Page 116 of The Lost Future of Pepperharrow

She grinned. ‘Do you know what? A monk trundled up with his lightbulb cart, and the guards let him in because he was a holy man; then he put me in his cart and trundled straight out again. Man’s a genius. What happened to your face?’

‘The protesters at the legation.’

‘Oh, yes. I saw the front of the Mail.’ She frowned. ‘That woman. Christ. You can even see her intentions in the photograph, have you seen it? She was about to punch him in the head. What a valkyrie.’

Thaniel nodded and didn’t try to speak, because he felt like she had jammed her fingers into the bullet scar. She glanced back, because her husband was signalling at her.

‘Anyway, Akira thinks there’s going to be a fight. I’d better take him home.’

Thaniel watched her go. Because of that, he didn’t see exactly what happened next. He was convinced, later, that in his military way Kuroda only meant to call the place to order. He couldn’t imagine him hurting anyone actually inside the Palace. But the Duke’s retainers were already on edge, and when they saw the gun in Kuroda’s hands, he doubted their first thought was a dry shot fired into the ceiling. The gunshot actually went straight over Vaulker’s shoulder, because someone had dragged Kuroda’s arm down. There was an instant of perfect silence.

‘Look, that’s enough,’ Mori said, as if he were breaking up an ordinary tiff over coffee. And then, quietly but very clearly to Kuroda, ‘What would your wife say?’

Kuroda stared at him. If Mori had sunk a knife into his throat, he couldn’t have looked more shocked. An interested murmur went round the room, and a kind of fizz.

‘Yes,’ said the Duke, as dry and immoveable as ever, ‘the tribunal will know that Count Kuroda and my bannerman were always close. One can’t help but suspect that all this dross thrown at the Mori name is nothing but a thuggish effort to keep him quiet in the matter of the murder of a noblewoman.’

‘This is speculation,’ Kuroda snapped.

‘Speaking of murdered people,’ the Duke continued, ‘the tribunal is also aware that Count Kuroda gave me a body which he claimed, fraudulently, was my bannerman. We’ve identified it as the steward of Yoruji, a dedicated and honourable man called Suzuki who, fortunately for us, was recorded in the ghosts at the property dying in defence of his master. Mr Suzuki was a retainer of my house. I will, naturally, be seeking to press charges for his murder. I will also be funding the lawsuits on behalf of the families of the four hundred and seventy-six people who have, thus far, died as a direct result of Count Kuroda’s electrical experiment in the greater Tokyo area alone.’

Uproar.

In the middle of it all, Kuroda inclined his head fractionally to Mori. Losing was the first gracious thing Thaniel had ever seen him do.

Choshu’s guard captain brought Mori across and said that they should go, and perhaps hurry out of the country when it was convenient.

They spent the brief journey back to the legation trying to calm Vaulker down, but they struggled. He was a terrible off-white, and shivering. There was blood on his cheek – the bullet had skimmed him.

‘Thaniel,’ Mori said as they pulled onto the legation driveway. He didn’t say it with any urgency, but he had just had to catch Vaulker’s wrists to keep him from hitting something or somebody in the little space, and Vaulker was much bigger than he was. Vaulker wasn’t trying to hurt anyone, but he was saying they had to get out, and what if someone had followed. ‘Could you find that tall doctor when we …’

‘I will. Do you want some help?’

Mori shook his head. ‘No, he’s not strong. What’s his name?’

‘Tom.’

Mori said it, not loudly enough, Thaniel thought at first, but Vaulker looked at him.

‘You’re all right,’ Mori said. ‘No one else is coming. It was only an accident. These are the legation gates, see? You’re safe.’

‘The men from your clan are still …?’

‘The men from my house are still here,’ Mori said gently. He smiled. ‘Clan. Who arrived here and said, I know, it looks just like Scotland?’

Vaulker nearly laughed. It looked like hypnosis. His hands had eased. ‘House like … the House of Tudor?’

‘Exactly. We say House Mori, House Shimazu. It’s all the same.’

Vaulker looked down, because he had begun to shake. ‘House. That is better, isn’t it. Why did people get it wrong?’

Mori squeezed his hands. There wasn’t much to see but sky outside the windows from the angle they were at, but then they passed a red banner. ‘I think,’ he said, very kindly, ‘it’s the same reason that Tahitian trimaran battleships are called canoes, while the Viking version, half the size and half as skilled, are longships.’

Vaulker smiled and looked embarrassed, and showed no sign of telling Mori it wasn’t true.

The carriage slowed. Thaniel got out before it had stopped altogether.

The Duke’s men had tidied up since this morning and to distract the ladies, someone explained later, they had invited some of the traders from the floating market to set up on the lawn. Privately Thaniel suspected the ladies were perfectly all right and it was Pringle who’d needed distracting, but nobody wanted to embarrass him.