Captain Albion Clemens and The Future that Never Was: A Steampunk Novel! (Lands Beyond Book 1) (9 page)

             
“What else could I have done? She’s no longer a threat to us, and I left her with as much grub as we could spare. It would never have worked, Rosa,” Albion said jokingly. He looked at me with a fleeting expression, as if I of all people should have known what he really meant. I did.

             
“I don’t know. Maybe you ought to show it more often, that you actually care,” I answered him the only way I could. “Maybe you could have offered her a place with us. You were certainly quick to offer it to Vanessa Hargreaves.”

             
“It’s time for us to go, Rosa,” he ordered. Albion fumbled in his pocket, as if he wanted to hammer home the point but the prop was missing.

             
“It looks like Kitty Desperado got the better of the Pyongyang Purloiner after all,” I said, and gave him my best smirk. I took my own pocket watch, a delicate jeweled number purchased with my
Hook
winnings, out of my bodice and twirled it in his face.

             
“Next time I see the little…” he muttered, and made a motion with his hands like he was drowning a cat. “I shouldn’t have given her back the Chandler Polaris.”

             
“Wait… you WHAT!?”

6: Rome

             
Hikawa Shoutaro was about to collapse in the courtyard of a monastery.

After days of kneeling in the sun, he was parched, dusty, but no less determined. Figures in brown robes kept passing by, pointedly ignoring his suffering or laughing uncomfortably at his odd, layered clothing. Others left food or water before him, items Hikawa did not touch. To touch a drop of charity would be to throw away an ocean of honor. Besides, much of it was unfamiliar foodstuffs: hard, brown buns, wedges of something yellow smelling of stables, and the occasional glass bottle, bound heavily with cord, smelling heavily of heady, rotten fruit.

Hikawa assumed it was some decadent European
sake
.

             
On the first day, the kneeling had been relief. After months of vomiting into the waves off a seafaring trader, then weeks of vomiting into thin air on a connecting dirigible, Hikawa finally reached the outskirts of Rome. From there, he had boarded one of the Europeans’ metal dragons, a smoky, rattling, crowded affair seemingly made to test Hikawa’s Zen calm. The denizens were raucous, hairy, and they had an alien smell.

Rome herself was narrow and crumbling beneath the pressure of time. Hikawa saw much ancient beauty, too often marred by unappreciative residents.

Carvings lay in broken piles on the ground. Historic streets ran obscured by haphazardly built dwellings.

A beautiful wall made of some white jade-like material had been drilled into by an enterprising owner, creating a ladder into an otherwis
e inaccessible loft.

Despite nearly run over by
buzzing, steaming two-wheeled horrors streaking through those narrow channels, Hikawa’s sandals eventually treaded the pleasant gardens of the Abbey, nestled in a claustrophobic corner of the city.

Cool grass embraced his knees. Though the figures in brown robes, with their odd hair cropped to look like so many
kappa
, or water imps, chattered incessantly at him, Hikawa did not speak Italian, and it was too late to learn.

Instead, he conducted the ritual: possessions, laid before him, just so. His hands, placed at rest on his knees. He spoke the name of the one he wanted, and settled down to wait.

              On the second day, the stiffness and numbing took on the familiar background unimportance of toil. Hikawa had gone through worse simply obtaining the leave of the emperor on his journey. There were the days on horseback, weeks of polite waiting in richly lacquered parlors, and the thousands of steps the country warden had been allowed to climb to actually gain an audience with the emperor. He had counted a hundred and eight
tori
, or spirit gates, on the long stair, with a hundred and eight steps between. Finally, he had had to renounce his ancestral lands, passing them onto a distant relative desperate for the title. The only things he had been allowed to take were the clothes on his back, some little provisions and the way of
samurai
. It mattered not; Hikawa had long discarded such frivolous things.

             
There was the sword, of course. He had been allowed to keep his
katana
. Without his sword, a perfect cut would be impossible.

             
That afternoon, some youths dared challenge the strange man with the black topknot and tanned complexion, like a Sicilian, who sat as if he awaited the end of the world.

