The Lost Future of Pepperharrow

by Natasha Pulley

  The juniors whooped and cheered. Even Mrs Vaulker relaxed. Four soldiers broke away from the others, flanking a fifth man. They came to the dining-room door and Thaniel eased down to help unblock it, with Vaulker and Pringle. When they opened it, Mori stepped through, and then turned back to bow to the man who must have been the captain. The man looked over Thaniel, Vaulker, and Pringle as though he would rather leave Mori alone on the veldt with only some especially stupid giraffes for help, but he bowed back and turned away.

  Thaniel kept his hands behind his back. Mori was studying him, unreadable. He might only have been so tired he had closed in on himself, but Thaniel didn’t think so. Thaniel could only hold his eyes for half a second before he had to look down.

  ‘Baron Mori,’ Vaulker said, sounding as though he was about to say something awkward and not entirely apologetic.

  ‘Secretary,’ Mori said. Like always after any length of time away, his voice was unexpected. It was lower and stronger, and more gold. He raked Vaulker with too intense a scrutiny, and Vaulker looked flustered. Mori hadn’t bothered to mask what he thought, which hung quite clear between them even unilluminated by electricity or icing sugar. ‘You’ve let things get out of hand here.’

  ‘These are – your men, are they?’ Vaulker faltered.

  ‘They are retainers from my house. I’ve borrowed them from the Duke of Choshu. Thank you for taking me in, that was very kind.’

  ‘Of course,’ Vaulker said again, and begged Thaniel for help with his eyes. ‘You’re welcome to stay.’

  Six had come across nearly straightaway, but she had kept quiet. She pulled Mori’s sleeve now and then smiled when he lifted her straight up.

  ‘How are you?’ he said gently.

  Vaulker looked like he wanted to die.

  Six clamped both arms around him and spoke mainly into his shoulder. ‘Mrs Vaulker keeps fluffing up my hair. Dad says we’re good tea trolls but I think I would be justified in being a man-eating troll in the case of Mrs Vaulker.’

  He tipped her back. ‘I don’t suppose that means you know where the tea is?’

  She nodded and made a small noise to be put down on the floor again. ‘I’ll show you.’

  ‘I’m – afraid the staff fled earlier,’ Vaulker said helplessly as Six led the way to the kitchen.

  Mori glanced at Thaniel once but ignored him otherwise. And then there was a general easing. The junior diplomats had been watching. It was like a classroom that had almost reached the point of riot, and then gone right back to normal with the return of the schoolmaster. Vaulker seemed suddenly no more authoritative than the fussy prefect from the front row.

  Out in the garden, everything was dying down. The Duke’s men were combing back through the camp again, looking through piles of canvas to make sure there was no one left hiding. The burnt banners whirled ash into the snow. It was starting to freckle the windows.

  Vaulker caught Thaniel’s arm. ‘Steepleton … if you could … perhaps not tell Mr Mori how badly we all behaved here, I’d be grateful.’

  Thaniel looked down at his own arm until Vaulker let go. ‘It’s Baron, not mister. So when he asks me what happened, I should lie?’

  ‘Well, if you would.’

  ‘No,’ Thaniel said, as neutrally as he could. ‘I’m going to find something to eat; would you like anything?’

  ‘No,’ Vaulker said. ‘No, thank you.’ He went away along the windows to watch the soldiers.

  Mori had found some tea things, and some leftover rice. He set them down on the edge of the table closest to the fire. There were other people, and they were in the process of moving to the seats furthest away by the time Thaniel went across. He moved a chair out. The small scrape it made on the wooden floor made Mori jump. He had been looking at the fire as if he had never seen one before. Six had disappeared again.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Thaniel said. He sat down slowly, ready to get up again quickly if Mori told him to go away.

  Mori’s hands were shaking around the cup, a just- noticeable tremor that might have been cold or shock, or neither.

  ‘Yes. How did you know what to do?’

  ‘I didn’t. It was Mrs Pepperharrow.’ Thaniel felt like the cane was hovering right above his hand. ‘She said we needed to give you a flare.’

  Mori nodded slowly. Thaniel saw him breathe in and make an effort to gather the words together. He thought he was going to say something about Takiko, and ask to know how Thaniel had let any of it happen, but it wasn’t that at all.

