The Matsumoto Trilogy: Omnibus Edition

by Sarah K. L. Wilson

  “Look,” Jenna said. “Look, you idiot, your knife went right through her hand!”

  I was blinking back tears, but I saw Roman’s gaze swivel to my hand, and he stopped thrashing against Martin. Ian’s eyes went to the pool of blood forming beneath my hand. As soon as the fighting stopped Jenna’s attention swiveled back to me.

  “Now you’re pledged whether you meant to or not,” Jenna said, steel behind her words. Everyone remained perfectly still as if a spell had been cast. Perhaps it was shock, or simply curiosity.

  I looked around at them all. There was this feeling in the air, like if I made the wrong choice then Roman and I could say goodbye to ever seeing another sunrise. Maybe this is what happened to Denise. Suddenly my companions seemed more sinister than ever before. I glanced around at their cold faces and made my decision.

  “I pledge to protect Capricornia,” I said, and I heard Roman sigh in frustration.

  The reaction to my words was like a dam broke. Everyone started laughing, and Jenna ran over to help Ian, who had cracked his head on the stone when Roman shoved him. In the chaos, Roman bent over me, examining my hand.

  “I have a kit to help you with this, but we should wait to remove the knife till I have a good place to stitch you up.”

  I nodded.

  “That was pretty stupid back there,” he said, his burning cinnamon eyes boring into me.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, meekly, not sure if he meant the pledge, the kiss or the waterfall.

  “I admire your tenacity, Matsumoto, but please try to stay in one piece,” he said gently, still holding my injured hand.

  “If I died here, Roman, no one would even care.”

  “I would care,” Roman said, looking away.

  “And I still can’t figure out why,” I said.

  “Can’t you?” he sighed, almost as if he hadn’t meant for me to hear, and then Ian interrupted us.

  “Vera, I’m so sorry! It was an accident, I swear.” He was looking at me in that melting way with those gorgeous blue eyes and I couldn’t help but smile my forgiveness.

  “Sure Ian, It’s no big deal,” I said, but I was nervous. Only a moment ago it seemed like he might kill me if I didn’t pledge.

  “Let’s get you to camp right away so we can take care of that hand.”

  It turned out that the camp wasn’t very far away. It was about a half an hour’s hike further down the path, still high on the ridge of the huge hill, but nowhere near the monument site. The most time was spent convincing the others that my hand was fine enough until we got to the camp. It wasn’t bleeding too much and all the fussing over me was making me uncomfortable. For a little while Ian had demanded that I be carried, but when Roman moved in front of me in a way that even I found intimidating he seemed to give up on that at least.

  When we finally sorted things out enough to begin walking again, my hand was throbbing and it was hard to keep the jolting of each step from making me gasp as spears of pain shot up my arm. I gritted my teeth and tried to distract myself.

  “Did Denise take the pledge?” I asked Ian.

  He seemed uncomfortable at the question and he looked away, but Jenna answered for him.

  “We don’t discuss the ceremony after it is complete,” she said simply.

  There were more rules for being a Capricornian than you ever would have believed if you just watched them from the outside.

  As everyone settled I allowed Roman to sit me down on a chair with my left palm spread out over a low table. He carefully cleaned a needle, a small scalpel and his hands, and pulled out other tools and bandages.

  “This will hurt”, he warned me, before easing the knife out of my hand. I bit my lip, holding back a yelp and felt my eyes tear up and he gently swabbed away the blood and inspected the cut. “The knife only hit the meaty part of your hand. A few stitches and a bandage will sort you out right away.”

  I nodded, still trying to hold back tears and he began to stitch my hand. Every stitch was painful, but the tugging feeling of the thread was the worst, and it turned my stomach. I clenched my teeth to keep my nausea back.

  He bit his lip as he stitched, glancing up at me from time to time. I blinked back tears, and when he finished the last stitch he sprayed an anesthetic over my hand for the pain and wrapped it in a bandage. I breathed a sigh of relief, glad it was over. He reached up, oh so gently and wiped the corners of my eyes with his thumbs.