They approached him from behind, as if he would not be aware of their presence. There were four of them. Hikawa was not yet so far gone as to be deaf to their footsteps.

The red lacquer of his sword sheath before him reflected their figures clearly- one larger than Hikawa himself, the others likely cronies. They threw small stones at him. Hikawa knew the missiles for what they were: a test of his mettle, no more than the barking of small dogs at some interesting new animal in their yard.

The instant one touched
him, the youth found himself flat upon the floor, Hikawa’s fingers a pincer round his wrist. Hikawa hadn’t even stood up.

             
Some small fuss resulted from this altercation, of course. There was some rustling of brown robes. Several of the
kappa
emerged to chatter some more at him, but they seemed unwilling to acquiesce to his clearly stated demand. Neither did they look prepared to throw him out.

For the first time, Hikawa considered the possibility they were toying with him. No, it could not be, Hikawa reassured himself. Such a thing would blot out the honor of so great a swordsman as the one he had come to challenge. Hikawa repeated the name to the
kappa
, rather more insistently, changing his honorifics to reflect his growing impatience.

It was a masterfully phrased demand- as polite as a request could be for a
samurai
of his already substantial accomplishments, yet clearly communicating the existence of discomfort. He had faith it could not be misconstrued. Very proper- his father would have been proud.

             
Now it was the third day, and morning dew had ceased to sustain Hikawa’s lean, muscular form.

His knees were locked comfortably in their customary pose beneath him, but everything else felt parched, dried out, like a bit of
bonito
, ready to be shaved. A wisp of longing drifted through his mind, of hot fluffy rice, and simple days in his Ryukyu island home. Even with the dirigible traffic from Lands Beyond explorers, news reached the cluster of islands at a languid pace- even the passing of the era

to
Showa
had come a month late, by official messenger. For a Nippon lauded for advancement in steamworking, the Ryukyu clusters often felt like
Meiji,
even
Edo
era with its open ocean breezes, tropical climate, and country simplicity.

             
Shoutaro shook the remembrance from mind. It would only make the ordeal more difficult. Besides, here was a contingent of
kappa
, come to receive him once more. Perhaps they would be civilized this time, at least with a missive from their master. Hikawa had not been treated this way since he had been an apprentice.

             
The brown robes parted way, to reveal a man black of hair and eye, with no other resemblance to Hikawa. Where Hikawa was tall, and dressed in the finest Okinawa fabrics, this man was short, slender, and patchwork in various severe styles. Hikawa had seen such a
nabe
, or hotpot, of clothing before: an airman.

             
Casually, this new arrival took a most offensive squat directly before Hikawa. To the samurai’s eye, the airman’s chin was now resting on top of his genitals. This rude person cocked his head slightly, proceeding to bark a series of harsh syllables. He seemed to be repeating something, then switching to another staccato of sounds, equally expectantly. Finally the airman emitted something Hikawa could understand.

             
“Hello? Hello? Nitwit, you best say something useful soon, else the good whores will all be bought up.”

             
“Pardon?” Hikawa answered, in the same tongue. This was Cantonese, the language of the Imperial Canton not far to the southwest of Ryukyu. Hikawa knew the dialect roughly, from the traders in Okinawa who brought in dried shitake and hairy grass. Ryukyu islanders still retained much of the Middle Kingdom heritage, down to the lion statues guarding their homes.

             
“He speaks!” The airman ejaculated a string of harsh profanities. Such was not uncommon to the dialect, and Hikawa let it pass unmolested. “It was tough going for a moment there. I had a hard time guessing where your
hometown
was.” He placed a certain emphasis on the word, to mean ‘origins.’

             
“This is your mother tongue,” Hikawa guessed, to an emphatic nod.

              “At first I thought Japanese, from your sword, but the peasant rags reminded me of the Balinese, for a bit,” the airman rolled on.

“I don’t speak Japanese. Good, good. Those baldies over there, they’re only giving me a chit for the job, so you better hurry up and tell me what you want. They can’t tell the difference between two Orientals, anyway.”

