Page 31 of The Lost Future of Pepperharrow

The dining room was a long, lush space with a huge view out to sea through a pair of double doors that almost opened the entire back wall. The tables were long and low with hollows underneath so you could sit on the floor, and, despite the open doors, they trapped the heat. At intervals along them were gorgeous arrangements of hothouse flowers in glass vivariums, set around pebbles and moss and half-flowering twigs. In some were tiny hummingbirds which, on close inspection, were clockwork, the silver oxidised to gleam blue. People called compliments for the hostess from all along the tables.

Thaniel overheard a lady telling her husband that the hummingbirds had been part of Mori’s wedding present to Takiko, and that some people might do well to borrow a leaf from his book on their next anniversary.

Thaniel closed one hand hard over his watch. Mori had made that too.

If you were just entering into a friendly business arrangement, you did not spend hundreds of hours making ten clockwork hummingbirds for her. You bought her a nice set of china and that was that.

The food arrived in small but beautiful portions — sushi parcels wrapped perfectly and decorated with fish eggs that looked like tiny jewels, fried rice, ordinary rice but flecked with purple grains, a kind of tofu cake that came with a pot of honey to pour across, beans still in their pods and steaming through salt crystals and spices. The servants moved fast; the kitchen was right next door and it hissed and steamed brilliantly. Rather than signalling meekly when they wanted something, the women yelled and someone came speeding along. It was nothing like he’d expected and ten times more alive than the same house would have been in England.

‘Explain why I’m wearing this, to eat pub food? Which I hear you insisted on?’ Mori said to Kuroda, who was sitting on his other side. Suzuki had chased him into another kimono, even more beautiful than the last, and plainly the equivalent of white tie. Everyone had them, each one made of layers and layers. Thaniel had resisted Suzuki’s best efforts – it seemed excruciatingly and indefinably disrespectful – and now he felt drab.

‘Not a damn thing wrong with pub food,’ Kuroda said happily. ‘And you’re wearing that so I can have a flower on each hand.’ He put one hand out to Mori and one to Takiko Pepperharrow, who was on his right. Mori looked at his hand sceptically and Kuroda laughed.

Thaniel made a quiet fuss of Six, who was between him and Mori. Someone had put her in a kimono too. It suited her, and there were pockets in the sleeves into which a determined person could fit quite a lot of nuts.

Mori gave him a glass of amber wine. It tasted of plums, cut with tea, and it was by far and away the nicest kind of alcohol he’d ever had. Its fumes blended well with the pipe smoke floating in the air. It wasn’t making him cough; with the open doors, the smoke was drifting outside, and the sharp nip of the oncoming sunset seeped in. The servants started to light little candles in paper lamps that hung from the rafters. Before long Thaniel had lost the thread of the conversation completely.

Every so often a bout of flame went up along the table, because the chefs were cooking trout with blowtorches in front of people as a party trick, and new gusts of laughter and snatches of punchlines followed. Lured by the candles, fireflies drifted in. They looked like constellations that had decided to go wandering. They looped here and there through the smoky air and trundled about when they found the lights, puzzled. Some of the women caught them in their sleeves, and before long there were jars full of confused fireflies up and down the table.

The woman on Thaniel’s other side, who turned out to be Lady Shimazu, called across a footman and made Thaniel request new dishes for at least five people in a list. When he managed it, she whooped and refilled his glass. He could see he was half being mocked, but it was funny all the same. Lady Shimazu asked him about the journey and they all chipped in when he mentioned the birds. The birds had been doing bizarre things for weeks now. Lord Shimazu’s groundsman had piles of them in the woodshed. The peasants were getting superstitious about it.

‘Maybe the mountain will blow,’ someone said, and they all hmmed and said ‘hope not’, not in the least as if they were talking about being incinerated by a volcano.

They were directly opposite the lighthouse, so when it came on, the electric light strobed right across the room. It was the colour of a foghorn. He had to thump his hand against his ear to convince himself he wasn’t really hearing it.

All the servants stopped what they were doing, straightened up, and each rang one small silver bell. The chimes sang their metallic blue through the smoke. There was a girl right behind them and to get to her bell, she dropped a cup. It fell straight into Mori’s lap and tipped steaming hot tea across his knee. He didn’t gasp. He only froze.

People were looking round expectantly, to see who was about to speak. The lighthouse lamp went off again. Thaniel had to tip his head one way and then the other to try and chase away the after-tone.

‘Time for the proper wine!’ Kuroda called, to general cheers.

Everyone seemed to accept that as the reason for the bells. Six went back to her dinner. Around the room, Kuroda’s bodyguards rotated; some switched with each other, and a couple of them left.

Mori was staring at the cup in his lap, white and unmoving, though he must have been burned. Thaniel had never seen anyone lose colour so completely and so quickly. He looked as if a body had just fallen out of a cupboard and cracked at his feet.

‘Mori,’ Thaniel said quietly. He reached past Six to move the cup and give Mori his wine glass, which was empty except for a good shard of ice.

Mori looked at it without understanding. Then, ‘Sorry. Yes. Thank you.’ He put his sleeve over his hand and tipped the ice into it for a makeshift poultice.

‘What the hell is going on? What are the bells for?’

‘It’s just the signal for Kuroda’s men to change their posts. They rotate to stay awake.’

‘Oh,’ said Thaniel. He frowned. While they were speaking, some new men had come in to take over from the ones who had left. ‘Made you jump, though.’

‘I’m just foggy from the journey,’ Mori said.

One of the men passed just behind them. He was keying at his radio. He was better than the others Thaniel had heard, faster.

Still in the dining room. The cup worked. He didn’t catch it.

Thaniel snapped round, then looked back at Mori. ‘That was on purpose. She dropped the cup on purpose. They’re talking to each other about you.’

‘I know,’ Mori said patiently. ‘They have to protect the Prime Minister. A clairvoyant who possibly defected to the enemy is every security officer’s worst nightmare, I expect.’

‘But how—’

‘Leave them be,’ Mori said. ‘They’re just doing their jobs.’