  “You shouldn’t fight me, Vera. We’re both in this together.”

  “I know, but if there is some way that you could be free of me you could pretend you never even heard of the Blackwatch Empire. I know you hate having to serve them. What’s to stop you from leaving right now? You could even stay here. Settle down with Gretchen maybe.”

  He gave me a wry smile, “Besides the fact your Emperor is showing up here in a week’s time with the entire fleet to destroy this planet?”

  “Besides that,” I said.

  “That little vow of yours puts you doubly on the line to find your cousin before they show up and obliterate the planet you just promised to protect.”

  I sighed, “So many promises, so little time. But seriously, Roman, you could go somewhere else, find a way off this planet and away from Blackwatch entirely.”

  He gave me a funny look I couldn’t understand and said, “I don’t want to go anywhere Vera, I’m staying right here.”

  “Well, that’s convenient for me I guess,” I joked.

  “You don’t make my job very easy, you know,” he grumbled.

  “I don’t think you can complain about this one,” I said, “since it was you who pushed Ian into me.”

  “Ian,” Roman said, like it was a curse, “That boy burns my self-control like its reactor fuel.”

  I laughed, and he looked up in surprise.

  “You think that’s funny?”

  “Yeah, don’t you?” I asked.

  “No, I don’t. I’m trying to protect you from him and you think it’s funny.”

  His face twisted like I’d hurt him, and I felt like a deflated balloon. I always said the wrong thing. I reached out and took one of his hands in my good one.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, my eyes welling with tears.

  He nodded, not meeting my eyes.

  “No, really. It wasn’t funny.”

  His hand gripped mine a little tighter and then he released it and looked around, taking in our surroundings in his guardian way.

  The camp was as amazing...as advertised, although it was difficult to fully appreciate it with my injured hand. When we got there, the valet from the yacht was already there, with a bonfire and our luggage laid out and our beds turned down. Ian said he’d been dropped off by helicopter, and the smell of the food he had laid out made me appreciative of the effort. The camp consisted of a common area for eating and the campfire outside. Hammocks were strung between the trees in various places around the edges of the common area and reclining chairs and little wooden tables dotted the area, too. A small pool steamed just outside the camp, that Ian assured me was a natural hot spring. That seemed pretty inviting for later.

  Outdoor showers were boxed off with bamboo woven sides for privacy and outdoor bathrooms were enclosed in a similar manner nearby.

  The bedrooms were where the artist had come in. She had shaped white pod-like dwellings, almost like garlic cloves into the spaces between the roots of some of the most verdant jungle trees I had ever seen. Their branches spread above us, their roots tangled around the pods and the colorful birds from before nestled high in the branches hundreds of feet above the pods. Inside the pods were elaborately designed with every convenience imaginable and stacked bunk beds. As always, I was slated to share one with Roman.

  From the common area you could see over top of the jungle below, just like you could from the stone steps. It seemed like we were sitting at the very Apex of Capricornia.

  “I’m not going anywhere,” he said.

  THE EX-PACIFIST: 30

/>   AFTER AN EXCEPTIONAL DINNER WE found ourselves sprawled out around the campfire. I was sitting on a flat stump, cradling my injured hand and thinking about Denise. So far this entire expedition was a complete waste of time. After all that I’d been through I still had no idea where she could be or what might have lured her away from her Capricornian keepers. If they were to be trusted, she had just wandered off in the night. According to Jenna it had been the night she had stayed here, right after the ceremony. Sitting in this idyllic location enjoying the warmth of the afternoon sun, it was impossible to imagine what could have whisked her away.

  In my preoccupied state I let my eyes drift over our party. Jack was talking quietly with the valet, likely arranging supper for tonight. Jenna and Kenneth were flirting in a hammock. Gretchen was sunbathing her amazing figure, as if it needed any more attention, and Roman was walking our perimeter, familiarizing himself with the landscape. I took that to mean that he finally felt comfortable enough with our party that he didn’t expect any of them to murder me right here.

