded to lean on it
himself for support.

“What you lack in
finesse, you make up for in vigor,” Kali informed him.

“My vigor
is
legendary. Are you all right?”

“I think so.” Kali
plucked her wrench out of the grass, where it lay among dozens, if
not hundreds of pieces that had flown out of the machine. “Are
you?” She looked toward the leg he had seemed to be favoring
before.

“Mostly.” Cedar rolled up
his trouser leg to reveal an ugly cut that wrapped around his calf
and shin. “While I was patting myself on the back for avoiding one
trap, I stepped into another. Want some advice? Don’t walk close to
the trees next to the cabin, and definitely don’t walk under any
nets.”

“I didn’t do any of those
things, and I still got attacked by a giant spider.” Kali eyed the
broken construct, wondering why it had so determinedly come after
her, even after Cedar had started shooting at it. Was it possible
that Amelia had left explicit instructions that Kali was to be kept
away? If so, how could that be done? Even though Kali found mundane
engineering more interesting, she wished she understood more about
magic, its limitations specifically.

“Maybe it woke up when I
triggered the first trap back there.” Cedar waved toward the woods
behind the cabin.

“So I have you to blame
for being shot at?”

“I told you I’m just a
tracker. It might not be too late to go back for the nose-whistling
criminal.”

“Ha ha.” Kali took a deep
breath. “Can you find me a safe way into that cabin, Tracker
Cedar?”

“I can find you
a
way in. Unfortunately, safety isn’t anything I can
promise you anymore.” He cast a wistful gaze toward the sky, and
Kali knew he was thinking of more than booby traps.

• • • • •

The inside of the cabin
was not what Cedar expected. After seeing that mechanical spider
stomp out, he had figured a whole laboratory would wait inside,
complete with the latest gadgets and creations from the twisted
mind of that Amelia woman. Instead, the dim interior matched the
exterior, with dead leaves littering the worn plank flooring and
mildew fuzzing a back wall. A breeze gusted through the two
glassless windows, tugging at tattered curtains that dangled from
rusty rods. Ants wandered across the floor, and some small animal
skittered about in the dust under a broken bed frame, the mattress
long gone. A dresser without drawers lay on its side next to a
table resting near a hearth, the aged bricks blackened by soot.
Several logs were stacked in a wood box beside to the fireplace,
and they were as covered with dust as everything else in the
cabin.

“This is making my cave
workshop look palatial in comparison,” Kali muttered, standing in
the doorway.

Cedar stood only a couple
of inches behind her, his revolver in one hand and the axe in the
other. He did not see anything that he was tempted to use either
on, but he could tell from the disturbed dust on the floor and a
few crushed leaves in the center of the cabin that someone wearing
shoes had been inside recently. The big spider had lacked
footwear.

“Maybe she destroyed your
workshop out of jealousy,” he said.

“There must be something
in here.” Kali eased inside, watching her step intently.
“Otherwise, why would she have bothered setting traps? And building
a giant spider to guard the place?”

“Impending insanity?”

Kali shook her head and
stepped carefully toward the table. Cedar used the haft of the axe
to thump at the knotty planks underfoot. Many cabins simply had
earthen floors. The fact that this one didn’t made him wonder if
there might be a root cellar. Amelia could have hidden much in such
a place. He pushed aside a moth-eaten bearskin rug with the head
still attached, thinking a trapdoor might lie underneath, but all
he found was a section of the floor less dusty than the rest.

Kali swept her hand
across the table, knocking off a few small springs and screws. She
ticked her fingernail against a lantern perched on the corner.
“This doesn’t look as old as the rest of the cabin.”

“Her work area, I
presume. That table looks sturdy enough that she could have
assembled a giant spider on it.”

“Perhaps other things as
well.” Kali rapped her knuckles on the table. “I wonder if she
needed to create a detonator in order to blow up the flash gold.
I’ve found it to be full of easily accessible energy, and it never
proved as volatile as dynamite when I worked with it. I
experimented on it after my father first passed away. I applied
heat and flame, and the small pieces never blew up.” She sighed.
“It was a fine energy source. Maybe the most superior source in the
world. I wish my father had left the schematics. Or recipe.
Whatever alchemists use.”

Cedar wasn’t sure whether
the world was ready for flash gold—he’d understood Amelia’s fears
when she had stated them, that such a powerful energy source could
be used for evil—though he had never minded it being in Kali’s
hands. He hoped she found the other half before Amelia did.

“No desks or cupboards
that she could have stored anything in.” Kali looked under the bed
frame. “Mouse droppings all over under there.”

“Probably not the ideal
storage environment.” Cedar thumped around more with the axe
handle.

Kali noticed his thumping
and grabbed a fireplace poker to do the same thing. She tapped the
bricks of the hearth. Minutes passed with nothing but their
asynchronous beat filling the space.

Now and then, Cedar
looked out the windows, but particularly the one facing the pond.
Those new airships might be keeping the soldiers distracted, but he
couldn’t assume that the search for them had been halted. Even if
the airship had been diverted, the Mounties could continue their
search on foot, and they had some decent trackers among their
ranks.

“The spider
must
have been guarding something.” Kali lowered her poker with a clank,
then dropped to her knees in front of the firebox.

Cedar walked over and
thumped on the floorboards beside the hearth. He had almost given
up on finding anything down there, but the axe thudded hollowly. He
tapped the planks a few feet away. A solid sound. He returned to
the floor by the hearth. Definitely a hollow sound.

“Kali? I might have found
something.” He tapped around more, trying to identify the size of
the hollow spot. It extended across several floorboards, so it was
definitely larger than a niche for hiding valuables. Maybe he’d
found a staircase to a root cellar that had been dug off to the
side of the cabin?

Kali had her head inside
the chimney, her body twisted so she could look up, and she did not
seem to have heard him. “Ah, what’s this?”

“More mouse droppings?”
Cedar dropped to his knees and slid his hands along the dusty
floorboards, looking for a crack or a hidden lever.

“No…”

“Mildew? Mold?”

Kali crawled further into
the hearth, her shoulders disappearing up into the chimney.

“Soot?” Cedar abandoned
his search for a trapdoor for the moment and crouched beside her in
case she needed help. Who knew if the crazy inventor woman might
have booby-trapped the chimney?

A soft clank came from
inside. Kali grunted, then wriggled back out, her face and hair
coated with soot.

“I see my guess was
accurate,” Cedar said, brushing the fine black powder from her
braid.

“What?” Kali barely
seemed aware of him. She had pulled something down from the chimney
and stared down at it.

A book? A journal?

She opened it with sooty
fingers, revealing a page mixed with drawings and small cursive
writing.

“Are these her notes?”
Kali asked, wonder in her voice. “There’s a date on this page.
August 17, 1867. This predates me. My existence, I mean.”

“Are you sure it belonged
to her and isn’t the diary of some mad trapper who was pining away
for a woman during some long winter nights?” Cedar would have
believed that the cabin had been abandoned for more than twenty
years.