Sharrow looked up at the guttering; a section hung loose, dripping water despite the fact the roof and street had now dried after the early-morning drizzle. She kicked fragments of a fallen roof tile into a weed-ruffed hole in the pavement, wrinkling her nose in distaste. “I take it being the world authority on the Kingdom of Pharpech doesn’t attract major funding.”

Zefla pulled harder on the string door-pull and stood back. “Maybe it does,” she said. “But the guy feels closer to the place living in an antiquated ruin like this.”

“Method scholarship?” Sharrow said sceptically. “More likely this is Cenuij’s idea of a joke.”

Zefla shook her head earnestly. “Oh, no. I can tell, he was genuine. I think he wanted to come himself, but he reckoned your man here would be more receptive to us.”

“Huh,” Sharrow said, frowning at the skeleton of a tiny animal lying just inside the doorway’s recess. “That description could cover a tankful of shit.”

A window creaked open on the third floor and a small, grey-haired, bearded man stuck his head out and looked down at them.

“Hello?” he said.

“Hello,” Zefla called. “We’re looking for a gentleman called Ivexton Travapeth.”

“Yes,” said the little man.

Zefla paused, then said, “You’re not him, then?”

“No.”

“Right. Do you know where we can find him?”

“Yes.”

Zefla looked at Sharrow, who started whistling.

“Could you tell us where he is?” Zefla said.

“Yes,” the little man said, blinking.

“Wrong department,” Sharrow muttered, folding her arms and turning to look back out over the city. “It’s the Formal Logic building and they’re working to rule.”

“Where is he?” Zefla asked, trying not to giggle.

“Oh, here,” the man nodded.

“May we see him?” Zefla said.

“Oh, yes.”

“Keep going,” Sharrow told Zefla quietly. “The Passports only last a year.”

“Good,” Zefla said. “Thank you. We’d have phoned or screened, but Mister Travapeth seems to discourage that sort of contact.”

“Yes.”

“Yes. Could you let us in?”

“Yes, yes,” the small man nodded.

Sharrow started to make loud snoring noises.

Zefla nudged her. “Please come down and let us in,” she said, smiling at the little man.

“Very well,” the grey-bearded man said and disappeared. The window banged shut.

Sharrow’s head thumped onto Zefla’s shoulder. She yawned. “Wake me when the door opens or the universe ends, whichever’s sooner.”

Zefla patted her auburn locks.

The door opened, creaking. Sharrow turned to look. The small grey-bearded man peeked out, looked up and down the street, then opened the door wide. He was pulling on a pair of floppy trousers with attached soft-shoes; he tied the cord and tucked his shirt into his trousers as he stood there, grinning at the two women. He was tiny, even smaller than he’d looked in the window. Zefla thought he looked cuddly.

“Good-morning,” she said.

“Yes,” he replied, and beckoned them to enter. Zefla and Sharrow stepped over the high sill into a dull but not dark space looking onto a small courtyard, partially shielded from them by a sheet hanging from the floor above. The air smelled of sweat and cooked fats. A grunting, wheezing male-sounding noise came from the other side of the grubby sheet. Zefla glanced at Sharrow, who shrugged.

“I hope you’re hearing that too,” she told Zefla, “or I’m more tired than I thought and flashing-back to last night.”

The grey-bearded man went on before them, still hitching up his trousers and tucking in the last few folds of his creased shirt as he bustled forward round the edge of the hanging sheet. They followed. The courtyard was small and cluttered; balconies ran round the two floors above, giving access to other rooms. A light covering of membrane made a gauzy roof above.

The floor of the atrium was covered with carpets and mats on which stood half a dozen over-stuffed bookshelves and a couple of tables covered with layers and rolls of paper. Exercise equipment in the shape of dumbbells, weights, heavy clubs and flexible bars lay strewn amongst the stuff of ancient scholarship.

In the centre of it all stood the tallish, gaunt figure of an almost naked elderly man with a white mat of hair on his chest and a shock of thick black hair on his head. He was clad in a grubby loincloth and clutched a pair of hand-weights which he was raising alternately, breathing heavily and grunting with each lift. There was sweat on his fined, tanned face. Zefla reckoned he was seventy at least, though his figure was relatively youthful; only the white chest-hair and a certain slackness round his belly revealed his age. “Ha; good-morning, lovely ladies!” he said in a deep voice. “Ivexton Travapeth at your service.”

He thumped the hand-weights down on a massive book that seemed to be holding down one corner of an age-brown chart, raising dust and making the table beneath shudder. “And how may this humble and undeserving scholar help two such radiantly pulchritudinous gentle-ladies?” He stood, arms crossed, biceps bulging, on the balls of his feet, facing them, still breathing heavily. His expression was somewhere between mischievous and lecherous.

“Good-morning, Mister Travapeth,” Zefla said, nodding as she stepped forward and put out her hand. They shook. “My name is Ms Franck; this is my assistant, Ms Demri.”

Sharrow nodded as Travapeth glanced, smiling, at her. “We’re researchers for an independent screen production company, MGK Productions. Our card.” Zefla handed him a card from one of Miz’s many front companies.

Travapeth squinted at the card. “Ali, you are from Golter. I thought so from your accent, of course. How may Travapeth help you, my saxicolous damsels?”

Zefla smiled. “We’d like to talk to you about a place called Pharpech.”

Ivexton Travapeth rocked back on his heels a little. “Indeed?” he said.

At that point the little man rushed out of the shadows behind the scholar, holding open a long grey gown. He jumped up and tried to put the gown over the tall man’s shoulders. He failed, and tried several more times while Travapeth boomed:

“Pharpech! Ali, dear, belovable lady, you utter a word-an almost magical word-which summons up such a welter of emotions in this well-travelled breast-” There was a hollow thud as Travapeth struck his white-haired chest with one fist “-I scarcely know where or how to begin to respond.”

The little man put the gown over one forearm and pulled a chair from beneath a table, stationing it behind Travapeth. He climbed up onto the chair and went to put the gown over the scholar’s shoulders just as Travapeth moved away towards a chest-high wooden stand holding a set of dumbbells. The little grey-haired man fell to the floor with a squeal.

Travapeth lifted the dumbbells from the stand, grunting.

“You say screen production company?” he said, straining to lift the dumbbells to his chin. The little man picked himself up and dusted himself down, retrieved the gown from the carpet and looked sulkily at Travapeth. Sharrow had her lips tightly closed.

“That’s right,” Zefla smiled.

The little grey-haired man scowled at Travapeth, then left the gown draped over the chair and returned to the shadows, muttering incoherently and shaking his head.

“Hmm,” Travapeth said, finally heaving the dumbbells level with the top of his shoulders and standing there panting for a moment. He swallowed. “I happen to know His Majesty King Tard the Seventeenth rather well,” he boomed. He smiled at the two women with a sort of radiant humility. “I was present at his coronation, you know, back when you two beautiful ladies were still suckling at the generous globes of your mothers’ breasts, I imagine.” He sighed contemplatively, perhaps sadly, then looked more serious as he strained at the dumbbells, and after a while relaxed. “And I have to say,” he panted, “His Majesty has shown… a consistent reluctance… to allow any sort of pictographic record… to be taken of his realm… which the modern world seems to regard as… bordering on the pathological.”