  Martin crouched over a stump similar to mine, surreptitiously tapping his tablet screen. He must be trying to keep it from the others, and I hid a grin. It was hard enough for regular people to get away from technology in this day and age. I couldn’t imagine how so many influential people managed it for so long.

  I was turning the whole concept of Capricornia over in my mind like a lozenge on the tongue. Capricornia was settled by scientists with a passion for human development and eco-preservation. Well they’d clearly managed the eco-preservation, except where those blackened fire areas were. What could have been on fire? Towns, like Roman thought? Well then why not rebuild?

  For a country concerned with human development, it was weird that I had yet to see a Capricornian child. I hadn’t seen a single person under fifteen yet. Of course, different people meant different things by “human development.” Maybe they didn’t mean training and conditioning. Maybe they meant something more, like the implant chip currently in my head. Or maybe it meant genetic tinkering. My ancestors had tried a little of that before they were stopped. I knew for a fact that my DNA was full of little scientific trinkets from tinkering four, five, and even six generations back. Maybe population growth wasn’t important because they’d discovered some kind of longevity thing that kept them all alive, beautiful and eighteen forever. That thought gave me the chills and I looked around, embarrassed that someone might notice.

  It was then that I noticed Ian had drawn his recliner close enough for a conversation, but not close enough to startle me. When he caught my eye he started to speak.

  “You’re bodyguard seems particularly rabid today.”

  I shrugged, “It’s his job.”

  “Yeah, because you’re a pacifist, right?” he asked.

  “I guess. Or at least, I was one before. Now I’m not really sure.”

  “What do you mean?” He sounded more like he was leading me to talk, than that he was actually curious.

  “I killed a man. Can you have killed a man and be a pacifist?”

  “I don’t know. I do know that you can’t really be anything you want to be.” He freighted his words with bitterness.

  “I would have thought that you, of all people, would be free to do as you like,” I replied.

  “Are any of us free to make our own choices, Vera?”

  “Our choices make us who we are.”

  “Even the ones we were forced into?”

  “I guess,” I said, with a little sigh, my eyes tracing the ferns on the jungle floor.

  “Then I guess you aren’t a pacifist, are you?”

  “Maybe I’m an ex-pacifist.”

  “Maybe that’s the best thing to be. To be an ex-something.”

  I shrugged, reluctant to get more philosophical.

  “I’ve been sitting here thinking about my cousin Denise,” I said, changing the topic.

  “Any thoughts?”

  “No. I would have thought something here would trigger an idea of where she could be, but so far there’s been nothing. It’s far away from civilization. I don’t see why she would wander into the jungle, but your people said there was no evidence of foul play.”

  “Maybe she went with someone because she wanted to,” he offered.

  “Maybe.” I didn’t buy it.

  “Why don’t the two of us take a dip in the hot spring and you can tell me more?”

  “Yeah, ok,” I said, pulling myself to my feet and following his lead towards the sleeping pods. It was a matter of a few minutes and I was back into the yellow bikini and following him to the hot spring. I’ve been in hot springs before, but this one smelled a lot less like sulphur than most do, it was actually pretty appealing.

  We eased ourselves into the hot spring, placing ourselves carefully on the smooth rock and letting the warm water wash over us. I was particularly careful to keep my injured hand out of the water.

  “What’s going to happen to you after this, Vera?” Ian asked.

  “It depends on how my trip here goes,” I answered.

  He nodded, as if he already knew the answer. “I’m helping you all I can, but as you can see there isn’t anything here to lead us to your cousin.”

  I toyed irritably with my damp hair.

  “If you don’t get what you are looking for, you should stay here. You’ve made the pledge. You might be able to qualify for citizenship. It would be a good idea, a good home for you,” he said, inching closer to me in the water until our knees touched.

  “Oh, and why’s that?” I was starting to feel uncomfortable. I wondered if a deer felt the same sort of itch between the shoulder blades when a hunter had it in his sights.

