Of course Spoo would have to do it in such a way that it wasn’t obvious to the crowd below, which now included more military men and other official-looking types.
Her afternoon was looking up.
Percy paid attention to interior decoration insomuch as to investigate other people’s libraries but nothing else. He was well aware of social status conferred through opulence. He had, after all, been raised by vampires. But he could never bring himself to care.
However, if he were to enjoy any interior it would be the one afforded by the Japanese temple train. It was sumptuous without being garish or cluttered. The temple managed to convey a restful beauty and a sense of welcome. He couldn’t pinpoint the details, and it wasn’t in his nature to do so, but he liked it. Since he rarely liked anything (apart from his cat, his books, and Arsenic) this surprised him.
Lady Manami led them around a corner out of sight into what amounted to a receiving hall. She then stopped and instructed them to remove their shoes.
Percy wasn’t sure how to proceed. Exercise and now the sudden sense of safety had rendered any weight on his ankle unbearable. He was wearing a jacket tied about his waist to avoid exposure. Any action he took to remove shoes would be ungentlemanly. He decided to throw all sense of decorum to the winds and simply sat on the floor to pull them off.
Arsenic, with a shrug, did the same. She sat next to him, bent double to unlace her bicycle boots.
No corset then.
Percy approved, practical. He’d never understood stays.
Lady Manami managed to loom over them and smile down in a slightly aggressive way. Percy concluded that the smile was a surer indication than anything else that she wasn’t native to Japan.
“Where are you from, originally?” He’d never learned to button up his curiosity.
“Oh, all over.” She was as evasive as Aunt Softy. “Come along, child. Let’s get you cleaned up and that leg tended.”
“I’ll do it,” insisted Arsenic, helping Percy to rise. He supposed a thousand Englishmen around the world cried out that he took aid from a woman, but he was never one to accept lightly the illogicality of custom. Tradition seemed to him a poor excuse for inconvenience. Also he rather enjoyed her fussing over him.
“Wifely duty?” wondered Lady Manami, eyes sparkling with some hidden amusement.
“Professional courtesy,” replied Arsenic.
Lady Manami was surprised, in the manner that indicated this was an unusual sensation. “You are a doctor?”
Arsenic nodded.
“Fascinating. I did not think Westerners allowed such.” She led them further down the hall and into a small side room.
Arsenic tilted her head. “Says the roving temple with the female guards.”
Percy looked around. The decoration was not dissimilar to the entrance of Lord Ryuunosuke’s residence in Edo. There were stiff cushions on the floor and low tray-like tables set around.
Lady Manami gestured with one graceful arm to two cushions.
Percy sat. He was grateful for the low seating, as it allowed his injured leg to stay relatively level.
“There is a great deal you do not know about Japan. The English are not so secretive. So I have the advantage. You are English, yes? All Europeans look alike.”
“English,” said Percy.
“Technically Scottish,” replied Arsenic.
Lady Manami tilted her head. “It is not the same?”
“Na if you ask a Scot.” Arsenic was intractable on this subject.
“Ah yes. We have that here, too.” Lady Manami pulled out a tiny gold bell which had been hanging in a cluster from a stick in her elaborate hair arrangement. She rang it.
Immediately a young lady in simple robes came in. Lady Manami issued a set of instructions in rapid Japanese that Percy followed only loosely. She was asking for hot water, and probably bandages, and he suspected if they were lucky, comestibles.
“If I may?” Arsenic asked, gesturing to Percy’s leg.
The lady inclined her head.
Arsenic bent to unwrap him.
The release of pressure made his ankle hurt worse. Percy only just managed to hold back a yelp. A few tears leaked down his cheeks.
“I’m a terrible baby,” he admitted to the two women in profound embarrassment.
Arsenic glared at him. “Dinna be a ninny-hammer. You’re in pain. ’Tis perfectly natural.” She turned to their hostess. “She’s bringing hot water for cleaning? Can I also have cold for soaking?”
