Her gaze slid from his eyes to the tunnel ahead, then back again. She took a breath.
She’s mine, he thought. Oh, don’t let me be wrong!
“What do you want to do?” she asked him.
He shrugged, adjusted a pillow at his side. “Well, I’m comfortable here…”
“You want to go through,” she said, the mirror-mask rising as she tipped her head back, as if daring him.
He just shrugged.
She looked at the people on the shore, and up at the sporadic bursts of fireworks above the city’s dark twinkle of lights. “I don’t know,” she said, looking back at him. And suddenly she was all haughty Golter noble, nose in the air, imperious and straight-backed, her voice commanding: “Persuade me.”
He smiled. A year ago, that would have been it; he’d have bridled at that arrogance, and laughed and said, Na, it’d be boring in the tunnel; let’s rejoin the others and have some real fun (and would secretly have hoped that she had wanted to go through, and so would be hurt that he’d said it would be boring)… but now he was a little older and a lot wiser, and he knew her better, too, and he was fairly sure now that he knew what it meant that she should suddenly revert to the behaviour of her earlier life.
And even then, even in that instant when he knew he was on the tremulous brink of something he wanted more desperately than he’d ever wanted anything before, and knew that it was going to break new and dangerous ground, and maybe endanger him, her and the others, and knew that he knew, and didn’t care, because life was there to be lived just this one time, and that meant gambling, seizing each and every chance for happiness and advancement; even then he found time to think, to be struck by the realisation: How old we have become.
Not one of us over twenty; her-this stunning, glorious creature in front of him-only just nineteen. And yet in the last year we have become ancient; from children to cynical, war-worn, half-careless, half-uncaring veterans who will take their enemies when and where they can in the darkness and the single-ship loneliness of the battle, coupling with them across microseconds of space, tussling and teasing and tangling with them until only one was left… and took their pleasures cut from the same template; total, intense and furiously concentrated involvement, immediately followed by utter indifference.
Persuade you, he thought. “Okay,” he said, smiling at her. “Come on through the tunnel and I promise I’ll tell you what I toasted to.”
She made a funny expression, drawing both ends of her mouth down, the tendons in her neck standing out. It was an expression he’d never seen on her before. He smiled despite himself, thinking how suddenly young she had looked.
“I don’t know,” she said, the mirror-mask looking down at her glass. “Then I’d have to tell you what I toasted to…”
She looked up into his eyes, and he wondered if it was possible to give a come-hither look from behind a mask. He settled back in the plushness of the cushions. Something sang in his soul. The tunnel entrance drifted closer.
Boat marshals called to them, reminding them this was their last chance to decant. People on shore made knowing, lowing noises and shouted ribald advice. He scarcely heard them.
“You’re persuaded?” he said.
She nodded. “I’m persuaded.”
He sat very still.
She reached up and took off the rainbow-mirror mask, just as the tunnel mouth came up to swallow them.
“This is it,” Zefla said. “31/3 Little Grant Terrace.”
The three-storey structure was even more darkly ramshackle than its neighbours. It was Malishu-vernacular in style, sculpted from bluey-purple layer-mat supported by fire-hardened beams of brown stalk-timber. It looked out over a narrow-railinged, bark-cobbled street to a view of the steeply raked roofs-some tented, some bark-tiled-of the Modern History Department, and out towards the city’s northern suburbs.
The place looked dead. The ground floor had no windows and the tall windows in the two upper floors were dark and dirty. The door, made from poorly cured bark that had warped and split over the years, hung crooked over a nailed-on extra sill. Zefla pulled on a string handle. They couldn’t hear any sound from the interior. Zefla tested the door but it was either locked or badly stuck.
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.