by Sarina Dorie
The doctor stabbed Faith’s arm with the needle. She gasped. Immediately she began to sway where she sat. She fell back toward Jacques. At least he caught her. I didn’t think he would let her come to harm physically.
“Watch that one. She’s feisty,” Jacques said to the two soldiers, nodding to me.
They dragged me toward the door. I tried to squirm away from one guard, but he tightened his grip. Mostly I struggled to distract them. This wasn’t the moment to get away. I needed a moment to study their uniforms, to examine their movements and find weaknesses. Tomomi Sensei, my old fighting teacher, had always warned me not to be too impulsive.
“Wait for the right moment and know when to act,” she used to say.
This was neither the right moment, nor the right battle. The men holding me hadn’t yet dragged me to the door when it swished open. Captain Jeanfreau barreled into me, nearly knocking me out of my guards’ grip. I could have chosen this moment to run, but experience told me to wait longer. Instead, I exaggerated my stumble, letting my arms flail and grope the soldier’s side as I righted myself. I lifted the laser pistol from his belt and let it fall into the long rectangle sleeve of this mostly useless attush. The long sleeve had slowed me down and made me weak on more than one occasion. This time at least I used it to my advantage.
The guards righted themselves and gained a new hold on me.
Captain Jeanfreau shoved us out of the way and stomped over to the doctor who was now examining Meriwether. “What is the meaning of this? I was told my private surgeon was called over to attend someone onboard this vessel. I had to find out from a lieutenant someone’s been shot.” He switched to French to shout at Jacques.
The guards yanked me out of the room.
As the door swished closed, Jacques raised a laser pistol into the air. His smile was like a tanuki about to steal a tender morsel from one’s hand. From the cry and the thud that came a second later behind the closed doors, I assumed he’d shot his captain. Another thump came. Someone else had dropped. It didn’t surprise me. The captain had been a fool and Jacques had little respect for him. He’d do what he needed to further his own agenda.
The two guards dragging me exchanged worried glances. They spoke a few words I didn’t understand. One man shook his head at the other and nodded down the hall.
I closed my eyes and went limp. My knees struck the metal grating of the floor but they caught me before I fell on my face. Faith had told me British and American ladies were always fainting in fear. Not that she had ever once fainted. I didn’t know if I fooled them.
One of them moaned in exasperation. He picked me up. One of my arms dangled behind his back, enabling me to drop my hand into the depths of my sleeve and grab the laser pistol. I switched off the safety and leveled it at the man who wasn’t carrying me. A blue light shot out and the man fell to the ground. The man holding me whirled to see the other collapse. I pointed the gun at the back of his head and pulled the trigger again.
He crumpled underneath me. I sprang away from him, examining both to ensure they were dead.
Their charred skin looked like overcooked meat. I’d seen blood and broken bones many times, but rarely injuries like this. The smell of burnt flesh made my stomach churn.
The other pirates would know I escaped as soon as they found the bodies. I dragged one body to a closet nearby and stuffed him inside. There wasn’t room for the other. I didn’t know where to hide him. The first room I tried was locked, as was the second. I kept dragging him until I reached the stairwell. I pushed him down. I thought to dispose of the corpse in the cargo bay where the chiramantep would be able to gorge themselves on him, but footsteps sounded on the deck below and thudded closer to the stairwell. I ascended the stairs to the level above.
There was one place on the ship I might be safe, but it was what Faith would call a long shot.
Chapter Eighteen
The tatsu that smiles and remains calm is always stronger than the tatsu that rages.
—Ancient Jomon proverb
I found an empty room and crawled into a robotic maid entrance. I could use this to hide and get about the ship without notice. It seemed like the perfect plan.
Until the engines started up.
The rumble of the ship engine shook the passage around me like thunder. The air grew hot and stuffy. I felt as though I was being crushed as the Absinthe rocked this way and that. I slid down the tunnel until I reached a fork in the path I could hold onto. My ears throbbed.
