Peacemaker fgc-3

by Lindsay Buroker

  Before she could reach for a folding knifein her pocket, the ropes tightened about her, scooping her up likea fish in the river.

  “Kali!” Cedarshouted.

  Now, he woke up. Great.

  The net constricted movement, and Kalicouldn’t get an arm free to dig into her pockets. It swung her intothe air. In fits and jerks, a rope slowly pulled her up. Clankssounded above her-someone winding a winch.

  Kali snarled and thrashed without anystrategy, aside from an overriding desire to damage something. Shewas angry at herself for running up the hill without a plan, andfor being captured like some dumb animal. Her thrashes did nothing;the net merely tightened.

  Then something rammed into her frombehind.

  “Tarnation! What now?”Kali demanded.

  “Sorry,” Cedar said frombehind her ear.

  Kali twisted her neck-even that was aneffort in the suffocating rope cocoon. Cedar clung to the outsidelike a spider. His eyes still had a glazed cast to them, but hisjaw was clenched with determination.

  He drew a knife and started sawing at herropes. “I thought you might like to get down.”

  “Yes, thank you.” Kalicould be calm and polite when someone was working to set her free.So long as he finished before whoever was working the winch gotthem on board. Already, they were nearly twenty feet from theground. The fall would not be pleasant.

  “Get him off!” a manyelled from somewhere above. “Shoot him!”

  “I believe someone ismaking plans for you,” Kali said.

  Cedar’s swift cuts were opening up herprison, and she gripped the ropes above her head with both hands soshe wouldn’t fall free when the support disappeared.

  “Not plans I’m partialto,” Cedar said. “I’ll have you down in a second.”

  Wood creaked above them, and Kali looked up,fearing they might weigh too much for whatever winch was operatingup there. She wanted freedom, yes, but she didn’t fancy the idea ofa long drop while still entangled in the ropes. A man wearing ablack bandana around his head and holding a shiny steel six-shooterleaned out through a trapdoor.

  “Look out,” Kali barked,afraid Cedar, intent on cutting her ropes, hadn’t seen theman.

  But he was already in motion, not jumpingfree to escape the gun like a sane person would do, but shimmyingup the rope. The pirate’s finger tightened on the trigger, butCedar was already pumping an arm to throw his knife. The blade spunupward and lodged in the man’s chest.

  The revolver fired anyway.

  Kali buried her head beneath her arms, butno bullet pierced her flesh. Before she could lift her eyes to seeif Cedar had also avoided being hit, something slammed into her.The force snapped the remaining ropes still binding her into thenet, and her legs flew free. Twine seared her palms, and she almostlost her grip, but she clenched her fingers tighter around therope. The dead pirate tumbled past her and smashed into the rockyshoreline below. Cedar had disappeared into the airship.

  Gunshots sounded above, followed by a clashof steel. That meant Cedar had his sword out. He might need help,but storming a fortress wasn’t anything Kali was trained for. She’dhave to try something else.

  Kali swung her legs up and found a toeholdin part of the netting that had not been cut. She climbed a fewfeet up the rope, but stopped well below the trapdoor. Twenty feetaway, mounted on the bottom of the hull, the twin-ducted fanshummed along.

  While gripping the rope with one hand, Kalidropped the other into a pocket and withdrew a grenade. Windbattered her, whipping her hair free of its braid and into hereyes. She squinted, trying to judge the distance for a toss to theclosest fan.

  “Cedar!” Kali yelled. Hewould be better at this.

  A battle cry-it might have been his-andanother long clash of steel answered her. Kali took that to meanshe was on her own.

  She took a deep breath, thumbed the triggeron the grenade, and watched for the spark. Yes, there it was. Shecounted to two and tossed the weapon.

  It sailed through the air, clanked off thefan casing and dropped. It exploded uselessly a few feet above theriver. A couple of men rowing a fishing boat and gawking up at theairship screamed and threw themselves into the water.

  “Not good,” Kalimuttered.

  She had one more grenade, but only one. Shegripped the cold metal, felt the grooves dig into her hand,imagined the hours she had spent patching the exterior togetherfrom scrap and carefully measuring out gunpowder and even morecarefully building the trigger device…. She resolved not to wastethis one.

