Lands Beyond Box Set: Books 1 - 3

by Kin S. Law

  The wheelchair threw him, of course. So did Esteban Dio’s missing legs.

  10

  Of Chess and Destiny

  Hikawa

  It was a week later before another airman could be diverted for Hikawa to speak to. Partly, the trouble arose because of the monks’ abject refusal to leave the Abbey, and thus abandon their monastic life. Messengers had to be found. From what Hikawa gathered, there seemed a general distaste for the airman lifestyle, as well. The monks tended to stay away from the ports and towers as much as possible.

  This time, it was a Japanese freighter captain who had some sympathies for a fellow countryman. Hikawa was glad to discover Tanaka Umihiko to be not only well-traveled, but familiar with Esteban Dio as well.

  “I am saddened to hear the news. The Abbot Francesco informs me the accident occurred a year ago, as Dio-sama was working at the bottling plant,” Tanaka informed Hikawa in the Abbey garden.

  After contributing the remains of his traveling funds with some hurried gestures, Hikawa had been allowed to stay in the Abbey, a few doors down from Dio’s room. The monks might be removed from society, but Hikawa’s lordly manner and bold, blatant squatting was universally understood. He tried not to think what might happen once the pull of his purse and the kappas’ patience ran out.

  “Dio is a member of an illustrious order of Knights Templar! What was he doing working?” The concept was as alien to the country daimyo as…well, as the rest of Italy. Not that he was daimyo any longer.

  “The Knights Templar have fallen. After the failed resurgence of the Inquisition, the primarily atheist elite have retaliated against centuries of persecution in Spain. Did you not think it strange Esteban Dio-sama was to be found outside his home country not on some assignment or assassination?”

  “So this is the European Steam Age,” Hikawa could only say. The normally spacious Abbey felt close and confined around them.

  “I know not where the other Templar have gone, but Dio-sama was forced to seek sanctuary here. Even in Italy, with the Vatican so close, a Templar elite would not be spared lest a new Inquisition be mustered. Our dirigibles and telegraphs carry information quickly.” Tanaka tensed, but he did not draw attention to himself by speaking softer. “I doubt the bottling plant explosion was an accident. Dio-sama is fortunate to have escaped with his life. The Templar still had connections to this Abbey, which maintains the finest hospice in all of Rome. I suggest you leave him to his old age.”

  “Thank you, Tanaka-san.” Having little else to give, Hikawa gave the last of his finery to Tanaka, who would at least know their value. The monks readily parted with their ubiquitous brown robes, at least.

  “Thank you. I would offer you passage out of Italy, but I know you will not take it. There is a look to you only someone who lives by the sword can understand, I think. But I warn you, the airmen are in an uproar–it seems the Calamity of London and Paris is coming south. Best fly back to Nippon when you can.”

  Hikawa ushered his countryman out of the Abbey, knowing the second he disappeared under the arch, Hikawa would be faced with a choice. He could not go back. His cousin, at the least, would never accept his return from exile. The prospect of eking out a living in the factories and plants did not appeal. What skill did Hikawa have in manual labor? Such things were peasant tasks, unfit for one such as he. Beside his sword, Hikawa had little else.

  As to the mysterious cataclysm, Hikawa had heard of no such thing. He could only assume it were some kind of natural disaster, preventing airship travel, like a storm. It was a fine thing. Hikawa had no fondness for vomiting.

  The lonely samurai sat before the church of the Virgin, in the Northeast of the Abbey under the shadow of a canvas factory. He was learning a little Italian from one of the kappa, at the least enough to mark the places he wished to go within the Abbey. The smell of dirigible chemicals blocked out the incense of the church, but there was a fine basil garden outside of it, with a bush of hops directly beside. The kappa were quite adept at cooking and brewing, once Hikawa got hungry enough to taste the fruits of their labors.

  His sword, yes, Hikawa still had his sword. He took it out of its sheath, admiring the heft, and the weight. The hamon, or wave in the blade, reminded him of the high cliffs of Okinawa. The wazikashi was inset with jade and pearl, and its guard was a shisa, guardian lion of Ryukyu, which made a male-female pair with the short tanto at his side. It was priceless—a Takatora original, a century old, and a family heirloom. Here, he doubted it would fetch him more than a week’s keep in linguini. Of course, he still possessed the cameo. He had learned what the bauble was called only recently, from an English tourist. But he would sooner part with his head than his mother’s only heirloom.

