Page 52 of The Lost Future of Pepperharrow

‘Hey, Mr Horikawa! It’s me.’

The door creaked open and Horikawa, the gate keeper, stepped back with his hands cupped over his cigarette to keep them warm. He spoke round it rather than move it. ‘In you come, girl, before the prisoners.’

She ducked in and he clanked the door hard behind her. The way in was a short tunnel under the watchtower above, open to the weather on the other side. A tiny staircase led up on her left. She stopped. ‘Do I just go to the main …?’

‘Expect so,’ he said, lifting his eyebrows to ask why she didn’t know. ‘Whatever you’re doing, do it before the detail gets in.’

She crossed the main courtyard, expecting someone to shout that she wasn’t meant to go that way. Something scratched at the door of what she had thought was a shed. It made her jump.

‘Can I come out yet?’ a voice whispered, nearly lost on the wind. There was no glow of a light or a fire from under the door, and no windows. It was only wood.

‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘I’m not a guard.’ She stared at the door. ‘Sorry,’ she said again, and crossed the courtyard as fast as she could, feeling dirty all the way. It was enough to make her want to turn around and leave. But she had promised not to.

A couple of nights before Christmas, coming back from a ride with Kuroda, whose horse had thrown him and who was limping back a fair way behind them on Tanaka’s arm, Takiko and Mori had followed the steep hill path up along the southern edge of the Yoruji graveyard. The horses were trotting parallel a short way off, playing and looking pleased with themselves. She was certain Mori had persuaded Kuroda’s to buck, although she hadn’t seen how.

The lighthouse flashed; from here, it was only possible to see the glow above the crest of the hill. Mori slowed and looked across the cemetery. He had an inhuman way of moving, fast and then slow.

Like silver cicadas, the bells in the trees and in the graveyard began to sing. Even though she knew just what it was, and that the lines were all connected back to the lighthouse and the machine there that generated random intervals, it was eerie. Near the gate and up by the house, dark figures moved; Kuroda’s men, changing their positions.

Mori pushed one fist hard into his chest, and by the uplight from her lamp, she could see the pulse in his wrist pounding far too fast. She’d seen people have nervous attacks before, actors mainly, but it seemed different on someone who was normally so calm.

She took his arm, pushed his sleeve back and then slapped his wrist, hard. His hand flickered and he nodded.

‘Thank you,’ he said quietly.

Caught between exasperation and guilt, her voice came out with a sharp mix of both. ‘Why are you letting Kuroda do this? He’s got you trapped here. What’s in it for you?’

He shook his head slightly. ‘I don’t remember why. I can’t remember anything very well at the moment, not really past next week. Then it’s only snatches. There’s a strong chance I might be dead soon. It makes things foggy, because having a future at all is unlikely.’ He sighed. ‘It’s why Thaniel left. I kept walking into rooms and seeing him and thinking I was seeing a ghost; I was convinced he was already …’ He shook his head once. ‘I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I’ve nearly died before, it hasn’t been like – it hasn’t made me feel confused. But I keep waking up and not knowing when I am. It feels like being drugged, I … well, maybe they will give me something and my useless brain is reacting beforehand.’

Quite gradually, the long nerve down her back shrank and pulled all the bones together. It hadn’t occurred to her until then that he was really risking anything at all. ‘If Kuroda could kill you, why is he still walking about?’

‘Because I need all this to happen.’

‘Why?’

‘I told you, no idea anymore. I just know I got myself into this on purpose. So it must be necessary.’

‘And you haven’t written anything down for yourself?’ She couldn’t keep all the incredulity out of her voice. ‘No instructions? At all? You’re walking through fire with no idea why?’

‘I had this done in Russia.’ He turned back his sleeve. Just under his elbow was a small, neat line of text.

Make Kuroda fight, but let him win.

‘What the hell use is that?’ she demanded. Without meaning to, she brushed the tattoo with her fingertip. Mori hated tattoos. They made you look, he said, like you were in the yakuza, and only teenagers and people who lived with their mothers wanted that.

Horribly, he relaxed when she touched him; as though it was all just Kuroda, not her too. Something deep in her gut twisted. It was easy to talk about Mori like a force, something terrible. It was easy to forget he was just a person too, with light bones and a deer’s shyness even around people he knew quite well.

‘Well, useful enough,’ he said. ‘It’s much better for me not to know in any detail.’

She didn’t understand.

He smiled. ‘I’m the easiest person in the world to interrogate. You don’t even need to hurt me, you just need to intend to and there I am writhing around on the floor like an idiot feeling ghost pain from a finger you haven’t even broken yet.’ He didn’t say, as you know. Her insides shrank up with guilt anyway, and a rotten sort of anger that he’d brought it up. She pushed it down. She had seen it too much in Kuroda now to imagine there was a single righteous thing about it. ‘Listen, Pepper … we talked a while ago about how I might need to ask you to do something for me one day.’

She frowned. ‘I asked what you wanted for a wedding present.’

‘Yes. It’s now.’ His eyes were serious and quiet, and like he always had when he fell still, he looked like something older than human beings. ‘I know you aren’t sure about me anymore. I know that what I did to Countess Kuroda was terrible. I’m not asking for a promise, just … some consideration.’

‘Why would I even consider it? I stopped feeling obliged to you the moment she hit the floor.’