Through all this, however, the Incas had always preserved scraps of the forest where the original antis had still clung on. And in the end the descendants of those antis, no doubt utterly bewildered, had been scooped up and transported to the Incas’ new empire in the sky. This wasn’t unprecedented; the Incas had similarly taken up samples of many of the peoples that had comprised the land-based empire. It was said that over a hundred and sixty languages had been spoken in the empire, even before its expansion beyond Valhalla Inferior to a global power.

Now, so it was said, the antis prospered in the forest as well as they had ever, and – some in the ayllu whispered cattily – most of them didn’t even know they were in some great human-made artefact in the sky.

The anti girl led them in a straight line, more or less, and Mardina tried to keep track of their route. But there were no landmarks – the trees all looked the same to her – and in the jumbled shadows she even had trouble telling which direction was which. If she could only get a glimpse of the sky, of the mirror landscape above, she’d reorient and then just walk out of this place.

Then, without warning, they broke into the light.

The clearing was perhaps a hundred paces across, and evidently created by fire, for on the ground Mardina saw the evidence of burning, blackened fallen trunks and scorched branches and a scatter of ash through which green saplings poked eagerly into the light. The air was humid and very hot. But the sky above, fringed with the green of the forest canopy, revealed a textured upside-down landscape that Mardina never would have believed could be such a reassuring sight.

In the centre of the clearing was a village. Huts built of what looked like long grass stems, or maybe bamboo, were set up in a rough circle around open, trampled ground. A fire burned on a rough hearth of stones, with what looked like a large guinea pig roasting on a crude spit. Villagers sat around, poking at the fire, mending baskets, skinning another animal, talking. A handful of children dozed in the afternoon heat.

As the anti girl brought the two strangers to the edge of the village, some of the people looked around, scowled, and spoke sharply to their guide. But she replied just as sharply – and she made an alarming cutthroat gesture with one finger. Grudgingly, the adults nodded and turned away. A couple of children, naked and wide-eyed, would have come wandering out to inspect the newcomers, but they were called back sharply by the adults.

The girl turned to Mardina and Clodia, held up her hands to stop them coming any further, and mimed that they should sit in the dirt. Then she ran into the village and returned with a couple of wooden mugs, and a handful of coca leaves that she set before them, before nodding and hurrying off.

The mugs contained what tasted like diluted beer. Mardina and Clodia drank deeply and gratefully. They both ignored the coca leaves.

Clodia groaned, ‘I wish they’d spare some of that roast. The smell is killing me.’

‘Hopefully we’ll be out of here before we die of hunger, Clodia.’

‘Maybe if I make a prayer to Jesu loudly enough they’ll offer me His charity.’

‘What do you mean?’

Clodia looked at her. ‘Didn’t you see that ornament around our guide’s neck?’

‘Well, it looked like a cross, but—’

‘And look over there.’ Clodia pointed beyond the village, to the clearing’s far side, where a crude wooden cross stood, a larger version of the girl’s pendant. A kind of dummy figure made of rolled-up bales of straw hung from the cross, fixed by outspread arms, legs strapped together.

‘Jesu,’ Clodia said triumphantly.

‘You’re right,’ Mardina breathed, astonished. The cross was a double symbol of Jesu’s career, shared by Romans and Brikanti alike: of the crucifix on which the Romans had shamefully put Him to death, and of the Hammer, the carpenter’s weapon with which the Saviour had led a rebellion against the forces that had oppressed His people. ‘A figure of Jesu, here in the forest. So we live in a world now where the technological city-dwelling empire builders are pagans, and the savages in the jungle follow Christ—’

The girl who’d brought them here came running up again now, holding her fingers to her lips to hush them. Mardina saw that the villagers were growing agitated too.

Beckoning, the girl summoned the visitors to their feet. She led them quickly back into the jungle, a good way away from the place they had come in. Once back in the forest the girl moved silent as a shadow, and Mardina and Clodia followed as best they could. Mardina judged they were heading back to the edge of the forest, and the ayllu.

And as they walked, Mardina glimpsed soldiers passing through the shadows of the trees. Led by the tocrico apu, they were heading for the anti village. No wonder the villagers were growing nervous. If Ruminavi was aware of the presence of the girls, he showed no sign of it.

The anti girl left them at the edge of the forest, and hurried away into the shadows before either of them could try to thank her, or say goodbye.

Ruminavi did not return to the ayllu that day, and Mardina had no way to question him about the whole strange incident, the reason they had needed to be hidden.

Not until the next time he returned.

CHAPTER 47

In the Roman camp time was recorded, by order of Quintus Fabius. From the beginning the Romans had counted the cycle of the habitat’s artificial days and nights, measuring the time they spent in this place.

So Mardina knew it was a month before Ruminavi came again to the village, this time alone, in his deputy-prefect finery but without his squad of soldiers. And he sought out Mardina, who was walking with Clodia with firewood from the edge of the forest.

‘You two,’ he snapped. ‘Come with me. Now.’ He headed out of the village, away from the line of the road, towards the largest of the local tambos. When they didn’t follow him immediately, he glanced back over his shoulder. ‘Look, you trusted me last time, and you were saved, weren’t you?’

Mardina called, ‘Saved from what?’

‘Come on, hurry …’

As they had before, they hesitated for a heartbeat. Then they dumped their armfuls of firewood and ran after him.

They caught him up by the low fence that surrounded the tambo. The imperial storehouse was a sprawling structure that was the centre of a complex of buildings, including an inn for travellers, a grander hotel for visiting imperial officials, and a small rail station. At the gate in a wall of moon rock Ruminavi produced documentation to prove his identity, vouched for the girls, and led them into the complex to the storehouse itself.

Before the storehouse, in a shaded corner out of sight of the main complex, stood a kind of stone plinth, only a hand’s breadth high, its sides engraved with the faces of some fierce god. There were many such enigmatic structures dotted about this god-soaked artificial world, and Mardina would not have given this one much thought. But the prefect, she saw, was working a kind of key into a lock in the plinth’s surface, that he’d brushed clear of dust.

Mardina repeated, ‘You saved us from what, apu?’

He grinned. ‘Well, when I’ve saved your life again I’ll explain it all. The last sweep wasn’t satisfactory, you see, in terms of tributes for the particular mit’a we had been assigned to collect. So the Inca’s courtiers sent out the awka kamayuq parties again. And that’s what I’m saving you from …’ At last the key turned. ‘Ha! Done it.’ He got to his feet, breathless, and grasped a handle set into the surface of the plinth. ‘Help me, you two. Look, here are more handles, there and there.’