She cursed inwardly. Run? Fight? No, even though she wore Cedar’s revolver in her belt, she couldn’t contemplate shooting a Mountie. That was a far greater crime than drilling a hole—at least, she was fairly certain it was.
“They went that way,” came Tadzi’s voice from behind Kali.
He ran down the alley as fast as his lame leg would take him, passing Kali without glancing at her. He pointed toward something behind the Mountie. Or maybe nothing. Either way, the man was distracted, taking his gaze from the lantern he’d been frowning at.
“I saw them do it,” Tadzi blurted as the man focused on him. “The two men who lit the mill on fire. They went this way.” He waved wildly at the Mountie as he charged past him.
As the man turned to watch him enter the alley on the far side of the street, Kali held her breath.
“Are you coming, mister?” Tadzi called back. “I’m not arresting them.”
The Mountie’s eyes narrowed, but he walked after Tadzi. “Slow down, boy. Tell me what you saw.”
Tadzi managed to lead him into that alley. Not certain how far he would manage to convince the Mountie to go, Kali flicked the saw back on. It only cut two more inches before a snap and an angry hiss came from the core of her tool. The lightning died, and black smoke wafted from the casing. She cursed again, hoping that whatever she had broken was something she could fix, but she worried that the lump of flash gold she had been using might have run out of power. Kali had no idea what the person who had blown up the block of it had done, but the wilted lump had definitely seemed weaker after surviving that detonation, providing less power than usual.
“Someone’s down there,” came a whisper from overhead.
Dread flooded her gut as Kali looked up. One of the soldiers on the airship was leaning over the railing, his face just visible as he stared down at the alley. At her.
A heavy thud sounded. Wood snapped. Kali was barely aware of the wall moving before it slammed into her, knocking her onto her butt. The saw flew from her hands.
Cedar tumbled out of the hole, almost landing on top of her.
Shouts came from the airship. All Kali heard was an order for someone to bring a gun. Then Cedar was grabbing her and hauling her to her feet.
A whistle blew from the front of the headquarters building. Kali reached for the saw, but Cedar tugged her along, deeper into the alley, and she didn’t have time to grab it. It would only slow her down, anyway.
She sprinted along with him, afraid to look back. He took the lead, for which she was glad, because her mind blanked as blood and fear surged through her veins—she couldn’t think of the best direction to run.
Someone leaned out of the hole they had made and shouted. “Stop, or I’ll shoot.”
Cedar shoved her around the corner. A rifle fired, a bullet lodging in the mud scant inches behind Kali.
“It’s our man,” someone yelled from the direction of the airship.
Cedar turned and turned again, leading her deep into the maze of Dawson’s alleys. A shadow blotted out the stars over them. The airship.
“Oh, sure,” Kali said between gasps for air. “Now they move that damned bloated cloud.”
“Such foul language,” Cedar said, pausing to wait for her. “Is that my pack?”
“It’s your everything.” She shrugged out of it as she ran and thrust it at him. He had been resting up since being arrested. Let him carry it.
“You’re a thoughtful jail breaker.”
Someone fired from the airship. The bullet didn’t come anywhere close, but it reminded Kali that they couldn’t linger. The entire city was alive with shouts, and she doubted they were all about the burning building now.
She and Cedar took another turn, and the dark placid waters of the Yukon River came into view.
“We’re not swimming, are we?” Kali had gotten turned around. She’d thought they had been running for the woods on the other side of town.
“I thought we’d borrow a boat, but that might not be a good idea.” Cedar glanced skyward.
“Not unless you want to be a target.”
When they reached the docks, he turned down the street that ran along the river instead of racing out to grab a boat. Kali struggled to keep up, having fantasies of her SAB and lamenting once more that it was buried with everything else.
Two Mounties charged out of an intersecting street ahead of them. Kali skidded to a stop, but Cedar barreled into them, punching as he went. They were down before Kali could even consider how she might help.
“Hurry,” Cedar urged, glancing up the street but continuing along the waterfront.
“Experiencing some pent-up aggravation?” Kali leaped over one of the groaning men and rushed after him.
“I’m not aggravated. I’m invigorated.”
Though it was getting harder to gasp in air as she kept running, Kali couldn’t resist the urge to tease him. “How would one know the difference?”
“I’m not shooting people.”
“You don’t have a gun.”
“Oh, right.”
They passed another street, and Kali nearly tripped. The mill she had set on fire was in view, with smoke spewing into the night, hazing the stars. Flames leaped from the interior of the building. There had been more wood left in there to burn than she had realized.
“That your work?” Cedar asked.
“I thought I needed a distraction.”
She expected him to say something flippant, but the look he cast over his shoulder was grim. It reminded her that whatever else happened tonight, she had marked herself as a criminal. She would never again be able to walk into town to deal with customers or even to buy something to eat, not without worrying about being arrested.
She looked at Cedar’s back as they ran, the dark shoreline of the river waiting ahead of them. It had been worth it.
