“Yes,” said Kit.

“Then the conversation should not be quick.”

Turning away, Nureki-san tapped two more buttons, checked a readout on a tiny screen, and spoke softly into a microphone. Engines fired into life below Kit’s feet and the Suijin-sama began to turn itself.

“This yacht,” said Mr. Nureki. “Self steering, self navigating, gyroscopically balanced. You could send her round the world and she’d come back undamaged.”

“Impressive,” Kit said, wondering how much was true.

“Pointless,” corrected Mr. Nureki. “Such technology steals all purpose from our lives.”

The ocean hosted a battle between the rain, the wind, and the waves; as torrential downpours tried to hammer flat seas that the wind kept scooping into white-capped peaks. Kit could see how belief in the nature gods might make sense. If he’d been a fisherman or farmer, he’d have been praying to the kami too.

Visibility was almost zero.

Actually, it was zero. So hard did the rain beat into Kit’s face that the only way he could stand its sting was to close his eyes and hunch his shoulders. Of course, he could always have faced in the other direction.

“You,” shouted a voice. A hand tugged at Kit’s arm, turning him. “Yuko says come below.” It was Tsusama, the eldest of Mr. Nureki’s sons.

“I’m fine,” insisted Kit.

“You’re sodden.”

“That’s not a problem.”

“Suit yourself.” The boy shrugged, then hesitated. Glancing round, he checked they could not be overheard. Since his words were ripped by the wind from his mouth almost before he could say them his caution seemed almost comic.

“Did you love her?”

“What?” Kit demanded.

“Yoshi. Did you love her?”

“Yes,” said Kit. “I did. A lot, just not very well.”

Tsusama nodded. “Yoshi was my cousin,” he said. Kit and the boy looked at each other and then the boy headed inside, scraping water from his hair. Whatever Tsusama said, Kit was left alone after that.

An hour later, with the wind less fierce, the torrential rain reduced to a drizzle, and the clouds almost empty, the yacht reached a line of green hills rising steeply from the sea. A length of beach could be seen to the north, but most of the coastline seemed to be wilder, with inlets and coves guarded by dark rocks.

“Boso-santo,” said Tsusama. “Beautiful, isn’t it?” Nureki-san’s eldest son was back. “We’ve been coming to the area my entire life. Yoshi used to visit as a child. Well, she did according to Father. That was before I was born.”

“What happens now?” Kit asked.

Tsusama shrugged. “Not my decision,” he said. “All the same you might want to get changed before you meet the high council.”

“Die smart?”

The boy grimaced, then patted Kit on the shoulder. “Yeah,” he said. “Something like that.”

A cupboard built into the bow of the Suijin-sama seemed to contain nothing but suits. A roller drawer above held neatly stacked shirts and a chrome rail inside the door hung with ties. Someone had even put silk socks into pairs next to the shirts.

Shaking his head, Kit said, “I don’t get it.”

“What’s to get? Take a suit.”

Kit did as he was told, choosing black, because all the suits his size were in black. He matched the jacket to a black tee-shirt, which was probably meant to be a vest but was what he could find. He kept the shoes he’d been wearing.

“No gun?” asked Tsusama.

In stripping to change Kit had revealed his lack of weapons.

“Why would I carry a gun?”

Tsusama shrugged. “I just thought,” he said. “You know…” He nodded towards Kit’s recently severed finger. “You were like us.” The idea of Mr. Nureki’s son considering any foreigner like us was so bizarre Kit wondered if the boy was mocking him. And then he realised something far more frightening. Tsusama was serious.

“It happened in London.”

“You owed a debt?”

“I paid a price.”

“There’s a difference?”

“Oh yes,” said Kit. “A big difference.”

“And this man you paid. Was he happy with the price?”

It was Kit’s turn to shrug. “I doubt it,” he said. “He died before I could ask.”

A single jetty jutted into the sea. Sun and rain had bleached its surface to a washed-out grey that designers around the world tried endlessly to imitate but never quite got right. It took years of weathering to achieve that effect. And though rain had darkened the wooden walk-way its planks were already patchy where the puddles had begun to dry.

A narrow path wound between twisted pines beyond the jetty. About half way up, a huge boulder broke through the dark and gritty earth and forced the path to change direction. At the top, four vermillion-painted cypress trunks formed a perfect torii gateway.

“We’re at a shrine?”

“Among other things,” said Tsusama.

“What other things?”

“We have houses,” the boy said. “A temple and family shrines. This is where we meet. There are rules…” He hesitated.

“That sometimes get broken?”

“Only once,” said the boy. “The cost was terrible.” Glancing at his watch, Tsusama nodded to himself. His father and brother had gone ahead, accompanied by Yuko. Tsusama was to deliver Kit to the ryokan exactly an hour later. This would allow sufficient time for the high council to meet. He was not to think, however, that the council met on his behalf. Their meeting and his presence on the island were coincidence.

The quietness is misleading, Mr. Nureki had told Kit. We are all in the eye of a terrible storm. Kit was still wondering if the man meant it figuratively, literally, or both.

“How long have your family owned the island?”

The boy smiled. “Not my family,” he said. “All of us, all the families, and this particular island is new.”

“Really?” Kit looked at the rocks, the dark volcanic sand of the little beach, and the worn path leading to where black-eared kites soared above the battered torii. The broken earth was sticky with rotted pine needles, ruts in a track leading to the jetty suggested generations of carts unloading cargo. If its newness was true, the island was a masterpiece.

“Seven years,” said Tsusama. “Mr. Oniji bought a strip of cliff and had this island built half a mile off shore. It took three months to sink the foundations and another eighteen to landscape the island and erect the shrine, torii, ryokan, and houses.”

“But that’s old,” said Kit, nodding towards the distant torii.

A smile was his reply. “Eleven hundred years,” he said. “Probably the oldest now existing. Mr. Oniji found it in Honshu.”

“And the temple?”

“From Sapporo. Also most of the houses, although Tamagusuku-san insisted on shipping his own from Okinawa.” Something clouded the boy’s eyes and he turned away, their conversation over. At 6.35 pm exactly, silence having filled the remaining minutes, Mr. Nureki’s son checked his watch one final time and indicated the path.

“Go now,” he said.

Pine needles still crunched where heavy branches had kept the worst of the rain from reaching the ground. Mostly, however, the needles just slid wetly, like scabs of ground breaking free. Kit stopped at the torii to clap once and bow to any kami who might be watching. Behind him he heard Tsusama do the same.