Liberty
(The Flash Gold Chronicles, #5)
by Lindsay Buroker
Copyright © 2016 Lindsay Buroker
Acknowledgments
As I write this, it’s been nearly two years in our world since I left poor Cedar in jail. Many of you have written and asked when the final adventure would come out. I’m glad I can tell you that it’s finally here! Thank you for your patience. Thank you, also, to my editor, Shelley Holloway, and my cover designer, Glendon Haddix at Streetlight Graphics. We hope you enjoy Liberty.
Part 1
Kali McAlister did her best not to glare as the young Mountie constable patted her down and removed wrenches, hammers, pliers, and other tools from her overalls. It wasn’t as if she would bring pliers to break Cedar out of jail. She could easily make explosives from the components in her cave workshop. Besides, she wouldn’t stage a breakout during broad daylight with dozens of horse-drawn wagons plodding down the street right outside the door.
“What’s this?” The constable withdrew a folded piece of paper from Kali’s pocket, his upper lip curling toward the sparsest mustache Kali had seen on anyone over eighteen.
“Blueprints to my airship engine.” She scowled at him, plucked the paper back out of his hand, and returned it to her pocket. “Unless you want to volunteer to come up and help me with the installation, then you’ve no need to paw over it with your muck forks.”
“Volunteer?” The constable scratched his pockmarked jaw.
“Muck forks,” the second Mountie in the office snorted as he sat with his heels kicked up on a desk, reading the day’s Midnight Sun. “You’re not supposed to let visitors insult you, Brandt.”
“That right? I thought it was just the prisoners we had to get particular with.”
“You’re an authority figure here, a representative of the Northwest Mounted Police. Respect is paramount.”
“But she’s a woman.”
“Women ain’t nothing but mantraps. Don’t be fooled.”
Kali rolled her eyes at this time-wasting exchange. “Can I go see him now that you’ve absconded with all of my tools?” She waved at the pile on the table.
“Absconded?” the constable objected. “Ma’am, you can have them back when you leave. We just can’t have you using them to aid a criminal.”
Kali ground her teeth at the word criminal. Cedar had put an end to a notorious killer, and yet they had him in jail. Based on something that may or may not have happened two thousand miles away and in another country. It wasn’t right. “Yes, I was figuring to use that tape measure there to help him escape.”
The constable picked up the tape measure and frowned at both sides, as if expecting it to secretly be some gadget capable of creating holes in walls.
“This way, right?” Kali pointed toward the closed door at the back of the office.
She had been in the building before, walking with Cedar as he’d turned in the head of a known murderer, and she knew where the two jail cells were, but she did not presume to stride back there. Even if she was frustrated with these two and the situation as a whole, they might find it suspicious if she seemed too eager to get to Cedar. She didn’t need them thinking too hard on whether or not she could be trusted. She had been with Cedar at the mill, helping him to catch up with Cudgel Conrad, and she was as much to blame for the building catching fire as he was. If the Mounties realized that, they might lock her up too. It would be much harder to free Cedar if she was locked up in the adjacent cell.
“Yes, that way.” The constable put down the tape measure and opened the door.
It led into a short hallway with the cells waiting in a tiny room to the left. Kali followed him into the tight space, where an oilcloth window let in limited light. The cells occupied the dark side of the room, standing side by side, iron bars walling in the prisoner. Cedar must have heard her exchange through the door because he stood alertly by the bars.
He smiled broadly at her, the gesture slightly reminiscent of the goofy smile from the day before, when he’d asked her if she would porch sit with him and only him, and she had said yes. Exasperatedly. The Mounties had been dragging him away at the time, and it hadn’t seemed the most important issue to discuss.
“Cedar.” Kali nodded to him and fidgeted with her hands. Maybe she should reach through the bars and give him a pat—or even a kiss? He wasn’t at his most appealing, with his clothing rumpled and a couple of days’ worth of beard growth on his usually clean-shaven chin, but he always tolerated her in her tool-filled man clothes, so who was she to judge? But she hesitated, aware that the constable had followed her into the small room and now leaned against the doorjamb.