Part 3
Cedar and Kali did not slow down until they were deep within the woods, miles outside of town, and many minutes had passed since they had heard indications of pursuit. Cedar had no doubt that the Mounties and the Pinkerton detective’s men would be out here tomorrow to search, likely with the help of that airship, but it shouldn’t matter now if they stopped to rest for a few minutes. He could hear Kali puffing along behind him with her shorter legs.
He slowed down, turning to stop her. He only intended to reach out with his hand, but he had been so certain that he would never see her again that his gesture turned into a fierce hug.
“I know I told you not to incriminate yourself over me,” he whispered, “but I’m glad you came.”
Kali said something, but with her face pressed into his shoulder, it was hard to hear. Cedar forced himself to loosen his grasp so she could speak. And breathe.
“I need your help,” she said, squeezing his arm. Hopefully, that meant she hadn’t minded the bone-crushing hug.
“Anything.”
“You remember that explosion we heard?”
“Yes.” Cedar grimaced—he’d forgotten about it as soon as Commissioner Steele and the airship had shown up. “Was it something to do with you?”
“You could say that.”
Cedar listened in silence as she explained it all: the blasted side of the mountain, the rockfall that had smothered her cave workshop, and the crater where she believed her block of flash gold had somehow been detonated.
“I need your help tracking down the person who did it,” Kali said. “I need to—I don’t even know, but I need to find out who did that and make sure they’re not going to keep coming after me. They must have known I wasn’t in the cave, since they sneaked in to steal my belongings and obviously didn’t see me there, but was that all they wanted to do? Destroy the flash gold and my airship? Or was that Step One? What if someone’s trying to kill me?”
“Valid questions, though before we consider the ramifications of staying near Dawson when lawmen from two countries are after us, let me ask you something.”
“Yes?”
In the darkness, he couldn’t see her face, and he knew she couldn’t see his smirk, but he hoped she sensed that he was joking. He knew full well that she would have come for him. After all, she had offered to do just that earlier that day.
“Honestly, I’ve been pining more for my airship,” Kali said. “It’s almost certainly destroyed and lost forever. You were just… in holding. Though if I’d known that some Pinkerton agent was here to collect you, I would have come tonight, whether you wanted me to or not.”
“Pining for your airship?” he asked. “When it never kisses you or hugs you or takes you on picnics?”
“It might have taken me on picnics.” She leaned against his chest. “I never got the chance to find out. Also, I would have been alarmed if it did any of those other things.”
Since she didn’t sound like she was in the mood for his teasing, he simply put an arm around her and let her lean against him. Crickets chirped in the forest, and a breeze whispered through the trees, rustling branches and licking at the sweat on his brow. Even though it was late summer, he could feel a hint of a chill in that breeze, the promise of autumn and then winter. He knew Kali had dreamed of being long gone from the Yukon before the seasons turned dark and cold again, but he didn’t know how realistic that would be if airship travel was not open to them. Nor did he like the odds of surviving as outlaws living in the woods somewhere, without the ability to head into town for supplies.
Well, they would figure it out. He was out of jail, and he had her in his arms. He was in a much better position than he had been an hour ago.
“Have you seen that Amelia woman lately?” Cedar asked, remembering the last time they had crossed paths with someone who wanted to destroy the flash gold instead of possessing it.
“I haven’t,” Kali said, “but her name has been in my mind.”
“You didn’t see any sign of flying contraptions or those awful shooting butterflies, did you?”
“I didn’t see any sign of anything except blown up rocks. That’s why I came to get you.”
“Ah. I reckon it’s good to be appreciated.”
“I’ll appreciate you even more after you find her. If we can’t wring her neck and throw her in the river to drown, I’d settle for chaining her in my cave—in a new cave—while she builds me another airship.”
Kali’s tone came out as flippant, but Cedar knew how much that ship meant to her, how long building it and escaping the Yukon had been her dream. He pulled her close for another hug.
“I’ll find her. You can do the deciding between whether to wring her neck or enslave her.”
“You’re generous.”
Cedar glimpsed a light in the sky, visible through the evergreen boughs overhead. He released Kali and searched for a spot where he could see more without being seen. Even though August was on the wane, the hours of darkness were still few, and the stars had already faded with the promise of dawn. It did not take him long to spot the dark shape drifting over the forest. It had to be the same airship that had come to collect him. He eased back under the cover of the trees. The soldiers on the deck would have a hard time spotting him now, but once the sun rose, that would be a different tale. His instincts told him to flee to the south, to find a way over the Chilkoot Pass and to keep going until he found someplace safe, perhaps into Mexico. If he wanted to live, he ought to leave Canada and the United States far behind.
But he had to help Kali first. And that wouldn’t be easy with all of Dawson looking for them—and with the Mounties knowing exactly where her workshop had been.
“Let’s get going,” Cedar said. “I’ll start looking for signs as soon as it’s light enough to see. And hopefully before the Mounties show up to search that area.”
“We’ll find her quickly,” Kali said, “and then figure something out.”
She didn’t sound like she had any more idea as to what that something should be than he did. He had always hoped his life would be better after Cudgel Conrad was removed from the world. Apparently, he had hoped for too much.