  “I am samurai,” Hikawa reminded himself. “I believe in the perfect cut. I came to honor the old ways, and to challenge a worthy opponent.”

  Indeed, he had. Esteban Dio was a legend, even in the backwaters of Ryukyu. Dirigible traffic had been bringing news of the legendary swordsman’s routs since Hikawa had been a boy. For a young lordling in the tropical islands, the conflicts of the faithful were gibberish; what he saw in the scraps of periodicals and propaganda leaflets was a quest. It was the gods versus the devils, of Momotaro ousting the oni, of Izanagi escaping the wights of the underworld, of good versus evil. Above all the Nippon in him answered the flash of the sword, the fleeting romance of the sakura tree and the eventuality of his becoming samurai.

  As he became older, such fanciful visions of the warrior class faded to obscurity. The Steam Age samurai was a civil servant more than a warrior. What battles there were to be fought were matters of delegation. He had pikemen and cavalry and lesser samurai to keep the peace, and in Ryukyu, there were fewer chances to use them than anywhere else in the country. Occasionally he would turn away his countrymen who urged the nation to Westernize, but the radicals had been dismissed as unpatriotic fools decades earlier, and were easy to shame in the face of a wealthy, advanced Nippon. More often there were the veiled enemies turning his sword in the tearooms and geisha parlors, shadowed alliances made, matters of importance conducted in secret. Who was Momotaro, or Izanagi? Who were the oni? It was very difficult to tell.

  Hikawa was tired of it, so very tired of it. If he could choose, he wouldn’t choose to go back. What master of worth might he serve? Being a ronin, or wanderer, was not so bad. Perhaps Hikawa’s next life would be in the service of a great man.

  Slowly, the early spring sun sank like a gigantic slab of pizza beneath the high, cabled cliffs of factories, and then the plaster of Roman frescoes in the west of the Abbey. With the darkness, Hikawa had his decision, as well.

  He had never gotten used to keeping his geta on indoors, and his feet clicked unpleasantly on the tile. In the yet warm interior of the rectory, darkness was a welcome messenger of the cool night to come. Hikawa clicked down the hallway, arriving at Esteban Dio’s chamber just as the last rays faded and candlelight was required. He knocked, gently, and when there was no answer he entered the chamber. Dio’s soft snoring was the only sound to be heard. Dio had fallen asleep in his chair, blanket thrown over his lower body. From the door, by Hikawa’s weak candle, Dio simply looked like an old man, grizzled and white. Not even the scar through his eye lightened the air of world-weariness settled round his shoulders.

  Hikawa sat down on the only other stool, and when Dio awoke, spoke in halting Italian, the words seized from a kappa during Tanaka’s brief stay.

  “Tell…me…of your…battle,” Hikawa said haltingly. It was enough to convey the message.

  There was yet a twinkle in the old man’s eye, and perhaps in the entire Abbey, those two in the room were the only people capable of understanding it. It was a look legible only to those who lived by the sword.

  11

  In the Shadow of the Valley of Death

  When the cataclysm arrived Hikawa and Dio were right in the thick of it. As was their custom, the pair were visiting the Vatican, playing chess in Sa
int Peter’s Square. The steamworking of Rome soared, seeming to belittle the Basilica and squash the palazzos beneath. Like great chessmen looking down upon a flat board, the manufactories and modern dwellings of Steam Age Rome bore down upon the Vatican’s marble on every side. Where one used to be able to walk seamlessly from the Italian capital to the spiritual one, high bridges and stairs now divided the border. It was still a lovely place to spend a brisk afternoon.

  Dio was winning.

  “I should like to think I was well enough known to the Spanish elite to require airborne pursuit,” Dio remarked as he slipped his knight in for check. Above them, the dark, unnatural cloud was rolling in over the famous clearing. All about them, people were hurtling past, to get away from the gleaming white target of the Vatican’s columns and rounded roofs. Souvenirs lay abandoned. Coffee cups were tossed to the ground. Photogram machines stood abandoned on their tripods, weeping memories. Dio and Hikawa calmly took turns on their ancient chess board. The battle had begun, and neither of them would stop even if the world ended.