The ship had vibrated like this when we’d launched from Aynu-Mosir, only it hadn’t been so intense. Metal screeched and something shuddered through the ship. It felt like an explosion, but perhaps that was just my head. The sound was so immensee and the vibration rattled me so greatly that pain blossomed in my head. My nose bled and I couldn’t hear.
It wasn’t like this the last time we’d lifted off. That hadn’t hurt my bones and head and every bit of kamuy that lived inside me. I squeezed my eyes closed, waiting for the sensations to pass. After a while I noticed the vibration wasn’t as intense. I lifted myself onto my hands and knees, but my limbs still shook. My stomach flip-flopped and dizziness washed over me in a wave. I went limp, too weak to move. The queasiness in my belly didn’t get any better, so I suspected I would have to crawl to someplace better, even if I didn’t feel well enough to do so. I didn’t make it far before I vomited on myself.
As if that wasn’t bad enough, one of those soulless robotic maids came whirring through my tunnel. I didn’t feel much like a battle. I watched it suck up my vomit with a tube. It tried to scrub me with a brush until I kicked it. After that, it pushed me up against the wall and squeezed past me, on its way to torment someone else.
Eventually, I blacked out only to wake up to a new robotic maid scrubbing me in the face with foul smelling chemicals. I turned my face away and tried to shove it away. I was as weak as a baby tanuki cub, my punch more of a swat than a powerful blow. Inside the side of the robot was a clear compartment of clothes it had swallowed. At least it wasn’t mine it had gotten this time.
My head pounded as soon as I lifted it and my stomach somersaulted. I didn’t know what was wrong with me. The nausea came at me like the ocean’s tides. Every time I managed to move a few lengths down the service corridors, it returned.
“Blimey, this is where you’ve gotten yourself to,” said a soft voice.
I blinked my eyes open to find Eli peering down at me with concern.
“I’m dying, aren’t I?”
“I bet you feel like you is ’bout now.” He patted my cheek as though I were a child. Had I been a little stronger, I would have protested. “What kind of barmy idea did you get into your head to stow away on a ship launching into hyperdrive without taking no space meds?”
“Space meds?” I asked.
He dragged me down the corridor as he whispered at me. The motion wasn’t quite as bad as when I tried crawling on my own. “Aye. They must have given you a shot the first time you went into space, didn’t they?”
“Oh, that.”
“You’ve got the whole bootlicking lot searching for you. The commander himself came to my post in engineering. He searched high and low, he did: inside all the machines, every barrel and sundry and manner of place big enough to hold a person. I didn’t give you away none and I didn’t say I’d seen you. As much as he scares me, I hate the idea he’d be scaring after you. They didn’t find you nowhere and the engine room was the last resort. I heard them figuring you must have escaped the Absinthe before it launched. Lucky for you too. It’s likely they won’t come back for you in engineering.” He stopped at a fork. “Here we are at a turn. Reckon it’ll be a rough one for you.”
He talked on and on, like a happy little nose bird. He grabbed me under the arms and pulled me around the corner. That much motion made fire lance through my ears. Bile rose up in my throat and I choked. Eli rolled me over so I could heave onto the metal and not onto myself.
He patted my back. “Don’t worry
, love. We’re almost there.”
“How much further?” I asked.
“We’re just a hop, skip and a jump away. We’ve got a deck to go and then some.”
I lay back down, miserable. The sickness in me felt even worse than when Charbonneau had given me his dirty gaijin disease to try to kill me to exterminate my people.
Eli’s chatter filled my ears like a song. I closed my eyes and listened. He didn’t chide me for being deadweight, nor did he get mad at me when I was sick on his shirt. Faith had yelled at me for that once. Of course, the circumstances had been different. I’d been laughing so hard I’d choked and then I’d heaved my dinner onto the pretty dress she’d taken so much time sewing. I felt bad comparing Faith to this stranger. How could I blame her for being cross with me? She’d been so miserable on Aynu-Mosir. Between the cold winters, the near starvation, and her loneliness without her sister, I hardly made her life easier by vomiting on her favorite dress.
Eli distracted me with conversation until we reached the engine room. He wasn’t a warrior and didn’t try to carry me to his bed. He dragged me across the floor behind a little red curtain hanging from a line of rope and tucked me into a bed of blankets not so different from my bedroll back home. I woke up once to Eli sticking my arm with a shot.
