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flying machine would need to be light, like an
eagle’s hollow bones. It’d...”
    She trailed off when she noticed Cedar’s
glare. He seemed less amazed at the invulnerable shield and more
irked.
    “Sorry,” Kali said.
    “Let’s go back to your idea,” he said as the
flyer drew closer again. “You said I should aim at the boiler?”
    Kali eyed the shield again. It protected the
pilot to the front and the sides, but it was open on the top.
Presumably the woman entered and exited the control seat from
there. It left her no protection from projectiles from above,
though she had no reason to anticipate weapons fire from overhead.
Air vehicles were rare, and the flyer was quicker and far more
maneuverable than an airship, so it could easily evade
balloon-based transport.
    When it came in for another pass, Cedar
loosed a few ineffective rounds at the boiler. Kali considered the
structure of the craft, especially the supports for the wings,
supports that angled upward behind the pilot. She closed her eyes,
remembering problems she had worked through in her father’s
mathematics books. At the time, she had been trying to win his
favor by showing interest in his studies. He had been too busy to
notice, but she remembered many of the lessons, and a chapter of
geometry problems involving balls on a billiards table came to
mind.
    “Same principle for bullets, right?” she
murmured.
    “What?” Cedar asked.
    “See that support beam behind her?” Kali
pointed. “You’re a better marksman than I am. Can you see if you
can hit it...hm...about a foot above that joint?”
    Cedar threw her a bewildered look, but he
raised his Winchester and aimed when the flyer came into range. It
bobbed toward them, a grenade ready in its launcher. Cedar grew
still, then fired.
    The bullet ricocheted off the angled support
post and slammed into the back of the pilot’s shoulder.
    This time she screamed—the first sound she
had voiced—and the craft lurched. It sped off, wobbling as it
skimmed the treetops. The nose came up briefly, but it dropped
again, and Kali lost sight of the flyer. A thunderous crack sounded
in the distance.
    “Crash,” Kali murmured, imaging the twisted
wreckage. She wished they could have downed the vehicle without
destroying it.
    “Crash,” Cedar agreed without any of her
regret.
    Kali leaned her rifle against the logs,
jumped, caught the corner of the roof, and wriggled herself up top.
Conscious of the fire damage, she stayed over the stout support
beams as she crept to the peak. Though the trees still towered over
her, the added height let her see smoke wafting in the distance.
Definitely a crash.
    Had it killed the woman? Her shoulders
slumped with regret at the thought. It was silly, given the pilot’s
inclination toward killing her, but Kali hoped the woman had
survived. She ached to talk to her, to find out more about the
craft.
    A touch on her shoulder brought her attention
back to the cabin. Cedar stood beside her.
    “Good thinking,” he said.
    “Er, yes, sorry it was slow to come. I wasn’t
expecting to come face-to-face with...” Kali groped for a way to
describe her feelings. Would he understand and forgive her for
being so distracted? Or would he, the professional bounty hunter,
believe there were no acceptable excuses?
    “Your mechanically inclined twin?” Cedar
asked. “Yes, that must have been surprising. And intriguing.”
    Kali let out a sigh of relief. He did
understand.
    “Intriguing, yes.” She wanted nothing more
than to hop down from the roof, sprint into the forest, and find
that woman. “Any chance you’d like to delay our trip to Sebastian’s
claim to go check on that smoke and question this woman if she’s
still alive?”
    Cedar gazed into the woods, not toward the
smoke, but upriver, toward the claims. With one of the Cudgel’s
allies nearby, he must feel the pull of his quest more than ever.
But someone who had staked a claim was not going anywhere any