Percy looked down and was impressed despite himself. His ankle was three times its normal size and a spectacular purple colour. At least it looks as bad as it hurts, he thought, smug.
“When she returns. Meanwhile, perhaps you might tell me how two Westerners fell out of the sky. And why one of them is wearing Lady Sakura’s gift as a bandage.”
“You know the lady?” Arsenic prodded.
“We are friends of a kind.”
“Of a kind. Are you supernatural?” Percy was being too blunt, but he wanted answers.
“Are you?” Lady Manami responded. A fan of the Socratic method, apparently.
“Perfectly human, but my mother is a vampire.” He used the word jikininki for vampire, because so far as he could tell it was the closest they had in Japan. Although his reading suggested they were more like the flesh-eating breeds found in India, and regarded with similar abhorrence. He wasn’t sure if a familial association would stand him in good stead or not.
Lady Manami started. “That is not possible.”
Percy grinned at her discomfort. “My sister and I were born before her metamorphosis.” He used the English word, because he had no idea what it was in Japanese. “She was bitten shortly after, so we’ve only really known her as a vampire.”
“A queen, she would be.”
Percy nodded. “Like your Lady Sakura.”
“She told you that?”
Arsenic interjected, “We guessed.”
Lady Manami nodded. “So, children, if you will tell me all you know from the beginning I will try to honour you with the same. Is that a fair exchange?”
The servant girl came back into the room followed by several others. They carried two bowls of hot water, several rags, and some long clean strips of silk to act as bandages. Another had food and the last a tray with what looked, to Percy’s delighted eye, like tea things. He suddenly realized how hungry he was.
Lady Manami sent the servant girl back out for cold water and a bowl large enough to fit his whole foot.
“And a splint,” added Arsenic, using the English word.
Lady Manami was perturbed. “I do not speak your language, girl. I only know your important words. Like tea and jewellery.”
Arsenic looked to Percy for aid. Percy consulted his brain. “A stick of wood about this long.” He made a shape with his hands, looking to Arsenic for agreement.
“A little longer,” she amended. “To wrap with cloth to keep the leg from moving.”
It was the best they could do, but Lady Manami seemed to understand. She said something more to the girl, who Percy supposed was the butler for the temple. All the young ladies trooped out, leaving the three of them alone.
Arsenic began cleaning his ankle and feet.
Lady Manami left her to it and began to pour tea.
The pot was strange, spouted like an English teapot but with a top handle made of rope and an egg-like shape. The cups were small, almost demitasse, and with no handles or saucers. The tea appeared to be green and served without milk or lemon, but Percy was disposed to be pleased with whatever was put before him.
“We do not have time for a proper ceremony,” lamented Lady Manami, “not that foreigners would know to expect such.”
Percy said, hoping it wasn’t rude, “Much more interested in simply getting tea into me. Thank you.”
Lady Manami regarded him with amusement. “Sensible boy.” She passed him the tiny cup.
Percy sipped, eyes closed, hap
py.
It was perfumed and quite grassy in flavour but warm and necessary and comforting. Percy drank gratefully.
Arsenic took her cup with a polite thanks, but put it aside to continue her ministrations.
The possibly-a-butler returned with a large bowl of water.
Arsenic arranged Percy so he might bend his leg and plunge his foot into the bowl. It was shockingly cold but the horrible throbbing in his ankle faded to aching numbness.
“Have you willow bark for pain?” Arsenic asked.
“Vi-yow?” replied the lady, thrown over by the word.
Arsenic sighed. “Of all the things we might have right now, I find myself wishing for a Japanese language book the most.”
Percy nodded. “It’s always a book one misses.” He tried to help. “A tree, lots of leaves, each one long and thin and light green. Grows near water, sometimes it weeps.” He made a gesture with his hands to show the curve of a weeping willow.
Arsenic added, “The skin is boiled and used for pain or fever.”
Lady Manami shook her head. Either they hadn’t communicated properly, or she didn’t know medicine, or there were no willows in Japan.