I started and flinched back.
“Hush, love. It’s just some medicine to take the space sickness away.” I think he tried to be gentle with my arm, but he wasn’t as good with the needle as Meriwether had been. His brow furrowed. “Sorry, ’bout that. I’m no doctor and I can only hope I did it right.” He smoothed my hair out of my face.
His eyes were full of such kindness and affection, it struck me as rather sad. For so many years I had yearned for Faith to look at me that way. I had dreamed she would come to realize she loved me as much as I loved her. There had been moments I thought I’d seen something in her eyes, but I’d been mistaken. Horror had flash across her face when she’d realized how I felt about her.
She didn’t love me, but I couldn’t not love her. Even now I worried how she fared, if she had been given time to rest, or if Jacques had manipulated her when she’d been at her most vulnerable.
I hadn’t been able to gather Faith state of mind. After dosha kuzure, there was no telling how one would react to the memory mudslide. It was a highly dangerous practice that the elders forbade because it could cause madness. Of course, there was the rare individual who could only perform memory exchange in such a manner. When Faith’s sister Felicity had given my brother so many memories at once fourteen years ago, he had gone mad for a time. He’d relapsed several times, Faith had said. It would have shamed him for others to know he’d behaved with so little control, so I’d never told him I knew.
I had no way of knowing how much control Faith had at the moment. Yet, there was no one I knew as strong as she was. She could be fragile and soft one minute, and another she was as harsh and tenacious as the winter wind. If anyone could master dosha kuzure, it would be my friend. I had to believe she could take care of herself, even though I doubted it was so.
The aroma of food woke me. My belly grumbled. A steaming bowl of broth rested on the floor beside me. I sat up. Immediately my head throbbed and I lay back down. My stomach cramped, but I suspected the ache in my belly was more from lack of food than anything else.
“You awake, Miss Sumiko?” Eli peeked over the top edge of the curtain. “Are you ready for some food?”
“Yes, thank you.” I sat up, but closed my eyes when the pounding in my skull started up.
“Blimey, you’ll make yourself ill again that way. You lie there and rest. There’s no use getting your stomach all twisted into knots.” He came around and sat beside me. He rearranged the pillows behind me so I could lie at more of an incline. “There, how’s that?”
He held the bowl and lifted a spoonful. It was golden orange and smelled of meat and vegetables. My belly growled like a chiramantep about to attack.
I frowned. “I can feed myself. I’m not a baby.”
“I expect you can, but if you’ll be so kind as to humor me, I’ll feed you anyway.” He held the spoon closer to my lips.
I opened my mouth. The broth was rich and flavorful, reminding me of the daily soup we’d had at home, only saltier. Eli held up another.
“I’m not used to such treatment,” I said. “People usually don’t take care of me. Always it’s the other way around.”
“What do you mean? You’re a princess, aren’t you? You must have loads of servants where you come from.” Eli fed me another spoonful.
“My life is a very simple one. As the leader’s sister, it’s my duty to serve the people. I fight and hunt like everyone else. When it’s my turn, I wipe snot from the little ones’ noses and bathe the elderly who no longer can care for themselves.”
“Well, Christ’s hospital! I’ve never heard no such thing! A princess who serves others. And fights? It weren’t you who shoved that soldier in a closet, were it?”
I smiled by way of answer and opened my mouth for another spoonful of broth. He could interpret that how he liked. After another mouthful I asked, “Have you heard anything about my friend, Faith-chan? I mean, Faith. Or about her fiancé, Meriwether Klark?”
Eli started, jostling broth onto himself. He set it aside and wiped his waistcoat with a handkerchief. “I beg your pardon, Miss Sumiko. That’s who they’ve got onboard? Didn’t know that. None of those Frenchies tells a commandeered mechanic nothing, as you might imagine.”
He picked up the bowl again. His hand was less steady than before.
“I’ve said something that disturbs you,” I said.
