Peacemaker by Lindsay Buroker Read Free Book Online

She
only paused long enough to make sure she was swimming in the right
direction. It was a testament to how cold she was that she reached
the shore before Cedar. She was tempted to jog back to the SAB—and
rip dry clothes and Cedar’s bedroll off the back—but she figured
she had best wait and see if he was injured or needed help. She
wouldn’t put it past him to race into battle and roar with
excitement while having a life-threatening wound.
    While she waited, she
watched the airship veering inland, smoke still wafting from the
charred hull. Maybe it would crash, the pirates would abandon it as
unsalvageable, and she could claim it for her own. That thought warmed her
cold limbs more than a little. If the hull was in decent shape, she
could commandeer it and not have to construct one from scratch. Oh,
she’d want to build her own engine from the ground up—no telling
what piecemeal garbage these pirates were using—and she had ideas
for dozens of modifications, but if she didn’t have to build that
cursed hull, she’d save months of construction time. She flexed her
cold fingers. Maybe a few digits endangered by that saw as
well.
    Her mind filled with daydreams of
reconstruction, Kali almost missed Cedar slogging out of the water
downstream. He had sheathed the sword, but he was still carrying
that bag, a small but bulging canvas tote. It made him lopsided as
he 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 for
warmth. “I could have done without the bath, but I suppose dropping
onto land would have been worse.” She gave him a once over, decided
he was uninjured, and headed along the bank toward her bicycle.
Puffs of steam still wafted from its stack, and nobody seemed to
have bothered it. The skirmish had cleared the river of boat
traffic.
    “ True.” Cedar strode along
beside her. He pointed at the airship—it was drifting on the other
side of the river now, going nowhere fast. “It looks like your
grenades proved useful.”
    “ Of course,” Kali
said.
    He walked in silence for a moment before
glancing at her and asking, “Aren’t you going to ask what I was up
to in there?”
    “ Judging by the sounds,
you weren’t attending a quilting bee.”
    “ Nope. I had to fight my
way out of their cargo hold. At first I had a notion of
singlehandedly taking control of the ship, but there were a lot of
them, and they were well-armed and reasonably accurate with their
firearms.” Cedar touched a rip in the sleeve of his duster. “They
cured me of my notion, but I was able to make my way up top, and I
spotted some of their stolen loot on the way.” He hefted the bag.
“I figure this might be that old man’s claim earnings. Getting it
back might ease his crankiness a tad.”
    “ Huh,” Kali
said.
    It sounded like a good adventure, and she
might ask for more details later, but she wanted dry clothes first
and a blanket around her shoulders. Having the sun come out would
be a nice perk, too, but if anything the fog was growing
denser.
    Cedar sighed. “I see you’re still a hard
lady to please.”
    “ I’m pleased.”
    “ You are? How would one
know?”
    “ I’m listening to you
instead of contemplating upgrades to my next batch of
grenades.”
    “ I see,” Cedar said.
“That is a high
honor.” He probed one of his soggy pockets, pulled out a knot of
beads, and handed it to her.
    Kali untangled the snarl to reveal the patch
of decorated hide he’d been fiddling with all through supper the
night before. “Good that this survived, I guess,” she said, not
sure why he was showing it to her.
    “ No,” Cedar said, delving
into a different pocket. “ This survived.” He pulled out another talisman, this
one unknotted. “ That I found next to the sack of gold.”
    “ Oh, hm. What do you think
the pirates are doing with an identical one? Is it something they
found? Or are they behind the