Page 6 of The Lost Future of Pepperharrow

Fanshaw let himself slouch. ‘Anyway, as I say, have a think tonight. But you do need to go, if you’re going to go much further with the Foreign Office. If you get stuck in England, you’ll be a clerk forever.’

Thaniel nodded again. Japan; he’d never been further than two hundred miles from home. The idea of it was so big that it was warping everything around it, even sitting here in the same old chair with a folded up Chinese passport stuck under the back leg to keep it level. Ten minutes ago, the office had just been the office, familiar, and cosy in the fog. Now, it didn’t feel safe. Instead of the fog, Japan was pawing at the windows, vast and nebulous, and for all he spoke the language and lived with a man who had grown up there, it was dark to him.

Fanshaw clapped him on the shoulder. ‘There are things poor people don’t teach their sons, and one of those things is that there’s a link to home you must sever, if you’re to do anything real at all.’

TWO

Tokyo, the same day

Kuroda had met Mori for the first time on a battlefield. The fighting was over by then. The field was beautiful, with mist hanging softly over the broken parts of men, horses, and artillery chassis, the grass black with blood and gunpowder burns. The only people standing upright were the relatives of the soldiers, looking for survivors, or at least relics to take home. Nearly all of them, including Kuroda, moved in a half-grim, half-panicky way, sometimes jolting forward to turn over a body and check who it was, sometimes having to pause at the edge of the field when they saw something too bad.

There was one figure who moved in clear, straight lines between corpses. He didn’t hesitate, he didn’t look at them, and he walked serenely through the slaughter like it was a rice field. Before long, Kuroda found himself staring, because he was overcome with the certainty that he wasn’t seeing a man at all, but a death god, collecting souls.

He didn’t believe in death gods, so he went and introduced himself. The young man laughed and promised he wasn’t a death god, just a very junior samurai from House Mori come to collect the armour of his fallen brothers. They’d got on well ever since. But Kuroda had never completely shrugged off the suspicion that Mori might actually have been lying about not being something other than entirely human. He hadn’t been in the least surprised to find that what had looked, to begin with, like a knack for luck, was actually an ability far more precise.

And then suddenly, after ten years in government service, Mori had moved to London. Almost certainly to defect. No doubt the British had given him a better offer. The Prime Minister at the time would have liked him killed, but Kuroda had quietly made sure nobody tried. It would have been stupid. Ironclads were all well and good, but when the Russians finally did come – he’d always known they would – it would be a hell of a lot better to have a death god. Or whatever you wanted to call him.

This morning, walking through the building site that was the Imperial Palace, Kuroda couldn’t help feeling put out that Mori hadn’t turned up yet. The Russians had been inching closer for two weeks, all but mooning the southern ports, and there was still no sign of him. Not even a telegram. Defector or not, Mori was still a samurai, not to mention a proper friend. Kuroda had honestly thought he would come home to help, if he were ever really needed.

He ducked as some men went by with bamboo scaffolding.

Everywhere, new glass panels winked. The Palace had burned down not long ago, and now builders were replacing all those very flammable old paper walls with brightly coloured glass. Walking through the new corridors was beautifully like navigating a kaleidoscope. Some things the Royal household got right.

Not very many, mind.

Ideally, Kuroda would have convened this Privy Council meeting at the local pub. It was impossible to discuss anything with the full pedantic weight of the Imperial Household leaning over your shoulder. You weren’t allowed to take the Emperor to a pub, though, and he was not feeling very optimistic. They needed to get to the point, not priss endlessly. While everyone was agonising over the place settings and the correct forms of address, the Russians were drifting nearer, and nearer.

All they had to do was make someone fire. If someone shot at a Russian ship, it would be war. Everyone might as well learn Russian now.

If no one fired, there were two possibilities. One, everything would be fine; the Russian fleet would end up nearly anchored in Nagasaki, where, given the spirit of Nagasaki, all the boardwalk traders would make a shedload of money rowing out and selling excellent Chinese food to the Russian sailors, and in general everyone except the Home Ministry would consider the whole thing quite funny. It was just about possible that at that point the Americans or the British would get jealous enough of their trading rights to chase off the ships.

Two, the Russians would anchor at Nagasaki, invade, and then look sorry later at the international war tribunals, before utterly failing to hand back the land they’d taken. The British had built an empire out of doing that and Kuroda saw no reason at all why the Tsar wouldn’t think it was a splendid idea.

It was two in three, then, for an industrial war the like of which had never been fought before. Part of Kuroda itched to just sink their flagship and get on with it.

The meeting that morning was in a grand room at the Palace with an echo that could be heard even from the corridor outside. The household steward, butler, imperial whatever – Kuroda hadn’t bothered to learn his title – bowed at him meticulously at the door.

‘Prime Minister! Despite your scheduling difficulties it is hoped that this chamber will prove appropriate,’ he said, with an air of triumph that put Kuroda strongly in mind of a dog that had brought back all the old shoes you’d tried to throw away earlier. Kuroda had come up with the scheduling difficulties on purpose. He had suggested moving rooms four times, trying to outrun the uniformed men with rulers and name cards.

‘Superb,’ he growled, wondering if anyone would really bother to prosecute him if he smacked the man with his own ceremonially embossed ledger.

Government ministers sat in a great horseshoe of chairs upholstered in deep purple velvet, behind a table draped in green damask. They were all in perfect morning suits or, in the case of the military ministers, black uniforms, the thin gold brocade across their chests glinting in the light that flooded in through the huge windows and the chandeliers. Kuroda thumped into a chair.

Beside him, the Emperor’s table was draped in red in case, Kuroda supposed, any newcomers or wandering foreigners perhaps hadn’t noticed that the youngish fellow kicking around court with too many servants was the Emperor. Like he often did, Mutsuhito came in quickly, to keep ahead of the comet tail of staff behind him, and waved in some men with tea and coffee as everyone jerked to their feet.

‘Sit down, sit down, I haven’t got my crown on yet,’ he murmured.

They sat, stiffly, and only gradually unstiffened as the bright teapots and cafetières went around. Mutsuhito wore a beard and a perpetual frown to seem older, although he had a bleak manner that made both unnecessary.

‘The thing is,’ he said suddenly to Kuroda as if they were still at the tail end of their conversation of yesterday, ‘what if they do end up nearly anchored in Nagasaki? It’s Nagasaki. People will have sold them fourteen different kinds of chicken and then stolen their lifeboats before they can even say priviet.’

‘Yes, and then every single country in the world will be giggling at us, sir,’ Kuroda said tiredly. It was treason, but he would have given anything for the Empress to attend these things instead of the Emperor. She told people things, and then the things happened. It was how command was meant to work. Mutsuhito was totally unsuited to being in charge of anything more complicated than a dinner party.

‘So?’ said Mutsuhito in his unbearably neutral way. ‘We shan’t be in violation of any treaties. They shan’t be legally allowed to invade.’

Kuroda stared into his coffee. He hated coffee. ‘Quite right, sir, but there will come a point when they don’t especially care what they’re legally allowed to do, and nor will anyone else. The British and the Americans will shrug and say it’s our own silly fault for failing to defend our own borders. And even if they don’t invade this time, someone else will, because we didn’t fight.’

‘Even though it would … be illegal for us to fire on the Russians. But aren’t they in violation of our waters?’