Page 108 of The Lost Future of Pepperharrow

‘I’m not.’

‘Mori, this is – rather a personal question, but she’s pretty rough and people have never hesitated to be rough with her, and I can imagine she doesn’t really see any reason not to take it out on someone else. She’s like Kuroda that way.’ She paused and tipped her head to catch his eyes. ‘She hasn’t hurt you, has she?’

‘No.’ He didn’t laugh.

‘But she could.’ She frowned. ‘You must feel it already.’

‘I’m not who you should be worrying about. Come on. I want to get drunk too. I’m a funny drunk, I go round prophesying at people I don’t know. I nearly caused a trade war with Holland last time.’

The Countess laughed. As a couple of hulking white men blundered by on the way to the stairs, she put herself between him and them.

Takiko had had one hand clamped over her mouth all the time they watched. When she took it away, she’d gone so white Thaniel thought she might collapse. He put his hand out in case she needed it, but she knocked it away and crossed her arms tight as if she would have liked to crush her own ribcage inward.

‘He didn’t tell me. He didn’t …’ She looked at Thaniel with drowning eyes. ‘What are we going to do?’

There was no time to say anything, because yells and barked orders filtered in from outside. Someone was shouldering a way through the protesters.

FORTY-FIVE

Kuroda’s men had come with twelve soldiers, with rifles, and the protesters let them through without much argument. Thaniel was surprised to find that in charge was the man in the red coat, although he didn’t have the red coat now. He looked different in an austere morning suit. He shook Thaniel’s hand once the door was shut.

‘Phew. You’ve got a crowd out there now, haven’t you? Afraid I’ve got some bad news for you. The Prime Minister is ejecting you all from the country. He’s breaking off diplomatic links with Great Britain.’

‘But Mori’s alive.’

‘Can’t have foreigners wandering around Tokyo burning down people’s houses,’ Tanaka said easily.

Thaniel thought about punching him.

‘I’m in charge here,’ Vaulker put in.

‘Who’s this?’ Tanaka said.

‘What is he saying?’ Vaulker demanded.

Thaniel took a deep breath, waiting to be able to switch easily between English and Japanese. It was like trying to come into a piece of music just off beat. When he did explain, Tanaka waited, listening rather than idle, and Thaniel had a powerful feeling that his English was as good as anybody’s. It would have been difficult to do his kind of work without it.

‘We can’t go anywhere,’ Vaulker said, frowning. ‘Mr Tanaka, you walked past that mob outside, they’re out for our blood. We’ve been trying to evacuate the legation all week.’

‘Not really the problem of the state,’ Tanaka said drily, ‘and I don’t think we owe you any favours.’

‘You’ve just handed us a death sentence then,’ Vaulker said, incredulous.

Thaniel was starting to ache from standing so tense. He knew exactly what Tanaka was going to say. It was a small relief to finally get there.

‘But,’ Tanaka said, cheerful again, ‘luckily, you do have a prisoner who’s escaped from state custody here. If you’d hand over Baron Mori, I’m sure we can come to an agreement about getting you all out of here safely.’

‘Tom,’ Thaniel said quietly, even though he could see he was on sinking ground. ‘They’ll kill him.’

‘This is the job,’ Vaulker said, hard. ‘What would you say to me, if I had an old friend in our cellar and a mob at the door? Those men outside are going to kill us all. And him, if they get in.’

Thaniel nodded. He heard it all, but at a distance. He didn’t understand how things could have gone so wrong, with all of Mori’s foresight.

Something banged hard on one of the new boards over the windows. It was small and the noise was white, followed by tiny sigh that might have been fire.

Tanaka lifted his eyebrows. ‘What’s it going to be?’

Vaulker nodded to Pringle and then at the stairs. Pringle glanced at Thaniel, then quickly down again, ashamed, but did as he was told.