  Kali thumbed the trigger, held the grenadehalf a second longer than the first, and lofted it toward thefan.

  This time it clanked into the horizontalcylinder containing the propeller. Kali held her breath. Thegrenade bumped against the inside of the casing and skidded towardthe fan. She cringed at the idea of it sliding past the blades andfalling out on other side.

  Before the grenade came close to that fate,it exploded with an echoing boom. Orange flashed, gray smoke filledthe air, and shards of metal flew.

  One whistled toward her face, and Kaliducked, throwing up her free hand. Her other hand slipped, and shelost her foothold and zipped down the rope. Fire seared her palm,tearing into her skin, but she growled and forced herself to holdon. She caught the bottom of the half-destroyed net, but her feetdangled free, swinging thirty feet above the earth.

  On the hull above, the only thing left ofthe fan was a singed stump of metal. Holes and charred wood markedthe hull as well. If it were a sea-going vessel, it’d be leakingfaster than the bilge pumps could bail, but up here, holes justmeant poorer aerodynamics. Already, though, the airship was listingto one side, heading out over the river. With one workingpropeller, it’d simply float around in wide circles until someonefixed it. That meant they’d have a hard time chasing anybody.

  “Cedar,” Kali calledagain. “It’s time to go!”

  She scanned the countryside below,ostensibly looking for her bicycle and to see how far upstream theyhad floated, but a part of her had to admire the view, a viewusually reserved for the birds. One day, she would sail in theskies with her own ship.

  A boom sounded above, not rifle fire thistime, but a shell gun or cannon. What in tarnation was Cedar doingup there?

  Kali was debating whether to climb up andjoin him-whatever he was doing, he might be getting himself introuble-when a familiar shout pulled her eye to the side.

  “Man overboard!” It wasCedar, leaping over the deck railing. He clutched a bag in one handand his sword in the other. “Let’s go, Kali!” he added before hesplashed into the river below.

  “Someone stole that man’srudder,” she muttered.

  Above her, a man with a bloody face leanedout of the trapdoor. From the pained snarl on his lips and the gunin his hand, Kali decided it was indeed time to go. After a quickcheck to make sure she was over water, she released the rope.

  She dropped thirty feet and plunged intodepths so icy they shocked her to the core. The calendar might saysummer, but this water came straight out of mountains stillsmothered with snow. Her feet brushed the bottom, and she pushedoff. She popped above the surface and tried to suck in a breath ofair, but her lungs, stunned from the cold, scarcely worked. An icywave washed into her eyes.

  A hand gripped Kali’s arm, helping her stayup.

  “That was brilliant!”Cedar exclaimed. The water dripping into his eyes couldn’t dulltheir gleam.

  Kali shook her head and swam for the shorewith frenzied strokes, hoping to warm her already-numb limbs. Sheonly paused long enough to make sure she was swimming in the rightdirection. It was a testament to how cold she was that she reachedthe shore before Cedar. She was tempted to jog back to the SAB-andrip dry clothes and Cedar’s bedroll off the back-but she figuredshe had best wait and see if he was injured or needed help. Shewouldn’t put it past him to race into battle and roar withexcitement while having a life-threatening wound.

  While she waited, shewatched the airship veering inland, smoke still wafting from thecharred hull. Maybe it
would crash, the pirates would abandon it asunsalvageable, and she could claim it for her own.That thought warmed hercold limbs more than a little. If the hull was in decent shape, shecould commandeer it and not have to construct one from scratch. Oh,she’d want to build her own engine from the ground up-no tellingwhat piecemeal garbage these pirates were using-and she had ideasfor dozens of modifications, but if she didn’t have to build thatcursed hull, she’d save months of construction time. She flexed hercold fingers. Maybe a few digits endangered by that saw aswell.

  Her mind filled with daydreams ofreconstruction, Kali almost missed Cedar slogging out of the waterdownstream. He had sheathed the sword, but he was still carryingthat bag, a small but bulging canvas tote. It made him lopsided ashe strode toward her. Some of the glitter had faded from his eyes,but he was still grinning. “Are you all right?”

  Kali wrapped her arms around herself forwarmth. “I could have done without the bath, but I suppose droppingonto land would have been worse.” She gave him a once over, decidedhe was uninjured, and headed along the bank toward her bicycle.Puffs of steam still wafted from its stack, and nobody seemed tohave bothered it. The skirmish had cleared the river of boattraffic.

