‘What’s wrong with him?’ the warden demanded.
‘He … this happened before the avalanche in Kabato. He got all dizzy if he tried to walk on the north side of the cell.’
‘Why?’
The guard hesitated. ‘Well, the avalanche … it tore off the north side of the cell.’
Everyone looked round. There was no obvious avalanche coming, though, and after a moment they all laughed. Takiko sent off the coordinates and sat back in her chair, uneasy, because Mori’s guard hadn’t laughed, and he hadn’t said how far in advance Mori had felt the absence of the floor.
‘Hey,’ someone said, and nodded at the window. ‘Look.’
She looked, half expecting to see a tidal wave or Mount Iou erupting, but the man hadn’t meant that at all. The sun had come out, sudden and bright, in a patch of vivid blue sky. The snow had stopped. She must have been imagining it, because there was no way in the world she could have heard it through the glass, but perfectly clearly all the same, she caught the minuscule popping of ice melting.
‘Another round,’ the warden decided. ‘To spring, gentlemen. That’s the first blue sky we’ve had since October.’
Mori was the only one who didn’t join in. He was still bent forward, his breathing visible. His guard tried to coax him into taking a sake cup, but if he heard, he didn’t show it. He still hadn’t made a sound. She wished he would; the others might have understood better that he was dying, inch by inch, in front of them.
Something thumped into the window right by her. They all jumped, except Mori.
But it was nothing awful. Someone had thrown a snowball. In the courtyard below was one prisoner, unwatched, standing there bright red in the snow. He smiled at her and threw another snowball. This one hit the pane above her head.
‘Er, is he meant to be …’
‘Why are there unaccompanied prisoners throwing snowballs at my bloody office …’ The warden was already on his way downstairs.
Little thorns pricked along the back of Takiko’s neck. All the time they had been talking, there had been a strange quiet from downstairs. It didn’t sound like five hundred men were trying to settle in or jostle for space in the cells, or telling their stories to another five hundred. There hadn’t been any shouting among the guards either. She looked down into the courtyard again. The man was still there. So were three horses, new ones from Kabato. They were ambling about unattended. They hadn’t even been unsaddled.
‘Say,’ she said. ‘How many guards did you come with?’
‘Only about fifteen of us in the end. But all the men were too cold to do much about it.’
The doctor was trying to talk to Mori, who still couldn’t hear him.
A gunshot exploded at the base of the stairs and the warden yelled. It electrified everyone and there was a rush for the stairs, for guns, for gloves in the bitter cold. Something smashed and a horrible, mechanical klaxon whined deafeningly across the courtyard. She caught Mori’s hand, meaning to go after the others and get out through the front gate, but the courtyard burst into red with running men. They were all out of the cells. She pulled the hidden tower door open instead.
Mori wouldn’t move, or couldn’t. Takiko had to lock one arm around his ribs and lift him up the first step to make him go. He must have been starving for all the time he had been in prison, because it wasn’t difficult.
The second they were through, she tilted the door shut. The dark was complete, except for one tightrope line from the keyhole, barely broad enough for a grasshopper to walk. Only a few seconds later, men bounded up the stairs and laughed in the strange hyena way of people who want to destroy something when they found the warden’s wine. She drew back from the door, horribly aware that she couldn’t close it completely without being locked in.
Although Takiko wanted desperately to watch, and know if anyone noticed the door, she stood back from it so that the light couldn’t catch in their eyes or their clothes. She could hear the men prowling and smashing just beyond it. Beside her, Mori swayed queasily, as if he wasn’t sure about the floor in here either. She held his shoulder. She could feel the bones underneath. Her mouth had gone so dry it felt like she’d drunk a whole bottle of vodka.
If she left him here now, he would be dead in five minutes. The men outside would kill anything that didn’t run away. They were feral now, she could hear it in their voices, and so abused that they were owed some killing. She could get out on her own, she was pretty confident of that. She was fast. It would bloody hurt if she smashed the window and jumped through it, but she’d be alive, and they’d be distracted by Mori.