              “These are
monks
?” Hikawa ejaculated, for ‘baldy’ was slang for the Buddhist monkhood in Cantonese. Hikawa had assumed all the proper spiritual personages were ensconced in the monastery, meditating, and the scurrying
kappa
were merely civilian servants forced to endure some cleansing ritual. To think such undignified…

             
“Sure. They do things differently in Italy, but the noodles aren’t bad,” the airman continued. “The name is Wang, by the way. Wang Shi-Fong, or Peter Wang. On purpose, not unfortunate.”

             
Hikawa did not know how this was meant, but he introduced himself politely anyway.

             
“A proper
samurai
! I’ve never been to Ryukyu myself, but I hear it’s very… assorted.” Wang trailed off a bit. “Anyway, what’s your business at the Abbey?”

             
“Is it not obvious? I come to challenge the Templar Esteban Dio-
sama
to honorable battle. It is to be a real-sword challenge.”

             
Hikawa reeled, for as the words left his mouth Wang threw back his head in a huge guffaw.

             
“Boss, you crack me up!” Wang said, shocking the
kappa
behind him by nearly losing his squat and falling over.

             
“Wang-
dono
, you risk your neck,” Hikawa warned him, hand hovering quite close to his sword.

             
“Best not,” Wang warned amiably.

His eyes moved pointedly in their sockets, and Hikawa followed their indication to the fire-spear at Wang’s hip, pointedly but stealthily aimed into Hikawa’s chin. Hikawa was good, but no blade ever beat a bullet.

“Do not take life so seriously!” Wang said, sheathing his weapon so it was hidden once more. The
kappas
had taken no notice of the sudden tension, and were actually milling about impatiently. “The western devils do not understand your customs, friend! Hell, I doubt many Chinese would either. You have knelt for nothing, and your accent is horrendous. I will translate- a moment, please.”

             
Peter Wang went off to chatter busily at the monks, who seemed taken aback at the proposal. Still, Wang had performed his function, and after a moment’s fumble with a purse, Wang was taking leave of the
kappa
, heading out of the Abbey’s little court. He stopped to wave back at Hikawa.

             
“Boss, take care now! Don’t let the old man cut you with his chair!” Wang called back enigmatically.

             
Hikawa was about to respond, but the
kappa
held out hands to help him up. Assuming they were to lead him to Dio, the
samurai
stood by himself, stretching out the kinks in his legs as he did. One of the
kappa
offered him a skin of water, which he accepted, and then they were on their way into the red walls of the Abbey. Hikawa supposed it would be improper to ask for green tea, or his childhood favorite, pineapple juice.

             
“This is a beautiful place,” Hikawa remarked, though of course the monks did not understand. Nor could Hikawa’s meager skill at poetry do justice to the stands of violently green stone pine, olive, and fig stalwartly surviving the soot of a modern Rome, or the severe, majestic architecture surrounding him.

He did not expect to be led to the Coliseum he had seen arriving to the city, but perhaps one of the many beautifully sculpted courts or an inner sanctum. They would be appropriate places to die, should it be his fate. Duly, Hikawa was surprised when they arrived at a nondescript square mass of brick, its duty as a building only indicated by the presence of a door and some slits for windows.

There was no time for puzzlement, for the monks bid Hikawa enter.

Inside, the walls were plainly whitewashed and barely furnished, befitting a monastic existence. A single ornament of some gilded wood crowned a lobby about four
tatami
large, something like the
kanji
for ten. The ornament was everywhere in the Abbey, if he thought on it. Hikawa looked about, bemused; he had heard the Templar preferred a simple, ascetic life, but such extremes hardly befit a man of Esteban Dio’s reputation.

Where were the holy land relics, the spoils from the routs at home? At the least, some tarnished mail or chipped sword should stand monument.

As they entered deeper into the enigmatic building, further mysteries seemed to arise. The few rooms they passed were shut, but one some ways ahead revealed a motionless lump nestled in an iron frame bed. At last, the
kappa
halted before a door no different from any other, and bid Hikawa enter.