“Kali.” Cedar lifted his hand to tip an imaginary hat.
“I came to see...” She had come to see if he wanted her to break him out, but that would not be wise to admit with a Mountie looking on. “How are you doing?” she finished.
She needed to talk in private with Cedar. How could she get the constable to wander back up to the front room for a few minutes?
“Tolerable. But nobody’s come to explain what my situation is, precisely. Whether I’m to be jailed permanently or, ah, worse. And if I have any legal recourse.” He grimaced.
Kali knew there were lawyers in town, but had only heard of cases involving squabbles over mining claims. Would they be able to do anything if Cedar was being held because of the murders he had been accused of committing in the United States? Was that even the reason the Mounties had arrested him? Or was it because he had killed Cudgel in the middle of town? As if that lowlife scalawag hadn’t deserved to die.
“Commissioner Steele had to go out to a claim site,” the constable offered. “He’s supposed to be back this evening.”
“At which point, I’ll find out exactly why I’m being held?” Cedar raised his eyebrows toward the constable, who stuck his hands into his pockets and looked away. All of the Mounties in the area ought to know he had been helping their organization, bringing in the heads—and sometimes the whole bodies—of criminals, long before Steele had shown up to take over the position of commissioner.
That they had arrested him now after he’d been in the territory for nearly a year… it was ridiculous. Intolerable. Kali bit back a growl.
“Can I bring you anything? Are you comfortable enough in there?” she asked, while still debating how to get rid of their audience. She nodded toward the small cell, made smaller by the fact that Cedar loomed well over six feet tall. “Not much for furnishings, is it? I see they gave you a mule’s breakfast to lie on.” She waved at the mattress and the single ratty blanket wadded up on it. Strands of straw poked out at the edges.
“I’ve slept on the ground plenty.” Cedar glanced toward the Mountie. “It’s not any worse than that. Admittedly, my height is a touch problematic in this case.” He glanced toward the mattress. The bottom foot of him probably dangled off the end if he lay straight.
“Well, I can’t fix your bed, but I can at least stimulate your mind.” Kali fished out the folded blueprints. “I’m aiming to put the engine in my ship soon.” She launched into a long explanation of the horsepower and mechanical specifics of it and what the capabilities of the finished airship would be.
Cedar looked on while wearing a faintly puzzled expression. She knew he wasn’t as interested in machinery as she was, but she kept talking, intentionally making that talk about as interesting as reading a technical book on engines. As she did so, she watched the Mountie out of the corner of her eye. He stifled a couple of yawns. After a few minutes, he pushed away from the doorjamb, muttered something about being right back, and wandered up to the front office.
“Here, you can see for yourself in the blueprints,” Kali said as he disappeared through the doorway. As soon as he was
out of sight, she lowered her voice and whispered, “Do you want me to break you out tonight?”
Cedar stared at her as if he didn’t comprehend. Why else would she have come to speak to him if not to extricate him from his uncertain fate? The punishment for murder was death, wasn’t it? She couldn’t leave him here if that was to be his fate.
Finally, he shook his head. “You can’t be made a criminal on my behalf. It’s already a miracle that they haven’t found anything to blame you for, considering you were at my side in the mill.”
Not to mention the pirate airship she had nearly crashed into the city a couple of months earlier… It did seem unfair that he was behind bars while she walked free. Not that she wanted to be incarcerated. But she wouldn’t let them hang or shoot Cedar, either. He was her business partner and… more. Even if they’d barely had time for more yet. Between his obsession to find Cudgel and her obsession to build her airship and escape the North, they hadn’t had many free hours. But now, Cudgel was dead and the airship was nearly done. The only problem was these bars keeping them apart.