  “True.” Cedar strode alongbeside her. He pointed at the airship-it was drifting on the otherside of the river now, going nowhere fast. “It looks like yourgrenades proved useful.”

  “Of course,” Kalisaid.

  He walked in silence for a moment beforeglancing at her and asking, “Aren’t you going to ask what I was upto in there?”

  “Judging by the sounds,you weren’t attending a quilting bee.”

  “Nope. I had to fight myway out of their cargo hold. At first I had a notion ofsinglehandedly taking control of the ship, but there were a lot ofthem, and they were well-armed and reasonably accurate with theirfirearms.” Cedar touched a rip in the sleeve of his duster. “Theycured me of my notion, but I was able to make my way up top, and Ispotted some of their stolen loot on the way.” He hefted the bag.“I figure this might be that old man’s claim earnings. Getting itback might ease his crankiness a tad.”

  “Huh,” Kalisaid.

  It sounded like a good adventure, and shemight ask for more details later, but she wanted dry clothes firstand a blanket around her shoulders. Having the sun come out wouldbe a nice perk, too, but if anything the fog was growingdenser.

  Cedar sighed. “I see you’re still a hardlady to please.”

  “I’m pleased.”

  “You are? How would oneknow?”

  “I’m listening to youinstead of contemplating upgrades to my next batch ofgrenades.”

  “I see,” Cedar said.“That is a highhonor.” He probed one of his soggy pockets, pulled out a knot ofbeads, and handed it to her.

  Kali untangled the snarl to reveal the patchof decorated hide he’d been fiddling with all through supper thenight before. “Good that this survived, I guess,” she said, notsure why he was showing it to her.

  “No,” Cedar said, delvinginto a different pocket. “Thissurvived.” He pulled out another talisman, thisone unknotted. “That I found next to the sack of gold.”

  “Oh, hm. What do you thinkthe pirates are doing with an identical one? Is it something theyfound? Or are they behind the murders?”

  “It didn’t come up when wewere slinging bullets and curses back and forth at eachother.”

  Kali shook her head and tsked. “Men are suchpoor conversationalists.”

  “There were a couple ofwomen shooting at me too.”

  They crested a rise and came to the craterthe airship had blown into the trail. Kali slowed down. Her bicyclewaited on the other side, but so did two people. One was the oldman from the boat, and the other was a boy of ten or eleven years.He had raven-colored hair and bronze skin with a face still chubbywith baby fat. He stared at them-no, at Cedar-with opened-mouthedastonishment.

  “That’s mine!” The old manstabbed a finger at the sack.

  “Figured it might be.”Cedar laid it at his feet.

  The old fellow grabbed it, dragged itseveral feet, sent slit-eyed glares at Kali and Cedar, then whippedout a small black revolver and aimed it between them. “You two stayright there. And you too boy.” He backed away, holding the gun withone hand and lugging the sack of gold with the other.

  Cedar watched blandly. Kali shook her head.The old man caught his heel on something, tripped, fell onto hisbackside, and cursed mightily. He stuffed the revolver back intohis belt, hefted the sack with both hands, and jogged-if one couldcall such lopsided, wobbly staggers a jog-back to his boat.

  “Grateful fellow,” Cedarobserved.

  “Less good than you’dthink comes out of helping people in these parts,” Kalisaid.

  The boy was still staring at Cedar, eyeswide, jaw slack. When he noticed Kali looking at him, he clamped itshut and swallowed.

  She was about to try talking to him in Hanwhen he tilted his head back to look Cedar in the eyes and said,“That was amazing.” He pointed toward the sky half a mile acrossthe river, where the airship was descending into the woods. “I sawyou fighting. All of them at once! Up on the deck. I could see itall from here!”

  “Just making the best outof a tricky situation,” Cedar said. Though he spoke as if hisheroics had been inconsequential, he did give Kali a pointed look,as if to say, “See? This is how you’re supposed to respond to myheroics.”

  Kali propped her hands on her hips and toldthe boy, “I was up there doing stuff too.”

  He blinked at her, a blank expression on hisface, then focused on Cedar again. “Where’d you get that sword?That’s the beatingest pig sticker I’ve seen.”

