The Lost Future of Pepperharrow by Natasha Pulley

Author:Natasha Pulley
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781635573312
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2019-12-12T19:08:28+00:00

She soon found that the best part of the day was cleaning the warden’s office. It was beautifully warm, with a fire burning in a real Western-style grate and lamps everywhere, even in the gloomy daytime. He had glass in the windows and furs on the floor. There was a big desk, full of good pens and paperwork, but at the other end of the room was a littler desk and a young man with glasses and a typewriter, and a telegraph machine whose wire came in through a tiny hole in the wall behind him. He typed all the time, but only numbers, which he was reading from graph axes drawn onto dozens and dozens of peculiar photographs. They were all the same, more or less; two pale, fluctuating patterns, traced out on a dark background. There was nothing more to them that, but they were unpleasant anyway, in a way which scratched at a nerve in the back of her mind, like a razor blade just catching on your knee.

So they had an electrograph. Mori might be here somewhere. She had an uneasy stir. If he thought she’d feel guilty and break him out once she actually saw the place, he’d miscalculated. A prison was where he belonged.

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.

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