Dreamlands (20 page)

Everyone nodded, and Hikura went back to his lesson. I was pissed, but more at myself than anything else, because he had managed to get under my skin.

“While Tamazusa-sama was my consort, she was never my wife,” Samojirou said.

I blinked. “What’s the difference? And small words, I’m dumb.” He stepped back so that our conversation wouldn’t disturb the others. “There is much that I cannot tell you.”

“Or won’t?” I asked dryly.

That earned me another look of respect. Something was going on.

Samojirou knew this entire plan had been fucked from the start and that we were all arguing like children for some reason. Not that we all got along usually, but this was beginning to be embarrassing. And what was this “centuries” crap? The man looked like he was Wolf’s age.

“There is much that depends on your knowledge of certain things,” Samojirou said. “I will not bore you with ancient history, but she was never my wife, nor did I ever treat her as such. It is sufficient to say that Tamazusa-sama rose to lord of this
kuni
because of her talent and her intelligence. I chose to help her further her ambitions, for a number of reasons.”

“And not because she has a set of brass ones,” I muttered.

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“I am afraid that I do not understand the reference,” Samojirou said with a smile, making me think that he completely did.

“Nothing,” I said. So they weren’t together; that explained the Sakura chick. Maybe. “But how ancient is the history?”

“Are you asking me my age?” Samojirou asked.

He was laughing for some reason. Okay, I wasn’t the smoothest interrogator the Trust had, but he didn’t have to act like this was joke. I shrugged, wanting to punch him in the mouth. “You aren’t a chick. You never ask
them
that.”

“I think that if I understand the slang that you are using, you would consider me a cock?” he asked.

“You said it, not me,” I said. “But you say ancient history. For some people, that’s yesterday. For others, ancient has a different meaning.”

Samojirou smiled and nodded. “I was born in the year of the metal serpent, ten cycles ago.”

I stared at him. “That means nothing to me.”

“And that is why I told you that,” he said smoothly.

“Son of a bitch!” I cursed.

He laughed, and I was wondering what was so damned funny, because he knew what I meant. The others looked over at us again, and I decided it was easier to try and deal with the fucking map than with him.

FELICITAS IVEY

142

MASON

ONE headache and three maps later, it was time for lunch. Samojirou trooped us all into a big mess hall, like he was our nanny or something.

Wait, no, he was here to make sure we all didn’t kill each other more than he was worried about us hurting his people. I wasn’t too put out when I figured out that we were eating with the other warriors, the guys I had dubbed the posse. Still no Keno though. Maybe the posse might be willing to take me and Wolf off Hikura’s hands. The man was about as interesting as mud, but he was having a lively discussion with McGann and the ice bitch, even if she had been sneering like a bad villain from a Saturday morning cartoon for the entire lesson, something about maps and languages and research, shit that bored the crap out of me.

Romejinoff looked around; the sneer was back on her face. She just figured out that she was eating with the help. I wanted to point out to her that she was damned lucky they weren’t eating her―and I didn’t mean
out
. McGann had that same pinched look on her face that I had, trying to figure out what I was looking at on the fucking map. I guess so many people around was giving her a headache.

Lunch was communal, with the couple of dozen guys passing around bowls of stuff. Rice, veggies, and stuff I couldn’t identify, but I 143

DREAMLANDS

was betting it was fish. Meat didn’t seem to be on the menu at all. I recognized the bruiser, Kazuya, and wandered over to him. Samojirou frowned, but he didn’t do anything else. I thought he figured out it would be easier to rescue me than control me. He was trying to herd the five of us, and I thought I was giving him the least amount of trouble besides Wolf, and the most entertainment.

Kazuya looked down at me and grinned. I was a big guy, but he had me by a head and looked like he could wrestle a bus and win. I stooped a little and pantomimed hair on my head, pulled up in a tail.

Which was fucking funny, since I shaved my head, a habit I’d kept from prison.

“Where is he? The guy that kicked your ass?” I asked slowly. Not loudly though, because while I was an ignorant American, I knew that volume didn’t help anyone figure out English any faster. “I’d like to talk to him.”

Kazuya laughed his ass off at my charades. I grinned and shrugged. “The kid with the hair. From this morning.” The big guy shook his head and started speaking really fast to a couple of the others. Both of them were smaller than me and looked to be fresh out of school, but something made me think they were older―maybe the centuries crack Samojirou made had something to it.

They all looked confused and a little pissed. There was a lot of arguing back and forth in Japanese, and then the youngest-looking one turned to me. His hair was pulled back in a braid. Most of them had long hair, and all of them had it in some sort ponytail, out of their way for a fight.

None of them were wearing the weird hairstyle you usually see samurai wearing in pictures and bad movies. But even with all the long hair, I didn’t think of them as girly or anything. Keno had been girly with his hair, but then, we didn’t let him cut it for all the time we had him.

McGann kept saying she didn’t think that he should be near anything sharp.

“I am Seki. We think that you should talk to Samojirou-sama about his blossom,” the kid said. His English was slow and halting, but I could understand him easily enough.

“Huh? What the fuck?” I asked. “I just want to talk to the kid.” FELICITAS IVEY

144

“He is someone that you should talk to Samojirou-sama about,” Seki repeated firmly.

I looked at all of them. None of them looked happy with me. The rest of the room was staring at us, and I realized I had fucked up. I didn’t care. I was willing to take a beating from Kazuya if I got some information on Keno. “When did this blossom show up?” I persisted.

Seki looked at me, weighing how much he wanted to tell me, and there was a lot more arguing between the three of them. I noticed Samojirou was just sitting there and smiling, not helping them at all. I thought he kind of knew what I was doing and was giving me enough rope for me to hang myself.

