Page 110 of The Lost Future of Pepperharrow

Mori shook Thaniel’s shoulder.

‘Get up. I can’t carry you.’

‘I don’t think—’

‘Get up,’ Mori interrupted. He caught Thaniel’s hand when he struggled and half lifted him onto his feet. There were protesters watching, hesitating. Mori banged the sword down into the snow to have his hands free. Nobody wanted to see how quickly he could pick it up again. ‘Get inside,’ he said to Thaniel. ‘I’ll be back in a few minutes.’

‘You’re not going anywhere,’ someone said, probably with much less certainty than they’d have liked.

Mori shook his head. He didn’t seem angry, only pressed for time. ‘You can kill me if you want, but there will be men coming for you if you do.’

Camera flashes were still strobing on the left, much closer than before, because the photographers had risked coming in over the lawn to get a better shot. To the right, most of the protesters hadn’t even noticed what was going on here; they were still throwing bottles at the legation windows, having fun, because before each throw, the electricity and the snow traced out the bottles’ parabolas ahead of them. Dozens of arcs flared every few seconds, flashing and beautiful. They looked like the vaults of an invisible cathedral crypt. Thaniel could only just see them properly. Something strange and blurry had happened to his sight. He could see sounds much more clearly than ordinary things. Concussion, that would be.

The crowd let Mori through. He didn’t look back as he disappeared behind the journalists. Thaniel limped towards the legation. The world swam. Someone shouted something into his face with a firework of red and yellow, but he didn’t catch what it was. When he reached the door, it was closed. He knocked his fist against it once, then collapsed on the threshold.

FORTY-SIX

Thaniel came to a section at a time. He was still deaf for a long while after he woke. He saw firelight, and the glint of gilt on the books on Willis’s desk, but it was all silent. There was a pattern stitched onto the pillowcase, something simple with straight lines. Not a pillowcase; it was one of the pinstripe cushions from the nice couches in the dining room. He was in the surgery. He sat up slowly. Everything was still soundless.

It was freezing. Someone had broken a window and a blizzard was blowing in. The snow was dry and powdery, and, upset with the draught, the fire was smoking.

Willis rushed down. As he did, someone lobbed a bottle at the boarded window. The men outside were playing and teasing each other, in the way you play with the sea; there was a sort of delicious thrill pushing and pushing to see how near you could go before you had to dive in.

‘Steepleton, good. Get upstairs. Can you shoot?’

‘Where is he?’ Thaniel asked.

‘I don’t know,’ Willis said, annoyed. ‘Hurry up. Can you?’

‘What?’

‘Shoot!’

‘Yes … yes.’

‘Thank Christ, so far it’s only Mrs Vaulker and Mrs Henley. Oh. Look at me.’

Thaniel looked.

Willis looked critically into his eyes. ‘Bit of a concussion, you’ll feel dizzy. But never mind that now, get up there. They’ve only got hunting rifles. Where did you learn?’

‘Home. Dad was a … gamekeeper, I used to …’ Thaniel shook his head. Talking was difficult. His head ached, but it wasn’t as bad as it might have been. There was a bandage around his hand. He puzzled over that until he remembered he had burned it on Takiko.

Her hair had burned. That wasn’t the worst thing, but it was what stuck the most. It had gone up fast and bright because it had soaked up the sake, beautiful in the snow, and horrible.

Willis hurried him up the stairs into something like organised chaos in the long dining room. There was no sign of Tanaka and his men – they must have run or gone after Mori – but Mrs Vaulker seemed to have taken charge of a group by the long windows. The windows were boarded up to the height of a person, but she and a couple of others were standing on the tables rammed up against the walls. They were getting ready to shoot over the boards. Six was with them. She was arranging new bullets in a perfectly straight line on the tabletop. At the end of the line she paused and made a smiley face with them instead. Mrs Vaulker snorted and patted the top of her head. Six looked annoyed.

‘Where’s Takiko?’ he said. ‘Did someone – find her body?’

‘Out there where you left her,’ Willis growled. Then, with far more force, ‘What the hell were you thinking, letting her go out like that?’

Thaniel stared out that way, through the last pane of glass that Pringle was just covering now. He should have been the one left out in the snow. For a fleet second he wondered if that was what he was for after all, the sacrifice to save a family. Takiko would have been a good mother to Six, and to her son. All lost now.

Mori wasn’t so cruel. None of it was meant to be like this. All at once Thaniel could see it.

That instant he had decided to go with Arinori to the Constitution parade had been the important one. He shouldn’t have gone.

Vaulker should have been with Arinori. He would have been quicker. Arinori would be alive.