  ‘I can’t remember anything. Ahead, I mean I can’t remember ahead.’

  Thaniel was quiet while he thought about it. ‘When did that happen?’

  ‘When I woke up. It was an overdose, they were drugging me.’

  ‘Is it – are you all right, do you need anything?’ Thaniel asked, completely insufficiently.

  ‘I’m fine. Just …’ He tipped his head like he could hear something rolling inside his skull. ‘Empty.’

  There was a long quiet that was full of the fire clicking and the yells from outside. The junior translators and diplomats were watching the Mori knights clear out the last protesters from the one unboarded window, excited now. Sometimes they cheered. They all looked very young.

  Eventually Thaniel couldn’t keep quiet anymore. ‘I’m sorry.’ He swallowed, because his voice had splintered. Hardly anyone had noticed what had happened to Takiko; it was what was sticking to him more than her dying. Hardly anyone had even looked. ‘I should have stopped her going. But I couldn’t catch—’ He had to stop himself, because it sounded so spineless. ‘I didn’t let her go out there for spite. I know it must seem like I did – but – you have to know … I didn’t.’

  ‘It’s not your fault,’ Mori said. The firelight was making his hair red on that side. His bones were sharper than before and he looked less human than he ever had. He sounded like he was speaking from a long way off.

  ‘It is. Everything’s wrong. You were here for her. You were going to have a child with her, for Christ’s sake. And now she’s …’

  Mori had been shaking his head while Thaniel was talking. ‘No – no. I wasn’t here for that, that’s just the future that would have come to pass, if you—’ He looked away sharply and then back again. ‘If you were to die. You know what grief looks like, in clairvoyants?’

  ‘No?’

  ‘Recovery. You get over a man dying before he’s even half gone. It’s inhuman.’ He was quiet. Whatever was coming next, he had to dredge it up. ‘But talking to you, and remembering my children with her – I was going mad with it. I didn’t let them give me an overdose by accident. I did it because if I hadn’t, I’d have torn my own eyes out remembering that while you were still here.’

  Mori watched him as if he might have said something else, but then looked down into his tea. He had his hand around his own throat, and he was pressing too hard now.

  Thaniel touched his knuckles, wanting him to stop.

  ‘Do you know what I was doing in Japan?’ Mori asked, very quietly. ‘Because as far as I can tell, all I’ve accomplished is a lot of – destruction.’ He had to reach for the English.

  ‘I don’t think what you were doing is finished yet,’ Thaniel said. He switched into Japanese. A lot of Mori’s English must have been from the future. It must have gone, the second he lost his future-memory. ‘It’s all going somewhere. The electricity and – well, you said something obscure about microscopes a while ago. I don’t know what you really wanted.’

  Mori shuddered and at first Thaniel thought he was crying, but he was laughing. ‘I see.’ It died away too quickly. He looked down and pushed his good hand over his eyes. For the first time, Thaniel noticed that when they weren’t watching the soldiers outside, the people at the windows watched Mori. It was a mix of curiosity and unease, and exactly what would have happened at the theatre if everyone had been smoking back stage, watching the operetta from a side door, only to find that when the fairy king came back to sit with the
m, he wasn’t an actor at all but the actual fairy king.

  ‘I know it must have felt like I was elbowing you aside every second of the way,’ he said softly. ‘But the reason I didn’t tell you anything was that you would have stopped me. For absolutely certain. And … I don’t remember what I was doing, but I do remember knowing I had to do it.’

  ‘I can’t stop you doing a damn thing,’ Thaniel said. His throat hurt.

  ‘Of course you can. I buckle whenever there’s even a chance you’ll be angry with me, never mind when you actually do it.’

  Thaniel couldn’t think of anything to say to that.

  The fire cracked every so often. Outside was quieter now. There were still tents burning, but all the protesters had run away. The Duke’s men were silhouettes among the flames.

  ‘You’ve finished talking now,’ Six told them, having appeared next to them. ‘It’s your turn to read again. This is about static induction, it’s by Tesla. It’s why the lightbulbs work.’ She gave Mori a journal. Then, ‘Why are you both so upset? There’s nothing to be upset about.’

  ‘Six,’ Thaniel said, ‘when someone’s upset, you …?’

