The Lost Future of Pepperharrow Read online

  ‘If it’s just about not firing on them, then why would anyone do that?’

  Fanshaw waved his hands at the whole department. ‘Because! Have you seen the heights of gibbering indignation the upper echelons of the Japanese armed forces can achieve? They’re still samurai. They grew up being unofficially allowed to test out new swords on unwanted foreigners. They’re still getting to grips with the idea that there are forces in the world they can’t bully. I almost guarantee someone will fire.’

  Thaniel tried to match that idea to Mori, who had never bullied anyone.

  Fanshaw let himself slouch. ‘Anyway, as I say, have a think tonight. But you do need to go, if you’re going to go much further with the Foreign Office. If you get stuck in England, you’ll be a clerk forever.’

  Thaniel nodded again. Japan; he’d never been further than two hundred miles from home. The idea of it was so big that it was warping everything around it, even sitting here in the same old chair with a folded up Chinese passport stuck under the back leg to keep it level. Ten minutes ago, the office had just been the office, familiar, and cosy in the fog. Now, it didn’t feel safe. Instead of the fog, Japan was pawing at the windows, vast and nebulous, and for all he spoke the language and lived with a man who had grown up there, it was dark to him.

  Fanshaw clapped him on the shoulder. ‘There are things poor people don’t teach their sons, and one of those things is that there’s a link to home you must sever, if you’re to do anything real at all.’

  TWO

  Tokyo, the same day

  Kuroda had met Mori for the first time on a battlefield. The fighting was over by then. The field was beautiful, with mist hanging softly over the broken parts of men, horses, and artillery chassis, the grass black with blood and gunpowder burns. The only people standing upright were the relatives of the soldiers, looking for survivors, or at least relics to take home. Nearly all of them, including Kuroda, moved in a half-grim, half-panicky way, sometimes jolting forward to turn over a body and check who it was, sometimes having to pause at the edge of the field when they saw something too bad.

  There was one figure who moved in clear, straight lines between corpses. He didn’t hesitate, he didn’t look at them, and he walked serenely through the slaughter like it was a rice field. Before long, Kuroda found himself staring, because he was overcome with the certainty that he wasn’t seeing a man at all, but a death god, collecting souls.

  He didn’t believe in death gods, so he went and introduced himself. The young man laughed and promised he wasn’t a death god, just a very junior samurai from House Mori come to collect the armour of his fallen brothers. They’d got on well ever since. But Kuroda had never completely shrugged off the suspicion that Mori might actually have been lying about not being something other than entirely human. He hadn’t been in the least surprised to find that what had looked, to begin with, like a knack for luck, was actually an ability far more precise.

  And then suddenly, after ten years in government service, Mori had moved to London. Almost certainly to defect. No doubt the British had given him a better offer. The Prime Minister at the time would have liked him killed, but Kuroda had quietly made sure nobody tried. It would have been stupid. Ironclads were all well and good, but when the Russians finally did come – he’d always known they would – it would be a hell of a lot better to have a death god. Or whatever you wanted to call him.

  This morning, walking through the building site that was the Imperial Palace, Kuroda couldn’t help feeling put out that Mori hadn’t turned up yet. The Russians had been inching closer for two weeks, all but mooning the southern ports, and there was still no sign of him. Not even a telegram. Defector or not, Mori was still a samurai, not to mention a proper friend. Kuroda had honestly thought he would come home to help, if he were ever really needed.

  He ducked as some men went by with bamboo scaffolding.

  Everywhere, new glass panels winked. The Palace had burned down not long ago, and now builders were replacing all those very flammable old paper walls with brightly coloured glass. Walking through the new corridors was beautifully like navigating a kaleidoscope. Some things the Royal household got right.

  Not very many, mind.

  Ideally, Kuroda would have convened this Privy Council meeting at the local pub. It was impossible to discuss anything with the full pedantic weight of the Imperial Household leaning over your shoulder. You weren’t allowed to take the Emperor to a pub, though, and he was not feeling very optimistic. They needed to get to the point, not priss endlessly. While everyone was agonising over the place settings and the correct forms of address, the Russians were drifting nearer, and nearer.