And then: she’d be free. Free from that rancid fear she’d carried around ever since she’d seen Countess Kuroda smash into the floor at Yoruji.
She would be mistress of Yoruji, and free to marry again; more sensibly this time. Nobody would be surprised to find she had managed to shed an inconvenient husband. Kali the Destroyer.
Mori was watching her, almost formless in the dark except for the shine of his eyes. He didn’t say anything, but he was frightened; and not as if he were worried she might decide to leave him. He thought she already had. There was no hope in him, and when he looked away from her, his eyes filled with a sadness she’d never seen in anyone before. She could almost see all the stars of his already-faint possible futures winking out. She saw him accept it, too. He didn’t try to argue.
The room beyond the heavy door had gone quiet. She caught his hand and edged out. The men had gone. Takiko hurried them both to the stairs. This time, at least, Mori moved with her.
Downstairs, more men were raiding the guards’ lockers for coats and scarves, at least thirty of them, and already small fights were breaking out over the supplies. Takiko snapped back behind the corner of the stairs, one arm flat to Mori’s chest to stop him moving.
‘No,’ she hissed when he ducked under it.
There was instant silence when they noticed he was there. Everyone got out of the way. He looked back for her and she had to go fast to catch up, willing no one to attack him for his coat.
One of the five prisoners she’d snatched from the firing squads came up to her and for a second she thought he was going to hit her, but he only fell in alongside.
‘On your way out?’
‘Very much so. Do you want to come? I’ve got to get this man to Tokyo.’
‘Who is he?’
‘My husband, and like an idiot he’s let them drug him to the eyes. I’m going to steal a ship if you’re up for it.’
She had a flare of relief to see that the other four were with him. They closed around Mori and her in a protective semicircle, and nobody even tried to stop them.
The courtyard was chaos, but none of the prisoners knew about the delivery gate behind the kitchens. The little road down to the town was quiet, even though, around the other side of the hill, there were yells and shrieks. Takiko had no coat and the air was bitter, but the town wasn’t far, and bobbing on the gradually melting sea, right by the pier, was a small but sturdy ice-cutter called Narwhal. They were the first there.
Mori stopped on the jetty. The others ran on ahead. She shook his arm.
‘They’ll leave us behind, move.’
It was a clear struggle for him to talk. ‘This … jetty will be burned down soon. I can’t really see. I can’t …’
‘Shut your eyes. Hold my arm.’
By the time they reached the ship, one of the men had already got the engine going. The yakuza man helped Mori over the rail, then lifted Takiko. She thanked him and locked her face into a smile, so that no one would see she was almost certain they would steer the ship wherever the hell they wanted and pitch her and Mori overboard if they complained too much.
When she looked back the way they had come, the prison was burning.
FORTY-TWO
Watching Mori felt like living in the lag of someone else’s déjà vu. Whenever the boat rocked as it struggled through the ice, Mori leaned into the corner where
his seat met the wall a second before he needed to. It was maddening, because it wasn’t enough warning to copy him, and so Takiko found herself jolted about, always knowing fully it was about to happen. Mori watched her as if he couldn’t quite see what the trouble was. He didn’t eat when someone brought in some fish, just caught from over the side. The others were ravenous, and so was she.
‘Not hungry?’ she said. She couldn’t believe it. The bones in his hands showed too much.
‘What?’
‘You haven’t eaten yet.’
Mori moved the bowl toward himself and picked at it, slowly, as if they had just eaten and nothing but good manners had persuaded him to even look at it. Before long he left it again and ignored her when she tried to tell him to have more. He was looking over at the far corner, at a stack of newspapers.
‘Do you want …?’
‘No. Someone’s left some French pornography over there, it’s horrible.’
All around the ship, the ice broke and clunked, groaning. Sometimes she couldn’t tell which noises were from the ice, and which from the hull. One of the men knew how to steer a boat, and they were all keeping pretty jolly, but everyone was staying very quiet about how rusty the hull was, and how the Narwhal had probably been docked for repairs.
