Page 61 of The Lost Future of Pepperharrow

The warden snapped his fingers at her. ‘Less staring, more work. Come on, girl.’

‘Sorry, sir. Shall I do the desktop or are you too busy?’

‘No, on you go.’ He pushed his chair back to watch her work. He relented after a second. ‘It’s a kind of experiment,’ he said.

‘Oh. It looks complicated.’

‘It is,’ he said, with feeling. ‘Electrical. I wouldn’t even like to say.’

‘I wouldn’t understand even if you did,’ she said, and realised wryly that she was doing her best Countess Kuroda impression. It gave her a spike of sadness. Everyone always said, well, you find other friends to fill the gaps the old ones leave; but she never had.

Behind the warden, on the broad window sill, a snowy owl landed and peered in through the briny glass. The warden saw and shooed it off.

When Takiko had finished in the office, she carted everything back down the steep stairs, into the dense cold, then tapped on the window of the guards’ office. ‘Is there anything else?’ she said to the young guard.

‘No! No, that’s you done for the day. The forest detail will be back soon,’ he said seriously. He checked his watch. ‘Actually, they should be back already. It’s better if you’re safe at home when they come in.’

‘I see. Thank you.’ She paused when his hand skittered on the desk in an involuntary-looking way, so violently he had to catch it with the other. ‘Are you all right?’

‘Oh, it’s nothing,’ he said. ‘Just palsy.’

She tapped her fingers against her thigh and didn’t point out that that was only a way of saying shaky, not a why or wherefore. ‘Well, see you tomorrow, Mr …’

‘Tanizaki. See you.’

The snow was falling again, thick and spinning. There was at least another few inches of it in the courtyard, enough to have covered over the tracks of the day. The cold was so dense it felt solid – it was a shock to walk into. She rubbed her nose and bounced twice on the spot to try to get the blood flowing. Her legs were stiff. Out on the dim shore, the sea had stopped moving. She looked at the padlock on the solitary confinement shed. The chain would probably have broken with a good enough smack from a spade. But there was a light in the window of the gatehouse, and, inside, Horikawa was watching her.

Just before she passed beneath the gatehouse, he opened the window.

‘I know your game, girl. Think you can make money out of the lads, do you? It’s not decent.’

‘I’m just doing the cleaning.’

‘My arse,’ he said, and didn’t shut the window. He only looked down at her, chewing the side of his tongue. After a while, he scratched his neck with his whole hand, making a claw.

She dropped her eyes so he would think she was upset, and jumped when something clanked into the snow beside her. When she picked it up, it was a bell, the kind you put on cows and oxen.

‘Ring it if you walk back after dark,’ Horikawa said. ‘There’s bears. Don’t want to take one of them by surprise, do you?’

She didn’t say that the bears were hibernating now, and carried on. Down the hill and right to the darkening horizon, there was nothing but the creaking forest, and the powder snow streaming where the wind blew it from the canopy. There was no sign of the late forest detail.

She wondered if she was going to have to do something about Horikawa.

TWENTY-FIVE

Tokyo, 11th February 1889

There was someone else in Thaniel’s bedroom. For a sliver of an instant he saw it: a grey thing hunched over on the hearth with its back to the grate.

And then there was nothing. The room was ordinary, the door was shut, and he would have noticed the latch, because it clicked such a bright shade of yellow. His heart was heaving.

It was the third or fourth time he’d had the same nightmare. He had to go to the hearth and stare at it until the absence of a person sank in properly. The chimneys all went down through the house, this one having its base in Vaulker’s office. In defiance of the staff, Vaulker had his fire lit, and so the grate was smoking. Thaniel could feel the warmth if he held his hand above it. He stood there for a couple of minutes, soaking in the borrowed heat, even though the soot dusted his palm.

In any case, nobody was lurking halfway up the shaft. It must have been the stormy weather that was niggling at him. The electricity in the air was a background scritching, hardly noticeable, but it had a sound, God knew how, and it tinted everything the colour of tin. It tasted of metal, too.

The nightmare figure didn’t feel like something in his own mind. He saw things that weren’t there all the time. If somebody played a rich enough E flat, the whole world went purple. There had been someone there.

‘Look …’ He sighed, feeling ridiculous. ‘You’re scaring the hell out of me, is the thing. If there’s anything I can do to help, tell me. If not – I need to sleep.’