‘I tell you what,’ said Sergei. ‘Since you’re busy with that thinking stuff, I’ll make breakfast for both of us. All right?’

‘Huh.’

Because this piece of intelligence was crucial: he was sure of it. So he had three choices: take credit with Moscow, as Sergei suggested; allow Torginov and his contacts to investigate further and perhaps make their own report; or shut the whole thing down, killing Torginov and burying the news of Japanese plans to strike eastward.

He felt the expression grow on his face: the Trickster smile, the harsh-humoured grin of Loki, both a god and betrayer of Asgarth. Ever since Dmitri learned the meaning of the word ‘Russia’ and associated it with the natural redness of his hair, he had felt kinship with those Old Norse beings, a resonance that spanned the centuries, and never mind that the Nazis did the same.

A choice between evils.

What could be better?

Hideo Kanazawa had wept in his sleep: something that should not be possible, surely; yet it brought back his first days at Naval School, and the bullying he had received as a sissy-boy who missed his parents. Now, he stood in his thin yukata kimono, cold despite the sunlight outside, and stared at the smart, serviceable kanji he had inked in what had been a blank, virgin book.

The written words spoke of pincer attacks and the importance of intelligence; and they mocked him just as the bullies had, because they were not his thoughts: they were words strained from thickened idea-stuff forced through him like grains from cooked rice. It was turgid, the language of von Clausewitz, but not enough to hide the psychotic brilliance of that military mind. Kanazawa picked up the volume he was trying to translate, and pictured himself hurling it across the room to rip through a shoji screen; then he replaced the book with exquisite gentleness, and let out a silent breath.

What did I say last night?

Drunkenness was necessary and even encouraged, from time to time; but with fellow officers, not gaijin. Shame filled him like tea inside a cup. Yet what should embarrass him? Letting down his guard with the wrong people … or immersing himself in the group insanity that swelled all around?

I befriended the gaijin because of Kano-san.

One of the two foreigners trained at the dojo of Dr Kano, the brilliant educationalist who – as a spare-time activity – created judo from the brutality of old jujitsu schools, forming moral fighters who defeated the best that the thuggish older styles could throw at them. His creation was modern, western-influenced (which few understood), yet a recreation of purity from ancient times, one that deserved to spread worldwide.

Dr Kano was a friend of Kanazawa’s uncle, hence the visit which resulted in meeting the gaijin. He and the great man had spent long hours decrying the militarism which was rising tsunami-like to engulf Japan – all that, despite the uniform that Kanazawa wore. On one occasion with his new western friends, he took down Sun Tzu’s Art of War – required reading at all military schools – and related what he knew of the author.

‘One day the Chinese emperor commanded Sun Tzu to appear,’ Kanazawa said, ‘knowing the man’s reputation, and needing someone to lead the imperial army. Sun Tzu had declared he could instil discipline in any group – even the emperor’s wives.’

At that, the foreigners had made ribald jokes – like last night, much saké had passed through their lips – before Kanazawa finished his story.

‘After extracting an imperial promise that he, Sun Tzu, was to have total command, he ordered the women to line up and march. The result was giggling – at which he ordered the imperial guard to behead one of the wives.

‘The emperor tried to intervene, but Sun Tzu reminded him of the promise. Then the wife was beheaded, and the remaining wives marched in perfect, coordinated silence.’

The gaijin had asked what happened afterwards. When Kanazawa told them that the emperor gave Sun Tzu command of all his armies, both foreigners had laughed.

Perhaps it was national pride or shame that prevented Kanazawa from discussing Miyamoto Musashi, the heroic kensei – sword saint – that his countrymen revered in preference to the Chinese Sun Tzu. But Musashi, that most solitary of men, had suffered from scrofulous skin, stinking since he never bathed – after assassins ambushed him in a bath-house once – and had the temerity to write of a lifetime committing homicide as if he were the greatest of artisans or artists.

Kanazawa touched the tiny shinto shrine in the corner of the room.

My country is wrong.

From the two-sword stand, he took a sheathed katana: the warrior’s primary sword, his a century old. Then he put it back, and picked up its smaller companion for close-work, the wakizashi.

My emperor is wrong.

He knelt, placed the sword on the tatami mat, then sat back on his heels. Time slowed as millimetre by millimetre he pulled open his light robe, shucked it from his shoulders, and bared himself to the waist.

The Japanese spirit is wrong.

It whispered from its sheath, the killing blade. Forged in the ancient way, incandescent metal folded on itself over and over in ritual, the wakizashi could part falling silk, or split iron-hard bamboo without sustaining damage. Or slice through a man’s body with ease.

It hurt.

He hardly felt it. Just the beginning: the parting of the skin.

So beautiful.

Pantheistic, his view of the world: everything imbued with its own spirit; everything beautiful; the universe demanding worship.

Even the dust.

White-gold dust in sunlight. Straw scent from mats. Softness of cotton on skin.

All to be extinguished, because of the …

Now is the time.

Because of the …

Time to do it.

The darkness, the twisting evil.

End it.

Amid beauty, the loathsome other, the enemy.

End it all.

Blade, ready to be pulled in, elbows close to his body for one tug inwards, then the sideways drag through stomach and intestines, to feel hot slickness spilling out.

Golden, the light.

So exquisite, the pain.

Sweet, the dreaming.

When he woke, sprawled on the mat, he knew the world had saved him. Sunlight had spoken, told him he was better than the darkness, and directed him to live for himself, not wrongheaded others who confused bullying with courage, sadism with strength.

There was a monastery, and he knew the way.

I will find the path.

Not just the physical way.

I swear it.

His body moved slowly but his spirit danced as he prepared to leave possessions and his world behind.

SEVEN

MOLSIN, 2603 AD

Orange clouds pulled away from the front of their ship; and there, across a kilometres-wide gap, hung the floating city of Barbour: elongated and convex, gleaming orange encrusted with sweeping, ice-like external promenades, spars and buttresses: beetle-like from their first perspective, changing as they flew beneath, nearing the pendulous stalactite-form that depended from the asymmetric underside.

Jed slowed their flight, docking against a questing quickglass tendril, as gently as if his ship were kissing a long-time lover. At Jed’s command, an oval melted open in the control cabin wall. The city’s hollow tendril, to which the hull was conjoined, formed a tunnel into the city, wide enough for Jed and Roger to walk in side by side.

They wore black – in Jed’s case, edged with narrow gold – and their eyes were natural obsidian. Pilots, openly so.

‘They’ll want to talk to us first,’ said Jed. ‘Before off-loading the cargo. Er …’

‘It’s all right. I know what you mean.’