Page 19 of The Lost Future of Pepperharrow

Thaniel wondered how she knew. She wasn’t a servant. Servants didn’t yell from balconies. They certainly didn’t call noblemen by their first names.

‘Yes. Six Steepleton. I don’t like alliterating,’ Six said, casting a narrow look at Thaniel as if his last name were his own personal fault, ‘but not doing so would have caused terrible legal difficulties.’

The woman was nodding. ‘Tell me about it. The whole Mori house went mad when Keita and I were married. They refused to let me take his name, so I’m still Pepperharrow.’

TEN

Shintomi Theatre, Tokyo, 1878 (ten years ago)

Until she was nearly thirty, Takiko Pepperharrow had been convinced that good things come to unobjectionable people. Saying yes and simpering all the time was silly – her mother did that and even noticeably anxious ducklings walked all over her mother – but she had always maintained that just marching in and annihilating everyone was a bad idea too, in the long run.

It was a kiln-hot afternoon in July, on the day her theatre master Ayame handed her the role of a lifetime, when Takiko decided it was time to give annihilating everyone a chance.

Princess Yaegaki was one of the greatest roles in all kabuki theatre. The play was incredible. There was a scene where the princess floated through the air among foxfire. Countess Kuroda had requested that the company perform the play on her birthday. And because she was terribly modern and fashionable, she wanted, said Ayame, to see a real woman in the role.

For about forty seconds, Takiko couldn’t believe it. After ten years making costumes and working the oily mechanisms under the stage that moved the scenery and the curtains, limping along in tiny roles with fewer lines than an eviction notice, it was everything she’d been waiting for.

‘We don’t have the licence to perform the play of course,’ Ayame added, glittering. Even if he was just talking about lunch, he sounded like he was confiding a secret, so when there was a real secret, it was impossible not to feel pulled in. ‘But it’ll be a private performance. Just the Countess, the Count, and their friends. No need to spend all that money on a licence when it’s just an informal thing that isn’t even for the general public.’

Takiko took a breath, because that was definitely wrong. The Guild would torch alive anyone who so much as breathed a copyrighted word without the proper licence.

But then she understood what was going on. Ayame had given her the role so he could report her. The others must have finally demanded he stop training her. That would be it. Career over. She might even end up in prison.

Balls to that.

When the day came, Takiko thought she would be nervous, but it was too hot to feel anything except thirsty. The dressing rooms trapped the heat inside their paper walls, and if anyone left the back door open for some air, the hot wind powered in like someone had put a blast furnace there.

Out in the auditorium, completely audible from the dressing rooms, Count Kuroda was growling that he would have preferred to go to the sumo. A bit deliriously, Takiko thought she would have quite liked to be at the sumo instead too. It was like theatre, with all the rigid ceremonies and the stiff judges sitting at the edge of the ring, but unlike the theatre, there was a certain necessary lightheartedness. She’d always thought the theatre would take itself less seriously if there were a healthy chance that the senior management might be skittled by an enormous man being flung across the room by the back of his belt.

While she stitched the new gold threads into Ayame’s best wig, she took care to look diligent, and not like she was plotting.

‘Get out of the way,’ someone snapped. She only glanced at him and didn’t catch who it was, only the white sweep of the paint down his neck and the cloth band that hid his hair, ready for a wig. Made up, all the actors were interchangeable swans. It was so hot in the warren of dressing rooms that everyone was walking about without shirts, the white paint drawn to inverted triangles right down their spines. They moved slowly to keep from sweating through it. ‘And shouldn’t you be ready by now?’

‘I’m leaving it til the last minute or I’ll keel over,’ she said. ‘It’s so hot.’ The costume was sparkling on its mannequin, all fire colours in layers and layers, some fox-trimmed, some purple, some bronze. She was already wearing the harness that had to go underneath it for the flying scene.

He narrowed his eyes at her. ‘If you were ever going to be a real actor, you wouldn’t let a bit of heat bother you. Women don’t have the constitution for the stage.’

‘We’ll see,’ she said.

‘Put that away,’ he said, and lobbed a pot of paint at her.

The lid wasn’t quite on properly, and some of the white spilled across her fingers. She rubbed it off on a cast-off scrap from one of the samurai costumes. The others had clusters of paint pots and jewellery in their places; hers, right on the end near the back door and the boiling draught that blew under it, was mainly taken up with a Singer sewing machine. She had come to like the Singer a lot. She was worried she liked it in the way that long-term prisoners felt safe behind the bars.

A small owl came in through the window and settled with a great deal of purpose on her sewing machine. Takiko tried to shoo it. It sat down. Its beak was sharp. She decided it could have the Singer if it really wanted to and stood back, puzzled. Something must have woken it up early.

‘Is that an owl? How lucky!’

Ayame had just floated in with a blast of hot air that smelled of dust and stagnant drains. He was dressed like a waitress, apron and everything, his beautiful hair piled up out of the way. There was a pencil stuck in it. He did hours at the teashop next door to practise being a woman.

‘Lucky?’ Takiko said.

‘Didn’t your mother tell you? Owls are called “fukurou” because they bring “fuku”.’ Luck. He’d said it in English, like he would have to a tourist. ‘They know things, owls. They have a way of turning up when something extraordinary is about to happen.’

‘My uncle says that if you’re followed by an owl it’s because a shinigami has marked you out to die,’ someone said in passing. ‘It’s not about luck, it’s about fate.’

‘Or that,’ Ayame said cheerfully.

Takiko sighed and didn’t ask how owls were supposed to know the business of passing death gods. ‘Did you send the owl in here?’