Page 1 of The Lost Future of Pepperharrow

PROLOGUE

It’s easy to think that nobody could really arrange the world like clockwork. All sorts of things would get stuck in the mechanisms; history is full of queens and generals who’ve given it a damn good go but failed because of nothing more complicated than the weather. But clairvoyants have a knack for arranging time, and it was not without a sense of irony that Keita Mori was a watchmaker.

In his workshop, it was difficult to see what he was making until it was done. A sort of organised chaos characterised the way he worked, so much so that he could be constructing something for months or years and it would only look like a tangle of something generically worrying – right up until it got up, walked off, and turned out to be an octopus.

It was even harder to tell what he was making when he was using time and not steel. But if you knew him quite well, it was possible to discern when he was arranging something, and sometimes even sketch the shape of its tentacles. One tentacle began to take a clear shape – to anyone watching closely enough – on the last day of October, in eighteen eighty-eight, in St Petersburg.

Pyotr Kuznetsov was surprised when, after not having seen each other for five years, Mori sent him an invitation for coffee at the Hotel Angleterre.

‘Hotel bloody Angleterre,’ Pyotr snarled at nobody as he crossed the road, which startled a boy who’d been shovelling snow.

On the great official map, Japan hated everyone. It was one of those deliciously rich but under-developed little countries that everyone wanted to invade – Britain, Russia, America – but Russia was closest and so if there had to be a ranking, it was number one on Tokyo’s to-be-stabbed list. Pyotr and Mori shouldn’t have been friends. Officers in enemy countries’ secret police were expected not to be. But they’d always been exact counterparts throughout their service careers. They both existed with one foot in often unpleasant, boring business, the other at black-tie events at embassies. They both disliked flag-waving and Americans. Mori could drink properly and Pyotr knew all the rules of sumo. They had a lot more in common with each other than with the flag-waving ministers they worked for.

One small spanner in the otherwise smooth works was that Mori was, and there was absolutely no getting round this, rich. He did horrible things like invite Pyotr to fancy hotels – as though any normal human would even get through the door at the Angleterre. Tolstoy was staying there now. Pyotr had never lost an instinctive anxiety about places with gilded frescoes and resident novelists.

Mori had retired from the Japanese service a few years ago, or so he said. He had been living in a suite at the Angleterre for six months, making clockwork for the Tsarina. It was the most stupendous cover story Pyotr had ever seen, because Mori actually was making clockwork for the Tsarina. She had given the Home Minister a watch a few months ago and he’d been showing it to everyone, including Pyotr. It was gorgeous.

Pyotr was willing to be called Katerina for a year if Mori really was here for clockwork.

Pyotr paused outside the hotel. It was still only ten to eleven; he’d left himself extra time in case the doormen wouldn’t let him in. Decently, he’d wait, but it was so cold he couldn’t stand still. The snow had flurried on and off for four days now; along the edges of the pavements it had been shovelled up seven feet high. Like icing sugar, it was fine and dry, and the passing of every cab and carriage blew wisps of it glittering into the air. Just along from the hotel, some men were repairing a telegraph line that must have snapped in the cold. And still only October; it was going to be a wolf of a winter.

In fact, the doormen did let Pyotr in. He didn’t even have to show his Okhrana badge.

The cafe was busy, a singing clatter of cakes being delivered on three-tiered plates and women talking – you knew you were somewhere well-heeled when the men spoke more softly than the women – but he saw Mori straightaway by the window, because the spray of mechanical parts on the table caught the light. He was making a toy octopus. He was adjusting something in its insides. The octopus was trying to steal the silver spoon from the sugar bowl.

‘Is that alive?’ Pyotr asked, mainly to avoid exclaiming that Mori didn’t look one single bollocking day older than the last time they’d met up. Pyotr had gone grey.

‘No,’ said Mori in his courtly Russian. He had the most unexpected voice of anyone Pyotr knew. He was a nymph of a man, but he sounded like petroleum fumes would if they’d had anything to say. ‘Just pretending.’

The octopus was nearly perfectly round, a shiny blob with silver and glass panels. Pyotr gave it the spoon. The little thing made a joyful mechanical noise that sounded a lot like wob wob wob wob and dived under the table, where it hugged his ankle. He leaned down to stroke it, trying hard not to make embarrassing cooing noises at it. It only had seven legs. The eighth was a tiny bronze wheel.

Opposite him, Mori was turning his sleeves down. Pyotr caught a snatch of a tattoo, Japanese writing, just at the top of his forearm. It must have been done today or yesterday, because it still looked sore. Belligerently, he decided not to ask.

‘So,’ said Pyotr. ‘What are you really doing here? Should I expect a clockwork bomb in the Tsar’s bedroom?’

Mori smiled. Life had been treating him so well that he had a glow. He could have illuminated a broom cupboard at least. Pyotr had a fantasy about shoving him in one. ‘You know I’m not working. I’ve lived in London for years; Tokyo wouldn’t be able to talk to me. Have you met the Royal Mail?’

‘London could talk to you. Did you defect?’ It came out sounding a lot more hurt than Pyotr had meant. He’d always hoped Mori would come across to Russia.

‘Of course I didn’t defect, I opened a watchmaking shop. I wouldn’t defect without defecting to you, would I? How are you?’ He did look honestly pleased to meet up again.

Pyotr melted. Nobody ever looked pleased to see him. ‘Ticking along,’ he said, and Mori was chivalrous enough to laugh. ‘All right for coffee?’ he asked.

‘Yes, thanks,’ said Mori, and bang on cue, a waitress arrived with two new cups.

‘How do you do that?’ Pyotr demanded. ‘I’m ten minutes early.’

If there was an answer, he didn’t catch it. There were three owls sitting on the ledge of the window behind Mori, all lined up and huddled together. They were looking inside as if they were at the theatre. Pyotr found himself cocking his head to see if any of them would copy him.

‘Listen, I heard something from Tokyo you might like,’ Mori said, and then kicked him as Pyotr took out his wallet to ask if he ought to pay.

‘What sort of something?’ Pyotr said, settling finally.

‘A friend of mine’s about to become Prime Minister.’ Mori was lifting the sugar bowl and the coffee pot away from the edge of the table, neat and delicate. ‘Kiyotaka Kuroda. You know—’

‘The crazy one who keeps invading Korea?’ Pyotr exploded, and banged down his already-empty cup. The table juddered. At least four different waiters frowned. ‘They let him into the Palace? Aren’t there rules? Don’t give me that bloody Pyotr’s-so-naive look, I was waterboarding a trade unionist fifteen minutes ago.’

Mori gave him the pistachio macaron that had come with the coffee. ‘Kuroda’s first order of business will be to establish himself. He’ll take the Kuril Islands and Vladivostok off you if he can.’