“Disturb? Bloody hell no. Just surprised, is all. I know who he is. Have to be a barmy fella not to know who the Klarks is. Most important family in the British Empire.” He fixed his gaze on the bowl, avoiding my eyes.
He was lying. That was interesting.
“He a friend of yours, this Mr. Klark?” Eli asked.
“Not a friend. He’s my friend’s fiancé, and if he is true to his word, he will help us escape. Though I suspect his plans have encountered some unexpected piras.” I didn’t know the words for a cliff that rises up in front of you and blocks your path. Getting himself burned like someone’s overcooked dinner, for instance, was a definite cliff in his path. I watched Eli’s face for a response. When there was none, I went on. “He’s in the hospital, I think they call it. He was shot and the things around him caught on fire and burned him. I’m afraid he’s badly injured. At home when my people breathe in flames and burn their lungs there’s little that can be done to save them. Is it the same among your people?” I didn’t know this was the case with Meriwether, but I was digging to see how Eli would respond. Like many gaijin, he wore his emotions on his face for all to see.
Eli chewed on his lip. “I don’t rightly now. I’m not the doctoring sort, but I know we have the ship surgeon onboard and he’s a learned man who can sew a man up and have him on his feet again in a week like nobody’s business.” He stared into the distance.
I didn’t think Eli hated Meriwether Klark from his reaction, but he did know him. I opened my mouth for another spoonful.
A swish of doors made Eli look up. He thrust the bowl into my hands and placed a finger to his lips before rushing out.
“Oi! What’s you gents doing in my private engineering room again? Don’t you know how long it took to clean it up after the way you busters mucked it up last time?”
I listened to one man bark out a long sentence of undecipherable French.
“I don’t speak no Frog. You bring me someone who speaks the proper Queen’s English,” Eli said.
He was very bold for being so small and not even a warrior. I smiled. My belly grumbled. I slowly sipped the rest of the broth. After all, I didn’t want the beast of hunger to give me away.
Eli’s voice rose. “Shoo, I said. That’s right. Au Revoir.”
My belly full, I snuggled into Eli’s blankets, notici
ng how they smelled like him. I smelled like him. How strange I didn’t find the perfume of metal and grease repulsive. Only days ago I had thought the starship and all about it was evil. Something had changed in me. I didn’t find the change unpleasant at all.
The sound of restful breathing beside me convinced me I was sleeping beside Faith like I always did. I rolled closer, comforted by the familiarity. I draped an arm around her waist and nuzzled my face into her neck. I expected the sensation of her silky soft hair to brush against my lips, but my face only felt skin. That alone wasn’t enough to disturb me. But her scent was peculiar, no longer the flowery soap she liked to use. The soap was clean, but not perfumed. There was something in the air like the chiramantep grease Faith used in her paints. My nose tingled with the scent of metal.
She still smelled like a woman. She smelled like someone I couldn’t have. Her hand slid over my hand.
The fantasy came to a close when I felt my arm being gently shifted back onto my own belly. Had it been Faith, she probably would have just elbowed me. I opened my eyes, taking in my surroundings. The red curtain dimmed the light from the other side, but not so much that I couldn’t see Eli’s expression as he turned to glance at me.
“Pardon me, miss. I think you must’a been dreaming. Didn’t mean to wake you.” He looked away, his expression somewhere between a sheepish smile and a grimace.
Perhaps his embarrassment saved me from feeling the same. Instead, I could only focus on fatigue.
He scooted a little farther away. “You go back to sleep. I’ll get you something to eat in the morning.”
I fell asleep thinking about how he smelled like a woman. His voice was between a man and a woman’s. His build could have been an adolescent boy’s, but his eyes said he was older. Was he a woman?
The next meal Eli brought me was another bowl of soup and bread. This time the broth contained chunks of meat and starchy vegetables. It was like home to my mouth and I savored every spoonful.
I stretched and yawned. Only now did I notice I wasn’t in the red attush Meriwether had made for me. I wore a long white shirt. I couldn’t remember what I’d been wearing the last time I’d woken. Perhaps I’d been too ill to notice. I found Eli staring at me, his lips slightly parted, staring at the place my nipples poked against the white fabric.