  With the Calamity bearing down on them, the tourists had scattered immediately. But the cloud was slow, and of no immediate threat to two seasoned warriors. They were stones in a current of people, calm and collected. In fact, Hikawa thought he and Dio might be thinking upon the same thing. Within the great, high walls all around the city within a city, the visitors who trooped daily through the ageless streets never seemed to understand the sacred majesty of those silent chapels and severe graveyards. Even Hikawa, a man from the far Orient, understood the tranquil beauty of a place barred to steam engines or dirigible traffic by stoic Swiss Guard. It had boasted the same basilicas and palazzos for generations, impervious to Roman progress. There were many serious pilgrims, but for most the place represented a sort of abstract authority rather than any true spiritualism. The odd duo had more than once observed knots of foreign visitors throttle the streets with the artifice of contrived awe.

  “Does it bother you?” Hikawa asked. He gestured to the photogram machines and the litter from the tourists, then took Dio’s queenside knight. Meanwhile, a ship dodged the vast, ominous cloud and wrecked itself on a palazzo rooftop.

  “Should it? Their faith is not my faith. Besides, my God resides in the Kingdom of Heaven, not petty idolatry. Does it bother you?”

  “My faith is in my sword. Should I wish to cut a thing perfectly, I believe it can be done.”

  “As it once was mine. No cut is perfect. You may cut a head of lettuce a million times and only make a wonderful salad.”

  “No, but it would not be a wasted million.”

  It was a subject the two conversed about endlessly, and this day was no different. On the day of the Calamity, Dio and Hikawa sat at their chess, the board propped on a crate Hikawa had appropriated from a nearby café. Though a young, whole Esteban Dio might have leaped to his feet, gathering the assembled pilgrims in an orderly retreat, old Dio’s cumbersome chair and scattered effects made for an undignified exodus. Hikawa had little enough command of Italian. However, the two were still seasoned warriors, and they did not panic easily.

  “Dio-sama, I do not think those dirigibles are after your illustrious person,” Hikawa said. “They bear the mark of the antipasto.”

  “The flag, Hikawa, the Italian flag,” Dio corrected calmly. “Let us make a tactical retreat.”

  By this time the square was mostly empty, leaving a rather sad obelisk in the center of the rosa dei venti. Not four tatami from the stone, a sudden dark patch was advancing steadily across the square—a shadow from some massive object hanging far over their heads. Slowly but surely, a gargantuan cloud was drifting across the sky, hounded by circling dirigibles.

  “Cowards,” Dio mentioned casually.

  In exchange for being allowed to stay on at the Abbey, Hikawa had taken on the duty of personal caregiver for the esteemed Esteban Dio. It seemed an odd arrangement, until Hikawa realized Esteban Dio esteemed nobody but Esteban Dio. Hikawa was accustomed to such extremes of self-confidence. He had grown up with a father and uncles who were samurai, after all. As a fringe benefit, he had developed a dab hand at packing up Dio’s various belongings and leaving enraged serving staff. He now employed this talent to hustle Dio away from the shadow.

  Unfortunately, the Vatican had been designed for personages of divine inspiration, not old men in wheelchairs. Oiled and well-kept though the chair might be, and hale the old man within, they were still easily defeated by a flight of stairs. To exacerbate matters, Steam Age Rome had taken many liberties with its civic arrangement. Her streets and buildings had grown up and around the Vatican’s eternal majesty, until the steaming pipework and rusted iron buttresses stood heads above the misty stone of the Holy See. The closest way for Hikawa and Dio to get to safety was straight between the sweeping colonnades of Charlemagne and Constantine, and then towards the edge of the Vatican where sloped ramps led away from the round target of the Wind Rose.

  The pair rolled along the route, now emptied and made easily accessible. They made an odd duo, Hikawa in kappa clothes, wearing a strange oriental sword, and Dio clutching a satchel of chess pieces and bric-a-brac, rattling along on wooden wheels.

