Claimed (The Flash Gold Chronicles, #4) (7 page)

She climbed up, using the wall and his shoulders—and once a finger in the eye—for handholds. Soon her boots rested on his shoulders. Soft pats sounded as she investigated the darkness above them.

“I can’t reach anything except more wall,” Kali said.

A soft
tink
came from above, then something clacked to the ground a few feet away. An angry rattle shook the silence.

“You’re irking the wildlife,” Cedar said.

“Fortunately, I’m up on a sturdy platform and well away from the wildlife.” Kali tossed something else. This time, whatever it was clacked higher up and didn’t fall back to the floor. “The trapdoor—I guess you’d call it a trap
floor
—is open, but it’s another ten feet above my head. No wonder falling hurt.”

Cedar grumbled to himself. The hours he had estimated that it would take someone to get to town, warn Cudgel, and return with a team of armed men no longer seemed such a huge amount of time. If he and Kali couldn’t figure out a way to escape before then, they would be easy targets to anyone standing up there with a gun. Of course, they might not have hours, anyway. Once the kerosene dried, it wouldn’t be nearly the deterrent for the snakes. He didn’t like the odds of keeping so many away with his sword, a sword he wasn’t even sure had fallen into the pit with him.

“You’ve got a rope,” Kali said. “What about a grappling hook?”

“No. Also, I don’t know that there’s anything up there except that rubble wall that one could latch onto, and it would be difficult to lodge a hook between rocks from this angle. And from twenty-five feet down.”

“I have confidence that you can do it.” Kali shifted her weight. “Let me down. I’ll see if I can make you a hook.”

“Out of what? Are you planning to sacrifice your tools to provide the metal?”

“Don’t be ridiculous. I’m sure there are some knives or belt buckles or other materials down here that I can use.”

Cedar helped Kali off his shoulders, keeping her close as he lowered her. She seemed too casual about the idea of poking around amongst these snakes. She hadn’t seen people die out in the desert after being bitten, not the way he had. Better for someone with a powerful respect for them to do the poking about.

“Stay here,” he said. “I’ll look.”

He thought she might argue, but all she said was, “Bones as a last resort, please.” She was breathing audibly, through her mouth. The stench must be worse down here, or it was getting to her regardless of her position. “They’d have to be whittled down and wouldn’t be as effective as metal,” she added. “And they’re... disturbing.”

“That they are.”

Another rattle buzzed, this one nearby. Cedar pulled out the kerosene bottle again, grimacing at the level of liquid remaining. He wished he had been less liberal with his first application, especially with all of Kali’s gear waiting outside.

He dampened his hands and the tip of his Winchester with the cool liquid, then lowered himself to his knees. He crawled into the darkness, using the weapon to probe the ground ahead of him. Again, scales rustled as snakes slithered away from his approach. He forced himself to angle toward the rotting carcasses of those who had fallen for the trap before, instead of veering away as he would have preferred. He patted down the mostly devoured bodies, searching for belts, knifes, guns, or other items that might be fashioned together into a hook. He had his own knife he could add to the effort, but Kali would probably need a few items to be used as prongs.

Light appeared, startling him. His first thought was that Kali had risked a match, but he couldn’t imagine her being so foolish. The streaky nature of the light wasn’t anything like a flame, and the source dawned on him. He had seen it before.

“I didn’t know you had any of that with you,” Cedar said, using the opportunity to examine their surroundings for the first time. What he had imagined proved quite accurate; they were indeed in a pit with dimensions close to the ten-by-ten feet he had estimated. Fist-sized holes dotted the first few feet of wall—snake holes. No less than twenty snakes were coiled along the edges of the pit—several had shifted away from the fluctuating brightness of the small flake of flash gold in Kali’s vial. Four dead men occupied the space as well, though they were more skeletons than corpses at this point. The Mounties wouldn’t have been able to identify them as the missing men anyway, unless one could figure out who they were by their effects.

“I don’t know if I can think of a way to use it to help with a grappling hook,” Kali said, “though it did belatedly occur to me that it would make an effective light source, one that shouldn’t ignite the kerosene.”

“
Shouldn’t
?”

