Even now, Mardina saw with a twinge of sadness, the boy could not raise his eyes to meet Quintus’s. But he said, ‘Thank you, Centurion.’

Titus Valerius grunted, and he adjusted his cloak. ‘Well said, sir, as always. But aren’t you exaggerating a bit? You call this an arena. We aren’t gladiators going into combat.’

‘Oh, Titus, you would never have made an officer. Let me face bare-handed a dozen highly trained and fully armed gladiators, each with a personal grudge against me, than a lawyer with a single pointed question. Come now, let’s get this done.’

In Pascac’s house Inguill sat comfortably upright on a couch, with Ruminavi on a mat on the ground on her left-hand side, and Pascac himself standing on the other, looking grave. Inguill had a kind of leather trunk open on the floor before her. Two soldiers, heavily armed, stood at ease behind her.

Ruminavi caught Mardina’s eye, and gave her a kind of wink. Uncomfortable, she looked away.

Quintus sat on a couch facing Inguill, with his own advisers arrayed behind him, sitting on the floor. Michael suppressed a grumble as he made his way down to the floor; this was a custom of the Incas, that only your leader was allowed to be at eye level with the representative of the Sapa Inca.

With everyone in place, they sat and faced each other in silence – like pieces on a game board, Mardina thought, and maybe that wasn’t an inappropriate analogy.

Dressed soberly, her eyes sharp, Inguill looked strong, in control. At last she spoke. ‘Well. You are wondering why I have come here, why I wish to speak to you today.’

Pascac, standing beside her, bowed from the waist. ‘The quipucamayoc to the Sapa Inca is always welcome—’

‘Oh, hush, man. This isn’t a time for flattery, for protocol. It’s a time for truth.’ She gazed at Quintus, at Titus, at Chu Yuen with his pack on the mat-strewn floor before him. ‘You’ll remember my first reaction to you people when you came wandering in, riding craft, your yachts, that were obviously unsuitable for the journey you described. Your unlikely story of a lost colony of Romaoi miners on an ice moon!

‘I am a record keeper. A historian. A number counter. My job for the Sapa Inca is to reflect the order of his vast empire, and to play my part in enforcing that order. And I remember I spoke to you of a deeper underpinning for our need for order. Unlike you Romaoi, or what is known of your history anyhow, our gods are not nurturing spirits who bring the rains in the spring and the sun in the summer. They are not upstart slaves like your Jesu, not gods of generosity and forgiveness. Our gods are gods of destruction and calamity – gods who lived at the summits of fire mountains, in the continent you call Valhalla Inferior. Gods who have to be approached in drug-induced trances and spirit flights, gods who need to be propitiated with sacrifices, of food, drink – and, yes, human blood.’

As she said that she looked pointedly at Ruminavi, who dropped his eyes.

Now Inguill leaned forward and faced Quintus. ‘I speak of gods who, our theologians believe, eventually overthrew yours, in your comfortable eastern continents, and shattered your Roman Empire.’ She straightened up. ‘The foundation of my job is maintaining order. Without order, rigidly applied, surely you can understand that the fabric of this great machine we all live in could not be maintained. As for me, I left my birth family to study at the Houses of Learning at Hurin Cuzco at the eastern hub, and then I have served the Sapa Inca in the administrative buildings of Hanan Cuzco at the western hub. I live alone. I care for my parents, my siblings, but rarely see them. For myself, order is my husband – the only one I need. He will not betray me, if I serve him well.

‘Which is why you people represent such a problem to me. You are a threat to that order, and have been since the moment you arrived.’ She pointed a finger at Quintus. ‘Because – you – don’t – fit.’

Titus growled, ‘How fortunate we were to have you on hand when we arrived, then, quipucamayoc.’

Quintus shot him a warning glance.

But Inguill said, ‘Oh, there was no fortune involved. I look out for – anomalies. Ripples on the pond of order and calm. You could say I collect them; you could call it a passion. And when I heard the reports of your ship’s approach, I knew you were just such a ripple on my pond.’

Quintus laughed, surprising Mardina, but she saw he was trying to lift the mood, to break up the intensity. ‘Ha! Never heard you described as a ripple on a pond, Titus Valerius. What is it you want to say to us, quipucamayoc?’

She smiled. ‘I want to learn more of you. I have come to think I need to. And believe me, you need to learn more of me.

‘I wish to propose an exchange of gifts. I give you something, you give me something in return. Our whole society is based on this exchange, if you think about it: you fulfil your mit’a obligations to the Sapa Inca, and in return he grants you the gift of a secure life.’

Quintus scowled. ‘What gift?’

She reached into her trunk and produced a Roman military belt buckle, heavy steel and brass. ‘Not so much a gift as returned property, I suppose. One of your men lost this when passing through the hub portals.’

Titus smacked his brow. ‘That fool Scorpus! I’ll tan his backside with his own belt.’

Quintus said evenly, ‘Hush, Titus. What of it? This is ours, but only a buckle – purely decorative.’

‘Well, I don’t think that’s true, is it? You know, Tiso Inca destroyed Rome, but after that we pursued you surviving Romaoi to your eastern heartlands, beyond your capital. There the conclusion of the campaign of conquest was less destructive …’

‘The provinces of Graecia and Asia Minor,’ Michael said quickly.

‘Yes,’ Quintus murmured. ‘Breadbasket of the empire. The imperial troops must have pulled back there in the face of the Inca advance, tried to establish shorter frontiers.’

‘Which is maybe why these Incas call us “Romaoi”, which is the Greek term.’

Inguill listened to this carefully, as if filing away the words on her bits of knotted string, Mardina thought. ‘After the surrender your citizens became subject to the Sapa Inca of the time. But compared to Italia, these eastern Romaoi had retained much of the fabric of their civilisation, the farms, the cities – and their records. You had libraries, impressive histories. So I know much about you, you see. I can even read your peculiar language, the strange symbols you use where we use our quipus, the placement of knots on strings …’ She held up the buckle. ‘I know what the words and numbers on this object say.’ She picked out the moulding: Legio XC Victrix. ‘The ninetieth legion, known as the victorious. Something like that? But, you see, there have been no Romaoi legions since the third century after Yupanqui. And there were never as many as ninety. Yet here is this belt buckle, five hundred years later. Here you are, in your hovels, in your field, muttering about campaigns fought and booty won, and calling this man “Centurion” when you think nobody is listening.’

Quintus visibly had to control his anger. ‘You have spies here?’

‘I don’t need them. Every ayllu is riddled with yanakunas, all of whom have ears and eyes and a memory, and all of whom will tell all they know to be spared a whipping. Our inspectors sample such sources, on a regular basis.’ She faced him. ‘I think you are a fragment of a Romaoi legion, half a millennium after no such legion can exist. What do you have to say to that?’

Quintus kept a dignified silence, evidently unsure, Mardina realised, where all this was leading.

‘A gift for a gift,’ Inguill said now. ‘That is what we agreed.’

‘That’s what you imposed on us,’ Quintus growled.

‘And the gift I want is the truth. Come now,’ Inguill said silkily. ‘I know much of it already. I know for instance that few of you have learned our language properly – this girl, Mardina, being an exception.’