  ‘… consider it an objective problem with a solution.’ She looked Mori over. ‘Is a cherry bakewell the solution?’ she offered, much more humbly.

  It made Mori laugh. ‘No, you keep it – sorry, where are you getting those in the middle of a siege?’

  ‘Mr Fukuoka is hiding in the larder,’ she explained, and gave him half her bakewell anyway.

  ‘I might have to look into that,’ Thaniel said. He couldn’t think of much in the world he wanted to do less than get up again, but he would regret staying idle if anyone else found Fukuoka first. As he went, Mori told Six he couldn’t remember the future anymore and that he might not know some of the difficult words.

  ‘You’re thinner too,’ she agreed, as if that were the same sort of thing.

  Thaniel woke up early, struggling out of a dream where he’d still been locked in the room upstairs. Burrs of it held on for a long time, and he couldn’t work out at first where he was. He clipped Mori before he remembered he was there. But he was; he had moved the pillow aside so he could lie flat. He slept like someone had dropped him, and silent, but he was breathing when Thaniel touched him. The claustrophobia vanished, really for the first time all week, and the pressure around his lungs lifted so suddenly he felt off-balance. He sank down again and put his head against Mori’s shoulder.

  From outside, the sound of the river traffic was seeping through the window pane; the barges were going to the sea for the tide. Thaniel lay still for about an hour, listening to the rivermen call and the smoky catch in his own lungs. The sun was soaking warmly through the back of his shirt. For once he hadn’t woken feeling like he was arranged around second-hand bones. He got up and lit the fire, and put on extra wood.

  On his way back, he paused, because there was a ghost just forming itself on the rug, lying down, asleep. He leaned down gradually and moved his hands through it to clear it. The ghost jerked awake. It made him jump back before he remembered.

  That night the soot handprints had appeared on his shoulders. He’d seen his own future ghost.

  He edged back into bed. Mori came awake all at once. He frowned and brushed Thaniel’s shoulder, where the new sun must have been showing the ugly blast of the bullet scar. It still looked raw and wicked.

  ‘What happened there?’

  ‘Just an accident. I got in someone’s way. He wasn’t aiming at me.’

  Mori didn’t ask for specifics. Eventually, he said, ‘Does it hurt?’

  ‘No,’ Thaniel said. He shifted awkwardly. He had known before that it was horrible to look at, but he’d managed not to pay too much attention. He hadn’t looked in a mirror yet. ‘It’s much better. You?’ Thaniel said. Mori was still holding his shoulder. ‘How’s the memory? Anything … coming back?’

  Mori was quiet at first. ‘No. It’s a novelty.’ He shook his head once against the pillow. ‘I was doing it for years. I remember altering things about exactly where those prisons would be built, who would staff them, I remember choosing which carpenter would be hired. It’s bizarre not to remember what it was for.’

  ‘It will be something good. Honestly.’

  ‘I’m glad you think so, because a lot of people died while I was arranging them into the right places.’ Mori had his other hand around his own throat, the same as yesterday. This time, Thaniel moved it and set his own hand in its place to stop him, much more softly. Mori’s pulse was going as fast as a sparrow’s, but Thaniel felt him start to ease, and he wondered if it could be possible that Mori had scared himself so badly over the last month that the only way left to feel safe was to know there was someone who could strangle him if need be.

  Mori shook his head a tiny fraction. ‘I can remember a tax receipt number I got in eighteen seventy-six,’ he said, almost laughing.

  ‘There must be a lot of freed up space in there,’ Thaniel murmured.

  Mori nodded. He was still smiling, just, but it was the way Thaniel would have smiled if he’d woken up and found someone had amputated his arm. There was no use making a fuss, or upsetting anyone, but inside, everything screamed. ‘Is that Six’s owl?’ he asked, towards the window.

  Owlbert was perched there, looking pleased with himself.

  Thaniel took a breath and realised he owed Six an apology. ‘Yeah. He’s been waiting for you.’

  Outside in the corridor, solid footsteps came their way. Thaniel watched the sound make dull mossy bursts, willing them to go straight past. Mori looked back too, very still. Thaniel didn’t say he would get used to not knowing, in case he didn’t.

  Someone tapped on the main door in the living room. The cotton of the quilt cover creaked as Mori clenched his hands over it. Thaniel touched his chest, very lightly.