  All they had to do was make someone fire. If someone shot at a Russian ship, it would be war. Everyone might as well learn Russian now.

  If no one fired, there were two possibilities. One, everything would be fine; the Russian fleet would end up nearly anchored in Nagasaki, where, given the spirit of Nagasaki, all the boardwalk traders would make a shedload of money rowing out and selling excellent Chinese food to the Russian sailors, and in general everyone except the Home Ministry would consider the whole thing quite funny. It was just about possible that at that point the Americans or the British would get jealous enough of their trading rights to chase off the ships.

  Two, the Russians would anchor at Nagasaki, invade, and then look sorry later at the international war tribunals, before utterly failing to hand back the land they’d taken. The British had built an empire out of doing that and Kuroda saw no reason at all why the Tsar wouldn’t think it was a splendid idea.

  It was two in three, then, for an industrial war the like of which had never been fought before. Part of Kuroda itched to just sink their flagship and get on with it.

  The meeting that morning was in a grand room at the Palace with an echo that could be heard even from the corridor outside. The household steward, butler, imperial whatever – Kuroda hadn’t bothered to learn his title – bowed at him meticulously at the door.

  ‘Prime Minister! Despite your scheduling difficulties it is hoped that this chamber will prove appropriate,’ he said, with an air of triumph that put Kuroda strongly in mind of a dog that had brought back all the old shoes you’d tried to throw away earlier. Kuroda had come up with the scheduling difficulties on purpose. He had suggested moving rooms four times, trying to outrun the uniformed men with rulers and name cards.

  ‘Superb,’ he growled, wondering if anyone would really bother to prosecute him if he smacked the man with his own ceremonially embossed ledger.

  Government ministers sat in a great horseshoe of chairs upholstered in deep purple velvet, behind a table draped in green damask. They were all in perfect morning suits or, in the case of the military ministers, black uniforms, the thin gold brocade across their chests glinting in the light that flooded in through the huge windows and the chandeliers. Kuroda thumped into a chair.

  Beside him, the Emperor’s table was draped in red in case, Kuroda supposed, any newcomers or wandering foreigners perhaps hadn’t noticed that the youngish fellow kicking around court with too many servants was the Emperor. Like he often did, Mutsuhito came in quickly, to keep ahead of the comet tail of staff behind him, and waved in some men with tea and coffee as everyone jerked to their feet.

  ‘Sit down, sit down, I haven’t got my crown on yet,’ he murmured.

  They sat, stiffly, and only gradually unstiffened as the bright teapots and cafetières went around. Mutsuhito wore a beard and a perpetual frown to seem older, although he had a bleak manner that made both unnecessary.

  ‘The thing is,’ he said suddenly to Kuroda as if they were still at the tail end of their conversation of yesterday, ‘what if they do end up nearly anchored in Nagasaki? It’s Nagasaki. People will have sold them fourteen different kinds of chicken and then stolen their lifeboats before they can even say priviet.’

  ‘Yes, and then every single country in the world will be giggling at us, sir,’ Kuroda sa
id tiredly. It was treason, but he would have given anything for the Empress to attend these things instead of the Emperor. She told people things, and then the things happened. It was how command was meant to work. Mutsuhito was totally unsuited to being in charge of anything more complicated than a dinner party.

  ‘So?’ said Mutsuhito in his unbearably neutral way. ‘We shan’t be in violation of any treaties. They shan’t be legally allowed to invade.’

  Kuroda stared into his coffee. He hated coffee. ‘Quite right, sir, but there will come a point when they don’t especially care what they’re legally allowed to do, and nor will anyone else. The British and the Americans will shrug and say it’s our own silly fault for failing to defend our own borders. And even if they don’t invade this time, someone else will, because we didn’t fight.’

  ‘Even though it would … be illegal for us to fire on the Russians. But aren’t they in violation of our waters?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘That’s a conundrum.’

  Kuroda wondered if he was in Purgatory.