Takiko nudged Mori and gave him some soup – it was just miso boiled up from an old cube someone had unearthed from a cupboard, hardly more than flavoured water, but it was better than nothing – hoping that having to hold something liquid was a better anchor than a bowl of sashimi he could ignore without burning himself. Mori touched the edge of the cup, but then stopped and looked out of the window, where there was a sea eagle on the ice. She saw him forget about the soup.
Someone came in and rifled through the pile of newspapers. ‘Ooh, nice,’ he said, over something with a black cover.
Mori pushed his hand over his eyes, then seemed to forget. ‘I miss radio,’ he said. ‘What do people do on long journeys?’
‘What’s radio?’ Takiko said. She sighed. ‘No, I don’t care. Look, I know you’re not hungry, but you haven’t eaten. Think about it. Please.’ She picked up the bowl and put it in his hands again. He put it straight down.
‘I can’t read books, I always know what happens.’
‘Unless you eat that,’ she said experimentally, ‘I am going to punch you in the eye.’
He pressed one hand over his eye, and took the bowl.
She sat back once he had got a respectable way through it, feeling like a bully. ‘What will happen when we reach Tokyo?’ she said.
He ran his fingertips over a few inches of the window pane, exactly level with his own temple. It was where he would have hit his head, if she had knocked him hard enough. ‘Say again?’
‘Has – something gone wrong?’ she said. She hadn’t meant to say it, but it was self-preservation; if she hadn’t asked, she would have drowned in it. ‘You’re not – well.’
‘The legation might be difficult,’ he said quietly. ‘There’s trouble …’
She felt like she was trying to swallow her own heart. It was torturous to see him like this, such a ruin of himself. ‘Hey. Do you know me?’
Nothing. She unfolded one of the blankets on the shelf behind them, because he must have been cold, even though the part of him that should have known to shiver had gone wherever the part that should have been hungry was. He was just present enough to hold it when she put it around him, but after a while, his fingers slackened and the blanket fell.
‘Hey, miss,’ the yakuza man said from the doorway of the little bridge cabin. ‘You should come and see this.’
As she got up, something huge boomed, a long way off. It still shook the whole ship. She had to hold onto the door frame as she ducked into the cabin, and then she stopped dead when she saw what was beyond the windows.
Arrayed in a vast line over the icy water was a fleet of ironclads. Each one might as well have been a black floating castle. Although they must still have been three or four miles away, she could see their water wheels, and the smoke rising in cathedral pillars from the funnels. They were exactly where Mori had said they would be; stationed just off the coast, blocking any possible shipping route round to Abashiri and beyond. She looked round and snatched up a pair of binoculars to make absolutely sure. Yes; the names of the ships were all in Russian. Every few seconds, huge, beautiful arcs of smoke soared out from their guns. They were running drills.
‘Wonder where our boys are,’ the yakuza man murmured.
‘I think they’re coming,’ she said. ‘They were gathering intelligence at Abashiri – I telegraphed the Navy about this half an hour ago. We should go right around. I think this is all going to be a battlefield by tonight. Hold on, I think they’re signalling us. What does that say? Does anyone know Morse?’
One of the Russian ships was flashing its fog lamp at them.
The man who had used to be a fisherman peered at it, then smiled. ‘They say they’re about to stop firing. We can go straight through.’
So they did, and sailing between two battleships was like sailing on a little stream at the bottom of a canyon. The steel hulls towered above the trawler on either side, so big they made the sounds of the water and the crackling ice echo. The gun ports loomed, crawling by. Some of them were still steaming. She glanced back into the other room, to where Mori was sitting exactly where she’d left him, and hoped to God he hadn’t been lying about how to win.
‘Are we definitely sure we want to be in Tokyo when all this kicks off ?’ the fisherman said, and Takiko set her teeth. ‘I mean really. We haven’t got a chance in hell against Russia—’
‘We’re going to Tokyo,’ the yakuza man said flatly. ‘The lady says so, so we’re doing it.’