  ‘I’ll go. Stay there.’

  ‘No – no. I’m all right. Normally when I have no idea what’s about to happen, it’s because I’m probably about to die. It’s just – going to take some getting used to. Better just get on with it.’

  He’d always thought that Mori was brave because he always knew what was going to happen, but that turned out to be a serious misjudgement of character. Mori went straight out. He hesitated with his hand on the latch, but only for a second. Thaniel waited a few feet back, leaning against the couch so that at least there were familiar things to turn back to.

  It was the guard captain, who had come with some clothes, and with Katsu, who he’d found on the gatepost, sunbathing. Katsu burst out of his hands and coiled round Mori’s shoulder straightaway. Thaniel straightened, worried it would make him jump, but Mori only smiled and wound a free tentacle through his hand.

  The guard captain looked ruefully pleased.

  ‘This came for you from the Palace,’ he said, holding out an envelope stamped with the seal of the Home Ministry. ‘They want you for a tribunal later this morning. And that idiot Vaulker.’

  Mori nodded. The guard captain bowed, not too stiffly, and left. Mori watched him go, all the way back along the corridor until he turned the corner and disappeared down the stairs. When he let his eyes drop, it was to the envelope.

  ‘I don’t know what’s inside,’ he said. He sounded unnerved. He twisted his head away. ‘What a stupid thing to say.’

  ‘No, it’s not. Everyone hates ominous envelopes.’ Thaniel opened it for him. ‘Kuroda is calling an investigative tribunal. “To ascertain how a dangerous prisoner escaped custody” – he is a prick.’ He had never liked the bullying wording that permeated English government documents, but Japanese had whole extra levels of language with which to be quietly, snidely, terrifyingly intimidating. He crushed the letter and lobbed it in the fire.

  ‘I don’t know what to do,’ Mori said quietly.

  ‘They don’t know that you’ve lost your memory. They’re not going to leave you alone. If we try to go to the docks, Tanaka will be waiting. You have to go to this tribun
al. Talk to Kuroda, you’re good at it.’

  ‘Yes,’ Mori said. He was watching Katsu wheel off for the fire. Then, ‘Can you come?’

  ‘I have to, I’m the only proper translator,’ Thaniel pointed out.

  ‘Yes,’ Mori said again. ‘And then …’

  Thaniel squeezed his shoulder. ‘Look, the Duke of Choshu owes you a favour. He should have been looking for you, all this time. I think he must be …’ He had been going to say ‘upset’, but he couldn’t imagine the Duke being upset. ‘Very embarrassed.’

  ‘What if he’s not?’

  ‘Kuroda convinced him I’d murdered you. Kuroda had a body, and everything; actually it would be worth finding out who that was, you could probably nail him for murder. Kei, Choshu wouldn’t have sent his men here if he weren’t angry. Kuroda pulled one over on him.’ He paused. ‘I can’t believe this is how it was supposed to turn out. I can’t believe you meant for Mrs Pepperharrow to die, or Arinori, but those things are my fault. You arranged everything else perfectly. I think you can trust that the tribunal will be all right.’

  ‘What do you mean, your fault?’ Mori said, frowning. ‘Arinori is dead? The Education Minister? How?’

  ‘He was shot. Vaulker was meant to go with him to the Constitution parades, but it was me. Arinori’s wife thought that you and Mrs Pepperharrow were in trouble, and I went with them because I wanted to know more. And then when the gunman fired, I was too slow.’ Thaniel motioned at the bullet scar. ‘And then I went looking for you, at Yoruji—’

  Mori caught his hands. ‘Wait, wait. Did you see the message on the wall, in Aokigahara?’

  ‘Yes, and I – bloody ignored it. I’m sorry. I was scared you were dead, I thought I could find out … I don’t know,’ Thaniel said, all in an excruciated rush. ‘But I went to Yoruji, I was seen, and Kuroda had me arrested. I was sitting locked in a room here like an idiot when I should have been negotiating with the protesters outside. I could have done it, too.’ He took his hands back, because they were shaking. ‘You should have been safe here, when you came back. There shouldn’t have been any protest anymore, never mind a mob. Mrs Pepperharrow would never have had to – she’d still be alive. We would have had time to think of something else, to bring you back to now. I’m so sorry.’