Page 55 of The Lost Future of Pepperharrow

She didn’t run, or make shapes; she only walked and watched the marks her shoes left.

Thaniel went on the path, because it was shorter and his lungs hurt already. The borders, bare now, were still spidery with old vines. The gardener had hung labels from parasol handles, and now they and their strings were all frozen perfectly, marking patches where the flowers would be in spring.

‘Morning, Mr Fukuoka,’ Six called toward the tents set up on the lawn. Between them, drooping now in the middle because a fold in the canvas was weighed down with snow, was a protest banner that said in tall kanji, Respect the Emperor, Expel the Barbarian.

‘Morning, love,’ Fukuoka said, tired. He was scooping snow into a kettle, looking worse for wear. He and his mad friend Yuna had been camped out here ever since the junior diplomats had shooed them away from the front door last month, and they had a few more friends now. It was, technically, part of Thaniel’s job to make sure the legation premises were not full of nationalist protesters, but it felt like bullying to call the militia for five miserable men and a sign.

‘How’s it coming?’ Thaniel said.

‘Got some more lads coming soon, for the Promulgation tomorrow. Hoping to get a few journalists up here.’

‘There will be. But don’t get too cold; come in for tea if you want. They’ve been baking a bit over-enthusiastically this week, so there’s plenty of leftovers. If you don’t mind everything in Imperial purple.’

‘I’ve got some already,’ Fukuoka said in a guilty hush. ‘But don’t tell him.’

‘Barbarians go home!’ shouted the tent.

Thaniel bowed slightly to Fukuoka, who bowed back. He went on up the gentle path, feeling grateful he wasn’t living in a tent. As he came up the legation steps, something gave him a vicious static shock through his sleeve and he swore, but when he looked around there was nothing it could have been. The steps were stone. Lightning flickered between the Palace buildings, but there was no thunder. He rubbed his arm and wondered if it might just be the air in general. It tasted of iron. Storm weather; he hoped it would break soon.

‘I thought I might build an igloo,’ Six said quickly before he could tell her to come in.

He wanted to say no, and to keep away from Fukuoka’s friends, but it was instincts like that – people deciding that locals weren’t to be trusted with children – which had made everyone angry in the first place.

‘Come here.’ He knelt down when she did. ‘Let’s see a left hook; right hook; uppercut, uppercut – good. Do it again and move your feet properly. Faster. Good girl. All right, go on.’

In the spacious hallway, the butler must have had some shocks of his own, because he was tying tea-towels around the handles of all the doors. Halfway inside, Thaniel caught another one off the lion knocker on the front door, stronger this time, and heard himself make a resentful noise. The butler nodded sympathetically.

‘This weather – do you normally have electrical storms?’ Thaniel asked, and noticed too late that he was making it sound like the butler’s own personal fault.

‘No, sir, it’s all very singular.’

It was still early and downstairs was quiet, although the ceiling creaked as people moved to and fro upstairs. He took off his coat gradually, because his shoulders ached, but then thought better of it. It was incredibly cold even inside. He could see the current of his breath.

Vaulker shot out of his office waving a piece of paper. ‘This is your department!’

‘Morning,’ said Thaniel.

‘It’s the bloody kitchen staff. They just left me this bloody note. Apparently they’re leaving. Blackmail for another bloody raise like the grubby little Arabs they are.’

Thaniel took the note. ‘This isn’t from all of them, it’s only Mrs Nakano’s girls. They say their mother is bringing in her friend Mrs Enno and her daughters, who are …’ He turned over the page, which smelled of Mrs Nakano’s sinus- destroying cigarette smoke. ‘Thick in the head.’

‘Tell her that if I hear one more squeak about ghosts, I shall sack them all. It’s not New Year anymore. I’m sure I can find other less neurotic people.’

‘Vaulker …’ Thaniel picked up a spare tea-towel from the butler’s basket and tucked it into the letterbox, which had just sparked. He tipped his head to look at it properly, nearly convinced somebody must have posted a sparkler through it, but no. He was going to write his sister a letter about the weather. She’d love to hear about a place with worse weather than Edinburgh. ‘There’s a nationalist protest on the lawn. If we sack our entire staff for no reason, the first thing they’ll do is go out there and join in, and probably bring all their friends, and probably egg anyone who tries to come for an interview.’ He’d enjoyed it at first, but the shine had worn off arguing with Vaulker. They should have been friends and they weren’t. They were the same age, they were in the same place and they knew all the same people at the Foreign Office. But Thaniel could never put aside the certainty that Vaulker was lazy, and Vaulker made no secret of worrying that Thaniel might lose his civilised veneer one day and punch someone. If they had talked about it early on, it would probably have been all right, and they would have forgiven each other a lot, but they hadn’t, and now those little dislikes had solidified into a cement block.

‘Damned if I shall be frightened of a protest,’ Vaulker said, but glassily, with cracks in the surface.

Thaniel didn’t say it would have to go into dispatches, and that Fanshaw in Whitehall wouldn’t be impressed to hear that they’d turned a small, pathetic protest into a full-blooded one the day before the new Constitution was announced and government dignitaries were in and out at all hours, along with journalists. It would probably be one of those invisible-ink marks against Vaulker’s name when the next Berlin posting opened. ‘I’m not saying we should be frightened. I’m saying that it will be a long while without cooked food.’

Vaulker seemed to ease. There was a tiny moment, not the first one, during which Thaniel felt like he and Vaulker were both holding chisels, but neither of them knew where to begin chipping, and neither of them wanted to get dust on the carpet. Instead they went into the translation office to fetch the morning papers.

As they came in, Pringle was building a tipi of firewood, his sleeves already sooty. He flushed when Vaulker asked what on earth he was doing.

‘The staff won’t lay fires, sir, they say it brings the ghosts.’

Vaulker made a noise like a disapproving horse and looked at Thaniel. ‘You were saying?’

‘It won’t light,’ Pringle said miserably. He was bundled up in a scarf.