She must have looked shocked, because after a while, he nudged her.
‘Miss. You literally walked in front of a firing squad for us. We can take you to Tokyo. People aren’t always shit, you know.’
It was two days’ sailing to Tokyo, even with the engine. They came into the bay in light that looked like dusk, but really it was storm dimness. The city was brilliant, and for a good while Takiko couldn’t understand what she was seeing. It was an electric glow that turned the undersides of the snow clouds orange. The others watched it too. It looked like the end of days.
As they turned into the great harbour, another kind of light, blue foxfire, followed the angles of the prow and the bridge cabin. It brightened and brightened, shining up the mast. She started to get a strange, metallic headache.
Mori hadn’t moved from his space by the window in the little communal room for the whole journey. He was struggling to stay upright; he wasn’t aligned enough with the immediate present anymore to move with the bob of the sea. Instead he pressed back against the cabin wall. He could talk when he was lucid, which was intermittently, but she hadn’t been able to make him eat properly, or sleep. His mind was working, but the clocks in his organs and bones had stopped.
‘I’m going to take you to the British legation. I’m a citizen and Kuroda can’t get you there.’ She glanced up, because the tip of the mast was tracing a beautiful line of blue fire at least forty yards behind them now. That happened in the famous scene in Princess Yaegaki, when the princess was taken over by the spirit of a fox and flew to stop a fight in among little falling fires. They did it with tiny paper lamps on stage, charged with baskets of kerosene. She hadn’t known foxfire was real.
Mori hesitated, worried. ‘Takiko,’ he said, and she frowned, because he had never called her that. She was always Pepper. He didn’t say anything else, lost.
‘It will be all right,’ she tried. ‘We’ll be safe.’
He looked down at his hands. Something in him faded. ‘Are you sure about Eton?’
She touched his arm. ‘Can you try and hold onto now for a bit longer? Just for another few minutes. Joy – look at me. Can you?’
He heard something else, from some time else. ‘He’s so little. He’s only seven.
It just seems awfully …’
She couldn’t move or speak then, because she could nearly see the future he was talking about sketched between them. A little boy. When she realised, she was paralysed; she smacked the back of her own hand to bring herself up from it. It stung enough to work. She opened the door and guided Mori through by the small of his back.
She had never thought about children. There had been no point. When her sisters asked if she wanted any, she had never been able to say, because hers had never been that kind of marriage, so there was a dam across the idea. It had never been worth knocking through. If she’d found that she did want children, it would have been horrible. She would have turned into one of those middle-aged people who collected dolls, and ended up with a room full of bright glass eyes in porcelain faces, all lined up on shelves pegged to walls painted in nursery colours. She couldn’t think of anything more disgusting.
‘Nearly there,’ the yakuza man called. ‘We’d best all go in different directions once we dock. Good luck, miss.’
FORTY-THREE
Tokyo, 22nd February 1889
With the storm and the electricity, all the ships back to England were booked up for the next week, and so Thaniel had spent four days locked in the visiting diplomats’ room with no company but the grand piano. They let Six in for an hour a day. He knew he ought to have been angry about that, but in fact he was grateful, because it would have been difficult to pretend to be cheerful for longer. Outside, the protest camp was much bigger. Someone with a good arm slung a wine bottle through the window in the middle of the night, but he couldn’t remember which night now. He had taped a newspaper over the hole, sheet by overlapping sheet, so that the articles about him were all overlaid in a meaningless blur. It was still cold, because the stewards wouldn’t come in to bring firewood, but whenever Six came, she smuggled in more lightbulbs, and the combined heat was enough to keep his corner of the room warm. They were shining more brightly than they had before, and there were more fires in town. The newspapers were full of a rush of solved crimes, and the big debate across the middle pages was whether the ghosts were admissible in court – whether a witness was enough or whether you had to have properly photographed the scene. But his own name came up too often and he had to stop looking at anything except the weather forecasts.
The Lost Future of Pepperharrow Page 34