“Several weeks ago,” Seki finally said. “In the beginning of the fourth month. We are well into the eighth one now.” So it wasn’t Keno, because he had only been missing a little more than a couple weeks. So where was he? And why was someone called Blossom kicking these people’s asses? “He always that good?”

“I think that is enough,” Samojirou finally said, coming over to us. “You should eat.”

I shrugged and went to my seat. The rest of them were already eating, Murphy scowling at the food like it was a personal insult since it wasn’t meat and potatoes. He looked up when I tried to fold myself underneath the table.

“Don’t fucking cause trouble,” Murphy snarled. “Not over a gook programmer.”

Samojirou scowled at us, and I knew he knew what that word meant and wasn’t happy Murphy was calling Keno that. I glared at Murphy. “Why don’t you just shout nigger in the middle of a NAACP

meeting?”

“What are you talking about?” McGann demanded.

“I think that our babysitter knows what that word means,” I hissed. “And he don’t like it.”

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I was pissed and wondering if Murphy had left his brains on the other side of the rollercoaster ride. He usually wasn’t this stupid, but I hadn’t worked with him in the field. In fact, I thought this was the first time I’d seen him out from behind a desk. The man was old to be running around after monsters. I was getting up there too, and I knew it was a young man’s game, monster hunting. I had a couple more years left in me before I was pulled out of the field, unless I became monster chow first.

“Nigger?” Murphy repeated with a grin. It wasn’t a nice one.

Romejinoff and Wolf looked confused, and McGann looked faintly disturbed.

“No,” I snarled. I didn’t care that we were now the center of attention, everyone in that hall looking at us. “That’s the other insult that you shouldn’t be fucking throwing around.”

“You have no sense of humor,” Murphy grumbled.

“I’m not the one you have to worry about,” I said. “No one here has to put up with your shit. I do. Which is why I haven’t fucked you over for being an ignorant asshole.”

I got up and moved back to Seki and Kazuya. “If I stay with the boss, I’m gonna fucking slug him.”

Seki looked alarmed. Samojirou was at the other end of the room, talking to someone, ignoring me again. “You shouldn’t talk about your lord like that.”

I was confused, and I got fucking angry. “That asshole isn’t my fucking lord! I just work for the same people that he does. Shit, Wolf’s usually the one that I’m teamed up with or I got my own posse.”

“So you are
ronin
?” Seki asked.

“I don’t know what you mean,” I said honestly.

Samojirou was still at the other end of the room. He looked over at me, and I waved. He smiled at us and shrugged. Seki nodded, and I guess he was giving him permission to talk to me. “I won’t ask about Blossom. But what is a
ronin
?
Sama
? I think that it’s a title because FELICITAS IVEY

146

you used it with Samojirou and Tamazusa.” Seki looked appalled at my ignorance. I shrugged. “I don’t know a lot of fancy shit; it’s not my job.

And while you hear about all those folks that get a degree in prison, I never thought that it was worth it. Who was going to hire someone fresh out of prison, even if he has a fancy piece of paper?” Seki looked faintly confused. “I have no idea what you are talking about. So could you explain some things to me, and I will tell you what you have asked about.”

I noticed that he didn’t promise to tell me about Keno, but I nodded my agreement. “Ask away.”

“What is it that made you so angry with your leader?” Seki asked.

I hesitated and realized it didn’t matter. “He was throwing around some pretty nasty fucking insults, and it pissed me off.” Seki nodded, but I could tell that he wasn’t getting it. “Trust me, gook and nigger aren’t something that you should be calling people,” I said.

There was a lot of discussion and waving of hands. I swore that Kazuya couldn’t talk without waving his hands around. It was funny, really. Seki finally worked out everything with the others, and he turned back to me. “
Ronin
is a samurai without a lord. It is a bad thing for a samurai to be without a lord.
Sama
is our word for lord. It is both a term of respect and a title. Tamazusa-sama is our lord.”

“And you respect Samojirou-sama,” I said.

“He is our lady’s councilor, as well as her confidant,” Seki said.

“They….”

There were some chuckles from the others, but I ignored them.

Murphy was glaring, and I was ignoring him. Samojirou I couldn’t really ignore, but I was working on it. “How long they been together?” Seki looked uncomfortable about that question. I waved my hand and smiled. “Never mind. I work in a place that half the shit we do is need-to-know and if you had to ask about it, then you didn’t need to know about it.”

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Seki looked confused. “That doesn’t sound very wise.” I shrugged. “I don’t make the fucking rules, but I know that I got my ass raked over the coals because of it. Like I have no fucking clue why Murphy’s the lead on this.”

“You think that it should be you?” Seki asked, and I thought he translated my comments to the others.

“Fuck, no,” I said with a grin. “Wolf or McGann.”

“Um, who―” Seki started.

“Either the tall blond guy or the shorter blonde chick,” I explained. “The other two are being bigger assholes than usual, and I’m not trusting them not to fuck up walking and talking, here. Wolf’s been my team lead before, and McGann always has her shit together.” He told the others that. I felt slightly weird about it, but it wasn’t like I was telling them something they didn’t know about already. As an invasion force, we sucked, and I thought that more than anything else we were going to self-destruct. It wasn’t like I was telling him about the incident in Boylston Street or that we were missing a shitload of people who didn’t make the bus. I hoped they had just missed the ride out and weren’t lost like Thompson’s legs.

“So what do you do?” Seki asked.

This was the tricky part, but I decided not to bullshit him. “I shoot monsters.”

More talking, and Kazuya said something. I was waiting for the punch I deserved. Seki asked, “With a bow?”

“Nah,” I said, “with those pretty clubs that we came here with, they actually work other places but here. You shoot things with them.” They all laughed when Seki translated that, but I also saw the crowd around me getting bigger. “So what do you consider monsters?” Seki asked.