  Kali gave the boy a closer look. He wore ahooded caribou jacket, and she assumed he was Han, but his commandof English was excellent, if one could call the local miners’ slangEnglish.

  “It’s from the Orient,though I got it down in the swamps of Florida.” Cedar drew theblade. “Do you want to see it? I could show you a fewmoves.”

  Kali lifted a hand, afraid the “boys” couldplay at swordfighting all day if she let them, but the youth’sshoulders slumped and he did not accept the sword.

  “I’m no good at fighting,”he said, “on account of my leg.”

  For the first time, he took a couple ofsteps, and Kali noticed a pronounced limp.

  “What happened?” sheasked.

  “Couple of summers back, Iclimbed up with a smoker to get some honey from a bee hive. Thebranch broke, and I fell a long ways and broke my hip. Medicine manfixed me up the best he could, but…” He shrugged, eyes still castdownward.

  Cedar took the boy’s hand and put the hiltof his sword in it.

  “What’s your name?” Kaliasked, heading over to check the bicycle for damage-and to see howshe might get it around the crater that had destroyed an eight-footswath of the trail.

  “Tadzi,” the boy said, hisgaze riveted to the blade. He took a few experimental swings andgrinned.

  “Tadzi, have you ever seenanything like these?” Cedar held up the beadworkpatches.

  The boy lowered the sword and scrutinizedthem. “No, sir. Not very good work.” His face brightened. “Want tosee something I made?”

  “Yes,” Cedarsaid.

  Kali knew him well enough to hear the hintof disappointment in his voice. What had he expected? That aten-year-old kid would know something about talismans of power?

  “That’s very good,” Cedarsaid.

  Kali glanced over to see what the boy wasshowing him. Some sort of block of carved wood. Cedar caught hereye and crooked a finger.

  “We should get going,”Kali said, though she came over to check on the youth’s handiwork.She froze when he held up a carving of an elk, a seven-point bullelk. Though the entire figurine was no larger than her hand, shecould count each individual tine on the antlers. They even appearedfuzzy, like the real thing. “That’s beautiful,” shebreathed.

  Tadzi twitched a shoulder. “I can doscrimshaw, too, but ivory’s hard to get. That time with the hon
ey,I was hoping to trade for better tools. It didn’t happen. I gotstung a bunch, on top of breaking my hip.”

  Kali could certainly understand going to anylengths in pursuit of one’s passions. “Don’t get discouraged. Youdo real fine work.”

  She caught a strange expression on Cedar’sface.

  “What?” sheasked.

  “Just wondering if Ishould be jealous of a ten-year-old boy,” he said.

  “Why?” Tadzi stared up at him-he only came up to Kali’s shoulder,so he had to tilt his head way back to look Cedar in theeyes.

  “Because she’s moreimpressed by your carving than by my skirmishing skills, eventhough I navigated heaps of pirates fighting harder than KilkennyCats, retrieved that surly fellow’s gold, cut the belt that held upthe captain’s pants, and escaped the mob by leaping over therailing from forty feet in the air.”

  Tadzi turned hisincredulous stare onto Kali. “You are?”

  Kali shrugged. “I get to see him do stufflike that all the time. Though-” she nodded at Cedar, “-you didn’tmention the part about the captain’s pants.”

  “They fell clear to hisankles and hobbled him like a horse,” Cedar said.

  “Nice. Tadzi, are you fromMoosehide?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “How did you learn suchgood English?” When Kali had been a girl, it hadn’t been spoken atall amongst the tribe, and only a couple of men who negotiated withtraders and trappers knew any at all.

  “I’ve been working at itreal hard,” Tadzi said. “I talk to any white people I can. Someday,I want to…” He chomped down on his lip and eyed the ground. “Ishouldn’t say.”

  Maybe he was someone like Kali had been,someone who always knew he would leave someday. “Can you take usthere? Introduce us to the medicine man?”

  Tadzi brightened. “Can weride there on that?” He nearly threw his shoulder out of joint in his eagernessto point at the SAB. “I saw its smoke, and that’s what made me comedown here. I bet riding it is a hog-killin’ time.”

  “There’s not room forthree,” Cedar said.

  Kali gave him a frank look.