Percy resigned himself to pain and enjoyed the cold water while he could.
“Just a splint, please, and I’ll stop making demands,” said Arsenic.
“I highly doubt that from a doctor,” replied Lady Manami, dismissing her servant. “Now, explain your presence here.”
So Percy and Arsenic attempted to do so. Starting with Edo, and the general excitement in the Paper City when they found out The Spotted Custard had a woman doctor, and moving to meeting Lady Sakura and Lord Ryuunosuke.
The head servant interrupted them only once, carrying a flat wooden cooking utensil that looked to be a good length and stiffness to become a splint, and another pot of tea, smaller and with only one cup, which she placed near Percy, eyes lowered, as though she were scared of him.
Percy thanked her gravely.
She hurried out, sliding the doors closed.
“Lady Sakura is worse?” Lady Manami resumed their conversation.
Arsenic sipped her tea. “She’s fading. Silly of them to keep trying human doctors. Her illness is clearly supernatural.”
Percy added, “They are using her to tether an entire city. What do they expect?”
Lady Manami’s eyes were sharp. “Your mother is a vampire queen, of course you would understand and sympathize.”
Percy resented being accused of either.
“That’s how we ended up here,” said Arsenic. “Percy got angry about it. Percy never gets angry.”
Percy hung his head. “I overreacted.” He said it in English, for Arsenic’s benefit. This was all his fault. The one time he let his emotions get ahead of him.
“What happened?” pressed Lady Manami.
So they explained about returning to the Custard with Lady Sakura, and the soldiers, and everyone getting angry. And them figuring out that Lady Sakura’s link to her people was being used to keep Edo in place.
“Kitsune,” explained Lady Manami, “are bonded strong. From what I have read it is not unlike your werewolves.”
“Are you one of them?” Percy asked. “You are not as small, but I wager you’re very light.”
Lady Manami laughed. “Smart boy. What gave me away?”
“Súilean geala,” suggested Arsenic.
“Gaelic again?” Percy put down his empty cup.
“Bright eyes, but the implication would be otherworldly.”
“Do you read Gaelic, perchance? I’ve this manuscript I’d love your help with. Well, if we ever get back to the Custard I’d like your help with it. It’s this fascinating little thing that—”
“Percy, focus.” Arsenic was grinning at him.
“Oh right, sorry, Arsenic.” Percy jumped back to explaining matters. “With Lady Sakura I didn’t know to look, now I’m on watch. You’re of a type.” He didn’t want to outright say she was arrogant and autocratic and capricious, like a tiny goddess.
“Am I? I should like to talk more on that subject but not now.”
“No,” agreed Percy gratefully because he didn’t want to insult her, “not now. But are you kitsune? You must be very old to function so well in daylight, unless that rule does not apply to your species.”
She gave him a thoughtful look. “I am huli jing. It is similar. You might say fox spirit so kitsune is good enough. Some have called me jiuweihu, but you would have to test me to find the truth. I am not part of Lady Sakura’s obi.”
“Her pack?”
“Good enough. My kind of fox, we travel, do well alone. Hers no. She has been separated from them, and stretched because she misses them. Without them, she is too much trapped. And without her, they are too much free.”
Percy considered. “Do they go mad?” Like packs without Alpha or an Alpha gone too old.
“Kitsune are tricksters by nature, without their lady it is more that they go evil. The lady is the moral heart. She is the honour of the kitsune. With her gone, there is no good left in them.”
This was fascinating, and Percy wondered if he might get a paper out of it. Really the different types of supernatural creatures were intriguing. Perhaps adventuring wasn’t so bad. His ankle throbbed at him.
“Yet somehow a tether based in goodness is concrete enough to hold a city in place?” He had to use the English word tether. He could not keep the suspicion from his voice.
“You speak of chi.”
Arsenic started to giggle. “Percy, ’tis a moral foundation! The church was right. Soul and all.”
“Stop it, woman.” Percy rolled his eyes. “I’m trying to understand the science in play!”