  Mutsuhito was looking at the next few pages of affairs to be gone through, altogether serene. He let the corners trail through his gloved fingers. ‘I think this young man is hoping to talk to you,’ he added.

  Kuroda twisted round in his chair. Tanaka had been waiting just by the door, ignoring the steward, who was trying to insist that a red coat with patched elbows and a Fabergé egg was not appropriate attire. Kuroda went out to him as quickly as he decently could.

  ‘I could kiss you,’ he said.

  ‘Prefer it if you didn’t,’ Tanaka said, and seemed to notice the steward for the first time. ‘Yeah, mate, no offence, but will you fuck off ?’

  The steward, amazingly, did as he was told.

  ‘Any news?’ Kuroda said quietly. He just about kept himself from saying, is Mori coming.

  Tanaka nodded once and handed him a file. ‘Yes, sir. These are the findings so far from Aokigahara. The scientists are settled in, they seem pretty happy. We’re getting a few reports of ghosts from the greater Tokyo area now, mind you, but so far it’s mainly people in coal warehouses and flour mills. None of the papers have picked it up yet. But, one big request from the head physicist.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘What they’ve been saying all along. There’s only so much they can do without a real clairvoyant to run tests on.’

  ‘I know,’ Kuroda said. He sighed. Mori wasn’t coming of his own accord. Fine. He was surprised, though, because Mori must have known what Kuroda would do if he didn’t turn up. ‘Send a telegram to our ambassador in London, tell him we want to make an accusation against a British civil servant. Nathaniel Steepleton. Indecent assault against the son of a major samurai house.’

  ‘Hey?’ said Tanaka.

  ‘It’s England,’ Kuroda prompted him. ‘They’re religious fanatics. Their favourite hobby is policing people’s bedrooms.’

  ‘Oh yeah.’ Tanaka thought about it. ‘Culty weirdos. Dunno why anyone would put up with it, myself. Are they brainwashed, sort of thing?’

  ‘Visit and you’ll see,’ said Kuroda. He would have paid a lot for a phonograph recording of Tanaka’s reaction to a Baptist church sermon. ‘Anyway, Mori should turn up pretty sharpish if he doesn’t want his boy in prison by next week.’

  Tanaka nodded slowly. ‘Surely he already knows you could make that threat though?’

  ‘I’m sure he does,’ Kuroda said. It was vaguely troubling that Mori had waited for him to make it. ‘But let’s hurry him along.’

  ‘And we’re definitely sure he isn’t going to kill us all?’

  Kuroda snorted. ‘Tanaka, he’s a knight. Promise him a decent fight and he’ll come. It’s called fun.’

  Tanaka looked like he could come up with a few other words for it than fun, and he had begun to turn away when a very young aide appeared with an envelope.

  ‘Um, sir?’ the young man squeaked.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Telegram – for you? From a Baron Mori?’

  Kuroda waved it at Tanaka, then tore the envelope open.

  This doesn’t bode well for not firing at the Russians, does it? My nine-year-old is better at playing chicken than you. See you on Dec 18th.

  Like a banner, the old familiar joy of the fight unrolled in Kuroda’s heart, dusty for having been packed away for so long, but no less bright. He’d been starving for it ever since he left the Navy, only he hadn’t understood how badly until now. A proper tournament, with a proper knight, for the first time in years. All at once he wanted Mori to be here right now, to see what happened next, with the wonderful fitful kind of excitement he’d had on his wedding day.

  Tanaka lifted his eyebrows when he saw the telegram. ‘You’re all insane,’ he said.

  ‘The only way you get any good at war,’ Kuroda said, still so full of elation he could probably have floated quite a respectable hot-air balloon with it, ‘is if you love it. That’s what a real samurai is.’

  ‘Great, great, and how are we going to make a clairvoyant stay in a room long enough for a bunch of scientists to ask him things? You know, if he doesn’t gracefully submit the second he arrives? He doesn’t sound like he means to.’

  ‘The scientists have some ideas,’ Kuroda promised.

