‘My name is Inguill – I am a quipucamayoc. Where are you from? Are you Roman? Do you understand? Do you speak runasimi?’

The ColU’s earpieces had been given to Quintus, Michael, Mardina and a few others. Now Mardina heard the strange device whisper its translation in her ear – a translation from Quechua, which the official called runasimi, into Latin, by an artificial being whose own first language was a kind of bastardised German. Just when it seemed her life couldn’t have got any stranger …

Quintus grunted. ‘I will never be able to speak this tongue of theirs! It sounds like squabbling birds.’

‘Allichu, huq kuti rimaway!’

‘That was, “Say that again,” ’ the ColU whispered. ‘Apologise, Centurion. And wait for me to translate.’

‘I am sorry.’

‘Pampachaykuway …’

‘My name is Quintus Fabius. I am the leader of this group. We are grateful for your shelter.’

‘Well, you haven’t been granted it yet.’ The quipucamayoc glared at Quintus and his men, suspicion bristling as visibly as feathers on a predatory bird, Mardina thought. ‘Tell me again where you claim to come from.’

‘We lived on an ice moon, far from the sun. I apologise; I do not know the names of these bodies as they are known in your mighty empire … (Collius, I’m not comfortable with all this lying …)’

(‘Be humble, Centurion. Guile, remember? You can display your strengths later.’)

‘We were there for many generations. Our fathers and mothers, our grandfathers and grandmothers worked the ice, living off the thin sunlight. We farmed—’

‘You were there so long you forgot most of your Quechua, it seems. Ha! Five centuries after Tiso Inca stomped Rome flat, you refugees still cling to your primitive tongue. Oh, never mind. So you farmed. Why are you here now?’

Mardina could hear the tension in Quintus Fabius’s voice as he swallowed these insults and responded. She was glad Titus Valerius and the rest could not understand what was said.

‘There was a calamity, quipucamayoc. Another body, a fast-moving rogue, hit our home. We, most of the men, were away, investigating another moon that seemed mineral-rich. We had not detected the rogue, there was no time – our home was destroyed, most of the women and children. All we had built over generations. We who survived came here in the last of our ships, to throw yourselves on your mercy.’

She peered into his face. ‘Well, at least you’re sticking to your story. But you don’t betray much grief. That’s either a sign that you’re strong, which is admirable, or you’re lying, which is less so.’ She pulled herself along a guide rope and inspected the legionaries. ‘Also you don’t look like no-weight farmers to me. You’re too solid. Too muscular.’

Quintus straightened his back. ‘We – our ancestors were Roman. We retained their sense of discipline, even in our exile out in the dark.’

‘Really. And that ship that brought you in – don’t imagine we didn’t see it before it scurried off into the dark – it didn’t look like any kind of mining craft to me.’

‘Another relic of our pioneering ancestors, quipucamayoc. All we had left. We sent it back to the ice moons to search again for survivors of our family. While we came here looking for work. (Collius, these lies become elaborate.)’

(‘Please, Centurion. Humour me. We are playing a long game.’)

(‘Hmm …’)

Inguill glared at Quintus. ‘You mutter in your antique tongue, as if talking to a voice in your head. Are you simple or insane?’ She studied the group, deeply suspicious. ‘I don’t like you, Quintus Fabius, if that is your name. I don’t like this rabble you have brought into my world. I don’t like your story, which stinks like a week-old fish head. I don’t like the way you hesitate before speaking every line, as if somebody is whispering in your ear. You don’t fit – and I don’t like things that don’t fit. I have the power to throw you all out into the airlessness, you know.’

Quintus held her gaze. ‘We are at your mercy.’

‘You are, aren’t you? But you have muscle, and evident discipline of a sort. This is a big craft and we are always short of muscle and discipline – especially if it can be applied to the jobs nobody else wants. Very well. I will let you live. I’ll send you to the antisuyu.’ Inguill grinned coldly. ‘You don’t know what that is, do you? In the antisuyu you will be far from my sight. Indeed you will be far from this place, which is the only way out of this habitat. And a deeper contrast to Rome, and indeed your ice moon, could hardly be imagined. But you won’t be out of my thoughts, believe me. You are a conundrum, Quintus Fabius, and it is evident to me that, to say the least, you are not telling me the whole truth.’ She pushed her face close to his. ‘I don’t like you, and you owe me your life. Never forget that.’

Quintus did not reply.

She backed off. ‘In anticipation of the decision, I brought this man.’ She indicated the other clerkish man next to her. ‘His name is Ruminavi, and he is the tocrico apu of the region to which you will be sent – which contains the ayllu to which you will be attached, among others.’ She looked at their empty faces. ‘Do you understand any of this? You are in Tawantinsuyu, the Empire of the Four Quarters – the earth and the sky, and east and west here in the habitat, the antisuyu and cuntisuyu. Under the Sapa Inca each quarter is controlled by an apu, a prefect, and under him or her are twenty-two tocrico apus … Oh! You will learn.

‘Now Ruminavi will escort you to your transports to the antisuyu. Do what the tocrico apu says, and your local curaca, work hard and don’t cause trouble, and you might survive a little while. Oh, and you will give up any weapons you are still concealing. No weapons in Yupanquisuyu, save for the troops and other designated officials.’

There was grumbling in the ranks at this, but Quintus said quietly in thick rural Latin, ‘Lads, we’ll find weapons as we need them, or steal them, make them. That’s always been my plan.’

The ColU said, ‘Make sure they don’t confiscate me. Tell them I am an idol. Or a piece of medical equipment. Or a scrap from the farmed moon, a sentimental souvenir …’

But the men had fallen silent.

Mardina turned, and saw that a door at the far end of the chamber had opened, to reveal the interior of the habitat for the first time. A tube of cloud, brightly illuminated, stretching to infinity.

‘By Jupiter and Jesu,’ muttered Fabius. ‘Into what have you delivered us, Collius?’

As the Romaoi filed towards the internal transport, one of Inguill’s soldiers approached her, holding a block of metal. ‘Found this, quipucamayoc. No idea how one of them smuggled this through the cleansing area. And then managed to drop it on the other side …’

Inguill took the piece. It was a kind of belt buckle, she saw, intricately shaped, and stamped with square, ugly Latin lettering that she had to pick out:

LEGIO XC VICTRIX

CHAPTER 41

Ruminavi, who was a fussy little man with none of the evident intellect of Inguill, said they would be transported in some kind of carriage from this hub to their new home – Mardina imagined something like an elevator car – indeed they would ride in a series of such transports; the carriages would not take all of them at once.

So the Romans were roughly divided into groups of a dozen or less. Quintus, with Titus’s help, made sure the men were in their contubernium tent groups as far as possible, with somebody relatively sensible in charge of each. The legionaries grumbled and moaned as they formed a queue, hanging weightless in the air – a line that would take them into a chamber of wonders, Mardina realised, but soldiers always grumbled whatever you did for them.