“I wouldn’t be planning to get caught,” Kali said.
Cedar smiled, though it was a wan gesture compared to the warm one he’d offered when she first entered. “We’re known to spend time together. If I disappear, and someone has sawn a hole in my wall from the outside, they’ll know it was you.”
“How will they prove it? They won’t have any evidence. And surely you’ve got other acquaintances that you might have finagled into breaking you out.”
“Not many. Bounty hunting is a solitary business, one that keeps me in contact with the law often, so most of my acquaintances are Mounties. They’re not known for cutting holes in their own headquarters building.”
“They sound repressed. If I make a tool using some of my—” she lowered her voice to a whisper, “—flash gold, it could be quick, maybe not make any noise.”
His brows rose. “Did you manage to get it back? I didn’t see Cudgel run out with it, but he was invisible at the time.” His mouth twisted in acknowledgment of the oddness of that statement.
Kali had grown up with an alchemist for a father, so she wasn’t so startled by the magical, even if this had been her first time witnessing a powder that could turn a man invisible. “He dropped it in the mill during the hullabaloo. While everyone was busy arresting you, I sneaked back into the fire and found it. Half of it. That mongrel made off and did who knows what with the other half.” She clenched her jaw, momentarily forgetting that she had come to speak to Cedar of rescues.
“Is the half you have left enough to power your airship?” he asked quietly.
“I’m not sure. I hope so—though I’d like to find the missing half too. I’m not sure if its power lasts indefinitely, and since I don’t know how to make more, I’ve been wanting to keep all that I have. Since my airship engine is designed to run solely on the power it supplies, rather than on the steam from coal or wood...”
“Perfectly understandable. I reckon you shouldn’t waste any of your gold on my cell wall.”
Kali shook her head. That would hardly be a waste. A waste was having the gold stolen in the first place. It was enough to make her wish Cudgel would come back to life so Cedar could kill him again. Perhaps not in front of the whole city this time.
A clank sounded up front, and someone bumped against the door.
Kali leaned close. “Milos,” she whispered, using his real name so he’d realize how important this was. “There’s not much time. Enough jokes. Tonight, be ready. I can—”
“No,” he said firmly.
“But—”
The door opened. Nobody came through at first, but the sound of a conversation finishing up drifted back.
Cedar reached through the bars and clasped her shoulder. “I don’t aim to go peaceable to my hanging,” he whispered. “I’ll figure something out, get a chance to slip out on my own. Then I’ll hide among the willows until you’ve got your airship completed. I’ll join you, and we’ll go south together. I’ll still be your security man, and we can sit on the deck together and enjoy the sunsets in a warmer locale.”
Kali opened her mouth to object—did he truly think the Mounties would slip up and let him escape? They knew him well, and they knew how competent he was. She was surprised she had even been permitted this time alone with him to conspire.
Before she could voice her words, the constable walked into the hallway.
“Ma’am, you’ll have to finish kissing him and skedaddle. The commissioner is coming back soon.”
“Kissing?” Kali asked. What about their positions made the man think they’d been doing that? Though she supposed it was better than him being aware of their true conversation.
The constable looked toward Cedar, who wore a wistful expression. Tarnation, maybe she should have kissed him. It just seemed that they had more important matters to dwell on.
“I was hoping for his sake that all that talk of engines would lead to something more interesting,” the constable said.
Kali narrowed her eyes at him. “My engine is extremely interesting.”
“If you say so, ma’am.” He gestured to the front office. “This way, please.”
Cedar watched silently, a morose expression settling over his face. Kali’s stomach clenched. Did he truly have plans to escape on his own? Or had he resigned himself to his fate? Well, it didn’t matter, either way. She would not leave him here to rot in jail—or to be hanged.
She had taken a couple of steps toward the door, obeying the constable’s gesture, but on impulse, Kali ran back and reached through the bars. She waved for Cedar to lower his head. They hadn’t shared all that many kisses during their unorthodox courting, and she wasn’t quite sure how to effectively lock lips through bars, but on the chance that it would make him feel less glum, she was willing to try.