“I haven’t caught myself on fire with it yet,” Kali said. “Admittedly, I don’t make a habit of handling it when I’m wearing kerosene cologne. As long as it’s in the vial, it will be fine. Tarnation, this is a hideous hole.” Lip curled, she looked like she regretted illuminating the space.

Cedar hurried to gather knives and weapons, then deposited them at Kali’s feet. She already had a small spool of copper wire out, along with wire cutters and pliers. He could only guess at what tools remained in her pack. She studied her “raw materials,” then set to work without hesitation. Cedar smiled, the light brightening his mood—and his confidence. Though he could now see that the tilted floor that marked the opening of the trap was high overhead, he was certain they would find a way out.

Keeping one eye on the snakes, he crouched beside Kali and picked up the vial. As he had seen it do before, the flake of flash gold pulsed with power, occasionally sending tiny streaks of lightning up and down its glass confines.

“Are you thinking of something crafty?” Kali asked as she pried a knife blade out of its hilt. “Or being mesmerized by the shiny sparks?”

“I was musing that, if we get out of here without being eaten—” Cedar eyed a snake that had slithered closer, “—we might set a trap of our own.”

“You think Cudgel will come out personally to deal with you?”

“Probably not. He won’t even know it’s me, unless that girl’s mighty fine with her descriptive words.”

“You don’t think Cudgel will know it’s you based on big, tall, and talks to himself and his guns?” Kali patted at her pockets, causing a few clinks and clanks, then pulled out a couple of fasteners of some kind.

“That describes more bounty hunters than you’d think,” Cedar said. “It’s a lonely road. You can’t talk to the people you’re hunting, or they become a little too human in your mind, and the shooting and beheading gets hard. Gotta talk to something.”

“Perhaps you could get a pet.”

“As appealing as a dog or wolf can be, I’ve grown partial to this woman that’s been wandering around with me this last year.”

“Well, she’s not that partial to the shooting and beheading and prefers being back in her workshop, if not her airship.” Kali glanced up from her work long enough to give him a quick smile. “You might talk her into getting you a cat for Christmas.”

“A generous offer.” Even if Cedar couldn’t see himself sharing the trail with anything less fierce than a wolf or a big ugly dog. “Though I’ve been thinking... that when I finally get Cudgel, I might be ready to pursue a different career.”

“Does the shooting and beheading bother you too?” she asked.

Her tone was light, but he sensed that there was a seriousness beneath it. Like she wanted the answer to be yes. She had always been blunt that the work bothered her, even if she allowed that proven murderers
deserved
to be beheaded, and he had seen for himself how much it disturbed her when her inventions proved more powerful—more
destructive
—than she intended, and when they caused death.

Cedar almost said yes in reply to her question, but wanted to be more honest than that. “What concerns me is that it
doesn’t
bother me much anymore. In the beginning, it was the hardest thing I’d ever done, looking into the eyes of a man pleading for his life and promising he would go straight and never cross the law again, and then shooting him in the heart. You knew they were lying most like, and even if they meant what they said, they’d already committed their crimes and the law is the law. But it was hard anyway. It was always easier to kill a man in a fight, in the heat of the moment. But to look him in the eyes...”

“I can see where that’d be difficult,” Kali said.

“Over the years, it got less difficult. In the beginning, you’re consciously trying to harden yourself, to distance yourself from those you hunt, but eventually it becomes a habit. And doing the job... it’s a mechanical act rather than one of... humanity.” Cedar set down the vial and stared across the pit, his senses still alert to the movements of the snakes, though he wasn’t focusing on them anymore. He was seeing the past, the men he’d hunted, the different terrains he’d stalked them across, the inevitable ends for all of them. “When I was younger, one of my mentors—the one who gave me the katana—told me that there’s a fine line between hunting criminals and becoming one of them. The easier it gets to kill, the harder it becomes to draw the line between when to do it and when not to, between a man who’s a stone-cold killer who deserves death and a man who picks a fight with you over cards. One dies as easily as another. One death is righteous in the eyes of the law and one turns you into the men you’ve been hunting.”