  “Hikawa!” Dio exclaimed, just as the first gleam of light appeared overhead. Hikawa did not see it, as he was navigating the slats of a walkway beneath, but he felt Dio trip the brakes on his chair, India rubber smoking as they clamped tight on the rolling wheels.

  The finger of God wrote on the ground before them—or so it seemed. The column was as brilliant and infernal as a Biblical digit, searing its way through the rusted green walkway as if it were a block of tofu. It spanned the width of the ramp and then some. Hikawa peered over the edge of his chair and beheld a chasm burning a bright red, coughing clouds of black smoke over its lip.

  “Hah, so we were right. Hell does exist!” Dio exclaimed in Spanish.

  Hikawa turned Dio around to find another way across. He was not as familiar with the Vatican, or indeed any part of Rome as well as he liked, but the tourists’ maps were easy enough to read. There was another way out due north, the opposite direction from where smoke and fire still emanated from the bright beam of destruction.

  “They go to such lengths to destroy me,” Dio joked to Hikawa, who was far too busy pushing and far too polite to answer much.

  Overhead, the Italian dirigibles had finally taken to launching some incendiary devices towards the ominous cloud, having decided a physical assault on their spiritual home warranted retaliation. There seemed to be no Swiss Guard craft about, though Hikawa doubted those showboats were actually capable of combat. The cloud seemed not to be affected by the smoking points of ammunition as they rocketed into the misty depths. But it lashed out anyway with bright arcs of lightning, all the while cutting away at the ground with its divine finger.

  As they neared another walkway, Dio again exclaimed, and again Hikawa responded by skidding to a halt. This time, a dirigible fell before them, wedging itself tightly across the Gate of Saint Anna. There was nearly no warning, and Hikawa had to hand it to the old man–Esteban Dio’s sense of danger was as sharp as it had ever been.

  “We must go round,” Hikawa said.

  Dio looked about to protest, but it was plain to both of them where the burning finger was headed–in a wide circle, enclosing Saint Peter’s Basilica and the Square, and a large portion of the Holy See from the Fountain of the Sacrement to the Museums. Going round meant stairs and narrow corridors. More importantly, it meant sacrificing some of Esteban Dio’s remaining dignity.

  Hikawa bent and, sword well-stowed, simply picked up Dio and slung him across a shoulder. Hikawa was in good shape, and the loss of Dio’s legs made him a lighter burden than he appeared. Hikawa took off at a brisk stride toward the Fountain of the Galera, where he knew there was another walkway.

  “Damn these kappa robes….” Hikawa griped, the only one he allowed himself to make. The rough brown material kept bunching as his knees bent to take
steps.

  “What in the name of the Holy Mother are kappa?”

  Hikawa briefly explained, about how the Abbey’s monks seemed like water imps with their perfectly round crowns. He had little enough breath to spare, but he had learned from experience not to deny Esteban Dio’s enthusiasm. The Templar had little to be enthusiastic about, save dice and beer.

  To his relief, there came a strangled sort of laughter from his shoulder. Esteban Dio found the idea hilarious.

  “In my country, there are similar stories,” Dio replied. “Though my order was given the charge of stamping them out, more often than not the cleaning men are the ones who get dirty. I remember—” But before Dio could recall a raunchy tale of the pagan oppressed, Hikawa’s voice wheezed into the gap.

  “Do you think of yourself in this manner? Swordsmen in my country honor ourselves by serving our lords. Cleaning is for peasants.”

  “The executioner’s sword holds no honor, merely blood.”

  Hikawa had no reply for that. Besides, the way was long, though not so long as the Emperor’s backbreaking stair.

  In the medium distance, the bright pillar from the cloud above was busy cutting a smoking line between the Gardens and the buildings of the Vatican. It cut noiselessly, leaving behind a smooth, smoldering line between the imposing wall of Steam-Age Rome and the picturesque, historic roofs at the Southern border, before heading to cut them off from the exit. Hikawa estimated he had a few minutes.

  “I believe in bushido,” said Hikawa. “I believe in the god of the sword. What righteous Christian would denounce his own God, Dio-sama?”