His brows twitched, but he obediently lowered his face. Kali always detested sharing private moments in front of witnesses, but she pressed her lips to his, the constable be damned. As Cedar returned the kiss, that wistfulness coming through in it, he lifted a hand to cup her cheek. Kali lingered longer than she meant to, especially with company watching on. Despite her resolve to rescue him, she couldn’t be positive that she would be successful or that they would have more moments together like this.
The constable cleared his throat, but it was something else that made Kali step back.
A thunderous boom sounded in the distance. An explosion? Some mining accident? She gaped toward the oilskin window, but could not see anything through the opaque material. She wouldn’t think they would hear mining mishaps here in the center of town. Most of the claims were miles away.
“What was that?” The constable grabbed the doorjamb as if he expected an earthquake.
The ground did tremble faintly in the aftermath of the explosion.
“Sounded like it came from the hills behind town,” Cedar said, meeting Kali’s eyes. His own eyes were grim.
“Behind town?” she mouthed. As in the hills where she kept her cave hidden, the cave she was using as a workshop? The cave that housed the airship she had very nearly completed after months and months of working on it? She swallowed. “I have to go.”
Cedar nodded in acceptance, though he shot a glower at the locked gate keeping him restrained. “I don’t suppose you’d like to let me out to go help, Bellerose?”
“Sorry, Cedar. You know I can’t.”
If they continued to speak, Kali did not hear it. She ran to the front office, barely able to make herself stop long enough to grab her tools and stuff them into her belt and pockets. The odds were against that explosion having anything to do with her or her airship. That didn’t keep her from sprinting out the door and toward the hills behind Dawson.
• • • • •
Kali was halfway up the forested hill that led to her cave before she slowed down, and only the burning of her lungs and her thighs prompted that. A pall of smoke hung in the air, v
isible whenever the trees thinned. It wasn’t her imagination—it hovered right above the ridge, right above her workshop. All she could imagine was that someone had blown up her airship. She had no idea who or why. Cudgel was dead—who else remained who wanted to hurt Cedar or her? She wasn’t the friendliest sort, but she didn’t think she had made any serious enemies in Dawson. Not unless some of Cudgel’s men were after her for revenge. Or what if some of those pirates had figured out who had been responsible for crashing their airship?
Brush snapped somewhere ahead of her, and Kali made herself slow from a jog to a walk so she could listen. Her booby traps lined this animal path, a path that had grown a little too worn in the months she, Cedar, and her Hän helpers had been walking to and from town. Even with the traps, someone might easily have found her cave. That smoke promised someone had found her cave.
Foliage rustled, and Kali stepped to the side of the trail, ducking behind a fir tree. She didn’t usually carry a pistol—she left the shooting and killing to Cedar—but she did usually have a couple of her smoke nuts with her, homemade grenades that clouded the air and sprayed shrapnel. Unfortunately, she had left her stash behind in her workshop, figuring the Mounties would search her and question their presence. She had figured right, but that left her without anything resembling a weapon now. For lack of a better option, she unhooked her hammer from its belt loop.
Footfalls sounded, someone jogging down the path. Those footfalls sounded light. A woman? Wanting the element of surprise, she resisted the urge to peek around the tree to look.
A bronze-skinned boy limped past her hiding spot, never looking toward her. Soot darkened his buckskin clothing, as well as half of his face, and a cut on his chin dribbled blood.
“Tadzi,” Kali blurted, recognizing him.
He halted so quickly he nearly tipped over. “Kali!”
“Did you come from my workshop?” She stepped forward to grip his arm—he looked like he needed support. His mussy black hair stuck out in all directions, and blood spattered his tunic. Was that all from the cut on his chin, or had he received other injuries? “What happened? Are you fit?”