  “Because I’m here,” he said, as he gave me that same smoldery look that made my heart speed up. He leaned in, and I thought he was going to kiss me again, when a loud splash covered us in hot water.

  With a yell of rage I jumped up, clasping my sodden bandages to my chest. My hand hurt already, but the water made it sting even worse. With a snarl I turned to see who was responsible.

  Roman lounged in the hot water, presenting us with an angelic smile.

  “The hot spring looked too good to resist,” he said innocently.

  I stormed out of the spring to get a new bandage and change. I didn’t want to soak in a hot spring anymore.

  The rest of the afternoon and evening passed without incident and at midnight I found myself aching for the bed in the pod. The active morning had taken its toll on me. Roman followed me into the pod. I was holding the portable lantern in my good hand. In order to make it more rustic, our perfectly designed luxury pods did not have lighting panels installed. Roman took it from me wordlessly and set it on the table while I got ready for bed.

  “You’re in the top bunk,” he said.

  “Why?”

  “Because if someone attacks us in the night, I need to be at ground level to defend you.”

  I was too tired to argue. I just crawled obediently up to the top bunk, wrapped myself in covers and settled in for the night. I was still wearing jeans and a long-sleeve t-shirt, but I was too tired to care. I had just about drifted off when Roman interrupted.

  Still partners, Matsumoto? He almost sounded conciliatory, and like he had something more to say. I was too tired to hear it.

  Still partners, I agreed, drifting off.

  I slept until the screaming began.

  THE EX-PACIFIST: 31

  I JOLTED AWAKE IMMEDIATELY, GLAD I had fallen asleep fully clothed. At least there wouldn’t be the embarrassment of running out of the pods in my skivvies only to discover that the scream was the result of a mouse and a squeamish sleepwalker.

  Roman was already fully alert, dressed, and with weapon in hand, sliding open the pod door just enough to peek out. He shut it just as quietly, motioning for me to join him on the floor. I obeyed without thinking. This was like one of the training exercises. It was one thing I had been trained for, and for once I was reading off the
same script as Roman.

  Stay close. Do as I say. Roman was terse in his anxiety. I hugged in tight behind him I could feel the warmth of his body through our light clothes. It reminded me of the first time we did this together.

  We left the pod, Roman leading the way and me creeping behind him. After one step outside I realized I had no shoes, but it was too late to go back for them. We inched through the thick roots of the trees towards the next sleeping pod, Gretchen and Jenna’s. Roman shoved something back at me and I felt cold tubular metal in my hand. A flashlight. I knew better than to just flick it on.

  I couldn’t hear a thing in the jungle around us, except for our own footsteps. Could we have imagined the scream? But then I realized it. I couldn’t hear a thing. The jungle hadn’t been quiet all day. There had been some animal or bird making noise from the first time we arrived until now. Animals could sense danger, couldn’t they?

  We reached the pod and Roman motioned to me.

  You look inside, I’ll watch your back.

  Ok.

  I felt in the dark for the slide-door, and gently pulled it open. The interior was dark. I flicked on the flashlight, trying to cover all but a narrow beam with my injured hand. When my eyes finally adjusted I bit back a scream. Jenna was lying on the bottom bunk, nettles peppering her chest and fresh red blood running from her mouth. I managed not to scream, but the hiss I made alerted Roman. He glanced in the pod, saw Jenna, and then turned back to the darkness.

  Door closed. Light off. Keep quiet.

  I obeyed mechanically, trying to convince myself it was just a scenario we were running in the training center again. I was not fooled. In the dark, my feet finally found the path again, as Roman led towards the next pod. The noise of leaves and branches hitting something to our right alerted me even before Roman shoved me into a tree, with his back pressed right up against me.

  “Jack,” he hissed. I didn’t know how he could tell who it was in the dark.

  Jack stopped running, turning in a circle, and whispering, “Who’s there? Who are you?”

  “It’s Roman and Vera,” Roman whispered, “Where are the others?”