Cedar pushed a hand through his hair. He was rambling, not explaining himself as well as he wished. Kali probably thought he was crazy. So long as he never put a doubt in her mind that would lead her to think
she
might ever be in danger if he got wrathy. He would hate himself for that. “I’ve never crossed that line, despite what that Pinkerton agent believed, but I’ve seen other bounty hunters go bad. This last year... since meeting you, really, I’ve decided... I want to quit once I’m done with Cudgel. All of this only started because of him, and I think it’s right that it should end with him. I’m not sure what I’ll do afterward, but I’m thinking on it.”

He shifted his weight and tossed the dregs of the kerosene bottle at a couple of snakes that had ventured close. One on the other side of the pit was slithering in and out of the rib cage of one of the fresher corpses. Kali kept glancing at it, and he thought about shooting it, just so she wouldn’t have to be disturbed by the image, but the bullet would go straight through its head and ricochet off the wall. Best not to stir up the rattlers until they were safely out of the pit.

“Head of security for a freighter captain?” Kali said.

Cedar snorted softly. “Something like that might work.”

“Because I’ve had your cooking, and I definitely couldn’t recommend you for galley work.”

“Good to know.” He cocked his head. “Freighter captain, huh? So this isn’t a one-time trip you’re thinking of making?”

“It started that way, with some of the Hän looking for an escape—there’s not much left for them here anymore, more disease and hunger than anything—and then me thinking that I might bring some cargo back to finance some further trips. Running freight isn’t
all
I’d like to do, but with all the money it’s taken to get this ship together, I’ve been realizing that getting it built won’t be the end of my journey but the start of a new one. Paying for repairs and supplies and keeping it in the air—well, we won’t be able to just fly around the world for free, not unless we take up pirating, which I’m not looking to do.”

“I reckon the difference between dreams and goals is that one has to be stoked with more than thoughts.”

Kali nodded. “I’m sure there would still be time to do some pure exploring, and I don’t know, I’ve thought about trying to learn more about the flash gold and this legacy my father left me, but running freight, it’s honest enough work, and it could take a captain—or a security chief—to some interesting places.”

“Places where Pinkerton agents wouldn’t be likely to follow?”

“The world’s a big place, I hear. Lots of other countries out there, some of them real distant from California.”

Cedar smiled again. Kali’s hands had continued to work while she spoke—while
he
spoke—and her grappling hook looked to be almost done. As usual, it appeared much more sophisticated than anything he would have made.

“This... isn’t the place for this, I know,” he said, “but I was wondering, when you were saying captain and security head, did you ever imagine...”

“Yes?” Kali prompted when the seconds ticked past.

A snake slithered out of the nose hole on a head that had been gnawed down to the skull. No, this wasn’t the place for this conversation. He would wait for a more appropriate moment. “Were you thinking we would be fifty-fifty on the earnings, like we have been with this bounty-hunting partnership, or do security guards rank lower on the pay schedule?”

“Hm.” Kali met his eyes, and he tried to decide if she knew what he’d truly been thinking about. “I don’t imagine security chiefs get a huge cut in normal circumstances, but as a co-owner, I expect you would be entitled to fifty percent. I’m just looking to have freedom, not to be rich, and that arrangement has worked fine for me so far.”

“It’s worked well for me too,” he said, though he couldn’t help but think he wanted more. More than a business arrangement. What they had started and stopped and started... how much did it mean to her?

She pointed her wire cutters at him. “Just don’t take that as a license to sleep on the job. With all the pirates I’ve heard about down south, I’ll need a good security man watching the skies for me.”

Cedar smiled, though not quite with all his heart, as he regretted chickening out and not asking what he’d truly meant to ask. “I understand.”

Kali stood up and handed him her grappling hook. “I also need someone who can chuck this up there and catch it on some rocks. Are you up for the task?”

“Yes, but if I pull that rockslide down on us, I hope you won’t curse me too much from the grave.” One of the snakes slithered around the edge of the pit, eyeing them. “Although at least I would bury the rattlers along with us.”

Kali thumped him in the chest with the back of her hand. “I wasn’t talking about the future with you so you could think like that. Look.” She held her hands out flat in front of her side-by-side, then tilted one down at an angle.