  When Kuroda got home, his steward was in a tizz. There was, apparently, a woman in his study and she wouldn’t go away. Puzzled, he went through. He did keep a geisha, but she was the real thing: an exquisite professional who had an ethereal way of not always turning up even when you were hoping she would. When he opened the door, though, the woman in his study wasn’t a geisha. She was little and plain and looking into his aquarium, where his octopus was prodding at her fingertip with one tentacle in what was definitely a handshake. He felt betrayed. He’d started keeping a pet octopus ever since he’d met Mori’s clockwork one. They were a lot more endearing than cats and, usually, a lot more loyal.

  ‘Mrs Pepperharrow,’ he said, honestly shocked. Like a fool, he found himself searching around for a reason to get away from her, and then felt angry with himself, and with her for making him feel that way. ‘I’m busy, what do you want?’ he said roughly.

  ‘The owls have come back,’ she said. She didn’t sound offended, or worried, or vengeful. ‘Mori is coming home.’

  ‘I – yes, I just got a telegram,’ Kuroda heard himself confessing.

  ‘Good stuff. Want some help?’

  ‘What? But – you hate me.’

  She nodded. Her strange eyes were ticking over him, up and down. Rather than step towards him when he came in, she had stepped backward, well out of reach. ‘Yes. But we both know he’s far more dangerous than you.’

  THREE

  London, the same day

  Thaniel and Fanshaw were still talking about ghosts when the electric lights hummed worse than ever, everything went green for a good five seconds, and then the power supply failed completely and plunged the office into a candlelit murk.

  ‘I vote,’ Fanshaw said firmly in the dark, ‘that we take the day off. You live near Kensington still, don’t you? Shall we share a cab?’

  ‘Ah, I’ve got an Underground ticket,’ said Thaniel, who could cope with brandy but not unexpected cab journeys. It wasn’t that he couldn’t afford it now. Foreign Office salaries were good. It was just that poverty was as much a state of mind as a fiscal reality, and sometimes he couldn’t smother the angry squawk of his father’s voice demanding to know why the buggery he was wasting his money.

  Fanshaw smiled. ‘Is that your oblique northern way of asking me for a raise?’

  ‘No, it’s my oblique northern way of saying you’re too fancy for your own good with your unnecessary cabs,’ Thaniel said, but he was relieved to let his smile fade once Fanshaw turned away to find his coat. He still didn’t know how he was going to convince an angry little girl that they were going to move to Tokyo next week. And Mori; he couldn’t help thinking that if Mori had had anything particular to sa
y about it all, he would have turned up by now.

  By the tall front doors, the desk clerks were squashing candles into pools of melted wax so that people could navigate a way out without falling over the hat stands. Thaniel pulled his scarf up over his face and slipped outside into the gritty dark.

  He could just make out that the street lamps were lit, but they didn’t illuminate anything. They were just disembodied glows. The people on the street were invisible until they passed a few feet in front of him. But he could hear them. People were whistling as they came to the corner to warn anyone coming the other way. The whistles made bright wisps in the pall.

  He was almost at Westminster Underground station when he heard someone ringing a bell and shouting that the line was shut. He stopped and looked around, not sure what to do.

  A flare went by, a real one, and then another hissed alight right in front of him with a sharp gunpowder tang.

  ‘Light the way for a shilling?’ the little boy behind it said.

  ‘Ah,’ said Thaniel, undecided. There might have been cabs in the road – he could hear horses – but the chances of flagging one down without being run over seemed small. An omnibus crawled past, top heavy with passengers, the big advert for Lipton’s tea on the side only just visible in ghost letters. The driver was leading the horses, a lantern hanging on his wrist.

  ‘Hit you with my cosh,’ the boy said experimentally.

  Thaniel pulled the cigarette out of the boy’s mouth and dropped it into the flare, which sputtered. ‘Don’t smoke while you threaten people. But all right. What about two shillings if you take me across to Knightsbridge?’

  ‘Knightsbridge!’ the little boy said. It had startled him enough to drop the cockney bravado. ‘That’s far.’ He rallied. ‘Did you say two shillings and six?’