Lady Manami looked almost pitying. “Poor boy, to try to make logic out of magic. We will talk philosophy later.”
Arsenic tapped Percy’s foot to lift it out of the bowl. She dried it with a rag.
Lady Manami passed her a pot of salve. Arsenic sniffed it and then with a shrug applied some to his ankle. She then used the wooden cooking tool to splint up his leg, wrapping it tight.
“So, you, Lady Manami, are neither weak nor evil because you aren’t part of her pack, her obi?” Percy pressed for comprehension.
“Exactly.”
“Yet you’re involved.”
“Foxes like to meddle. Now is a time of change in Japan. Much meddling is needed. But with Lady Sakura otherwise occupied, her kitsune are meddling in bad ways.”
“And this temple?”
“It is one of mercy and sanctuary, especially for women.”
“Is the rest of her pack here?”
“They are all wild now. It is not good.”
“Why not jump out of Edo, like we did?” asked Arsenic. “She has her special obi.”
“Worse things would happen if she left. Lord Ryuunosuke, he would…” Lady Manami was darkly mysterious.
Percy wondered how wrong he’d been to hate Lord Ryuunosuke. Perhaps he too was acting against his will.
“Politics.” Percy was unable to keep the disgust from his tone. He was eternally grateful that his mother’s title was one of conference and not inheritance. He need never take a seat in the House of Lords.
“Politics,” agreed the lady. “You should be warned, child, that you were permitted into the temple only because you were injured and claimed marriage. Yet I see no ring.”
“You know our customs?” Percy felt a twinge of guilt at the deception. Or perhaps it was simply that he liked the idea of strangers thinking him good enough to marry Arsenic.
“I pay attention to those who conquer.”
“Will you expose us?” Arsenic moved closer to Percy, put her hand over his. Percy welcomed the contact, accepting that he liked it when she touched him.
“Not yet, but I like knowing.”
“You too are a trickster?”
“Did I not say I liked to meddle? And I have no obi to keep my moral code, perhaps I am evil.” Lady Manami
stood with infinite grace. “I think we must find you clothes, young man. I should check with the guards as well.”
It occurred to Percy that she’d never answered his question about her being awake during daylight. She reminded him more and more of Lord Akeldama. Yes, a small cheeky version, full of mischief, but manipulative and measured and deft. Players of power did love delicate manoeuvring.
Percy wished fervently for his sister. He was horrible at delicate manoeuvring.
THIRTEEN
Breeches and Rutabaga
Percy quite dreaded what he might be given to wear. Not that he was averse to those relaxed-looking robes. Simply imagining his sister’s reaction (if she caught him in one of them) was a joy. But he thought they might insist he wear scaled armour and what was an ordinary Englishman to do with scales? It seemed overly flashy.
Instead of scales, one of the servants proudly offered up a stack of carefully tended and well-preserved gentleman’s attire. British gentleman’s attire. And by preserved Percy meant for decades. The clothing, and he was hesitant to use such a moniker, was perhaps a hundred years old. He thanked her as earnestly as possible under the circumstances.
Perhaps he exaggerated a touch, but the jacket was of the kind one’s grandfather wore in the 1820s. It was blue with puffy shoulders and large collar, and cropped in such a manner as to exaggerate certain frontal sectors of a chap’s anatomy, sectors Percy was tolerably certain a respectable gentleman ought not to be exaggerating. Which was to say, he had received compliments in the past, but only from ladies who were monetarily encouraged to be positive on the subject. The jacket had tails like a wedding suit that flapped over his posterior, which was a little disappointing as Arsenic had indicated her interest in that portion of his anatomy and he now appeared to be offering up the reverse. Perhaps she was egalitarian in her taste with regards to the male form?
The vest was brocade and similarly tight. There was a stock involved, and a fluffy cravat. The fawn-coloured buckskin breeches were exactly that, and the Honourable Percival Tunstell had never worn anything like leather trousers in his life. He supposed they’d be less likely to rip open when tumbling out of dirigibles, but honestly!
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