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address you gave me doesn’t exist. It was burned out a year ago and it doesn’t appear to have been occupied before the fire anyway. What was your friend’s name?’
    ‘Prospero.’
    Luis chuckled throatily. Merry Christmas.
    ‘Nothing like that in our records. Such as they are.’ Esteban shrugged then, slowly and dreadfully. He ran a hand down his leg and began to scratch conspicuously at the back of his ankle, as if commanded by an unbearable irritation.
    Kay nodded businesslike at the chatelaine, to make it clear that her words were meant for Esteban alone. Then she made him look up with the force of her glare.
    ‘I don’t,’ she said, ‘believe you.’
    ‘Shit!’
    Kay stood at the epicentre of the devastation. Around her, blackened timbers and scorched concrete spread in widening circles like a map of Hell, with the normal streets and buildings of Candida blue and hazy beyond the edge. This had been a huge building once, maybe even a Folly. The wind blew charcoal dirt on her clothes and exposed skin and mocked her flimsy holiday-wear. Esteban paced in a spiral around her, glass and debris crunching underfoot. The combination of hangover and cold air turned his skin faintly blue. Kay’s legs were frozen, but she didn’t want him to see her rub warmth into them.
    He looked at her like worshipful meat, like female territory.
    Remembering Azure’s dream, she asked: ‘Do you get a lot of fires?’
    ‘Less than you’d think,’ Esteban remarked. ‘Fire’s the bastard, isn’t it?!’
    ‘I’m in insurance,’ she remarked, but the thought had nowhere else to go.
    They’d ridden by rickshaw to the site of the building, and he’d pointed out the name of the street and the numbers so she’d be sure he wasn’t pulling a fast one. Mildly impressed, she forgot to press him about Azure’s bike.
    She spat. ‘Shit!’
    ‘Do you know where I can get Internet access or an international phoneline?’
    ‘You seem to forget how isolated we are. There are good practical reasons why no-one has ever invested in laying miles of fibre-optic cable to draw Candida into the global village. You might want to think on that.’
    ‘Yes-thank-you-I-appreciate-the-advice. Is there a decent mobile signal? No, I didn’t think so.’ Besides, you decided to leave your mobile in the UK and get a new one here. ‘Radio?’
    Esteban snorted. ‘Below a peak in the largest mountain range on the planet?’
    ‘A satellite phone should work.’
    ‘If you find such a thing,’ said Flower-of-the-Lady, and Kay was no longer certain she could count on the woman’s patience or goodwill, ‘then you’re welcome to try.’
    ‘Can I even write a letter?’
    ‘That would be sensible. The local Indians have been known to carry messages.’
    ‘Do you have any idea what century we’re in, where the only way I can contact my employers on urgent business is by writing with pen and ink and hope that some half-naked savage will pass it on to the right person eventually?’
    The-Lady inspected Kay’s blue, exposed limbs and pointedly said nothing.
    Most importantly, don’t let them make you angry.
    The tribunal resumed, informally. Flower-of-the-Lady had put away her papers and sat perched on the edge of the desk with the winglike folds of her dress spilling down her legs until it reached the naked points of her feet. Esteban returned to his seat, rubbing warmth from his palms into the backs of his hands. The third chair still held Luis’ formidable Sumo-bulk. He hadn’t moved in Kay’s absence.
    She and Esteban had returned through a side tunnel, giving her little impression of the house façade in close-up. As with her first journey here from Azure’s room, she had been taken through rough wood passages where the building’s electrical nerves and pipe arteries were fully exposed. There were few windows, which disorientated Kay so that occasionally she felt she was walking in circles inside an impossibly deep labyrinth. Esteban, like