• • • • •
Kali heard the scrapes of shovels before the landslide came into sight. Clouds scudded across the sky, hiding the first rays of dawn, but she could make out more of her surroundings than she had an hour ago. She and Cedar hadn’t seen the airship recently. She hoped that meant it had drifted over to the other side of the river and that the crew had no idea which way its prey had gone.
Expecting the Hän to be the ones digging, Kali started to head out of the trees to talk to the men with the shovels. Cedar caught her shoulder before she did so.
“I asked Tadzi to get some people to help dig,” she whispered, “in the unlikely chance that my cave wasn’t entirely destroyed and that some of my goods survived.” Specifically, the body of her airship.
“What people?”
“Kéitlyudee and her cousins.”
Cedar considered the dark shapes moving among rocks. “That may be who you asked for, but that’s not who’s there.”
“How can you tell?” Kali frowned at the diggers. She couldn’t make out faces in the poor lighting, and she didn’t hear anybody talking. There were more people out there than she would have expected for just Kéitlyudee’s family.
“I can tell.”
“They’re not Mounties, are they?” She grimaced at the idea of Cedar trying to track down her new nemesis when the authorities were already up here searching.
“No.”
“Who else would be up here?”
Cedar hesitated. “Scavengers would be my guess.”
Indignation flooded Kali. “Looking for treasure in my old workshop? How did they even know the workshop was here? I kept that secret. I had booby traps.” Realizing her voice sounded squeaky and her words were coming out quickly, Kali forced herself to take a deep breath, though she glowered at the shovel wielders poking through the rubble.
“You’ve had quite a few people up here helping you with the airship,” Cedar said, sounding irritatingly reasonable.
“Not mealy-mouthed miners with shovels. Maybe that Amelia woman, if she is who blew up my flash gold, told them to come up here and root around. Oh, I want to strangle her.”
“Someone might have simply come up to investigate the explosion and then found something valuable that had flown free.”
“Stop being so reasonable, Cedar. I intend to strangle someone.”
“How will you get her to work for you, rebuilding your airship, if she’s been strangled?”
“I’ll think of something. I’m creative.”
“Of that I have no doubt,” Cedar murmured. “I’ll poke around, see what I can find.”
“See if you can find a way to roll these freeloaders back down the hill to Dawson.”
“Now, now, I can only deal with one of your enemies at a time.”
“Really? I expect more from my future chief of security.”
Cedar waved his fingers, then glided into the shadows. He was too good of a man to point out that since she no longer had an airship, she couldn’t rightfully hire a chief of security for it.
Kali folded her arms and glared at the rock field. How could she get rid of these scavengers? She doubted stomping around and cursing at them would convince them to leave. Every time a shovel scraped against stone, it made her teeth grit. What if they did find something of hers? If nothing else, her coin purse was somewhere under that mountain. She could use those coins, especially now that she would probably have to bribe someone to skulk into town and buy food for her.
She stalked through the trees toward the trail, not sure what she meant to do. Perhaps if she dug out a few of her own traps and reset them, that would discourage scavenging.
A thud sounded, followed by several clacks as a boulder rolled down the slope,
banging and bouncing until it cracked against a stout tree and came to a stop. It occurred to Kali that she would have struggled to move such a solid rock on her own. It would have taken a long and sturdy lever. These people might actually be doing her a favor, if she could keep them from making off with her belongings when they found something. Maybe she could let them dig throughout the day, or however long it took them to reach the cave, then scare them away somehow.
The sound of voices drifted up from down the trail. More scavengers with shovels? No, they weren’t speaking French or English—they were conversing in Hän.
Kali waited until the speakers came close enough for her to see. There were four of them, one about Kali’s size and the other larger, probably men.
“Kéitlyudee?” Kali guessed.
The young woman jumped at her voice, skittering off the trail into the trees. A moment later, she warily whispered, “Kali?”
Kali couldn’t blame her for being twitchy. She had been pawed over by that monstrous murdering pirate before Kali had been able to free her, and bravery hadn’t come naturally to her before, either.
“It’s me,” Kali said, waving for the men to come forward. They hadn’t jumped off the path.
“What’s going on?” Kéitlyudee asked, rejoining the group.
“Opportunistic greed.”
“Pardon?”
“Come over here, please, and I’ll explain. Are these your kin?” Kali thought she recognized at least one face in the growing light.
“Yes. We brought tools for digging. Did you already find helpers? My cousins were hoping to earn some coin to buy some luxuries before winter.”
Yes, wasn’t everybody?
“That can still happen.” Kali drew the group to the side, using the trees to stay hidden from those toiling by the dim dawn lighting. “Those people up there weren’t invited. Would you and your relatives be willing to keep an eye on them for me? Let them dig, but if they’re able to get into my old workshop and find any valuable tools or if there’s anything left of my airship, find a way to shoo them off. No, wait. You just watch them.” Kali tapped the tools in her pockets. “I’ll see if I can make something that might scare grown men away. Maybe you can… I know. Go out there and pretend you’re just there to scavenge, too, but mention how angry the Hän spirits are about the explosion in this sacred land.”
Liberty (Flash Gold, #5) Page 4