Mardina bowed her head.

‘The others of you rely on prompts. As if somebody whispers in your ears. A spirit on your shoulders, perhaps, translating from the people’s tongue to Latin and back again?’ She pointed at Chu Yuen. ‘And all of you are more confident when this boy is close by, with the pack that never leaves his presence. We are only playing a game. You. The Xin, Chu Yuen. Show me what is in your bag. I won’t take it from you. Just show me.’

Chu glanced at Quintus, and at Michael.

The ColU spoke now, from a small speaker inside the pack. ‘Do as she says, Chu Yuen.’

Hearing this disembodied voice, the two soldiers behind Inguill drew their weapons, short stabbing swords. Titus growled and would have got to his feet in response, had Quintus not grabbed his arm.

Quintus called, ‘Collius? Are you sure?’

‘She already knows so much, Centurion. And in the end we are all trapped in this situation together, the Inca as much as us.’

Inguill frowned. ‘Trapped?’

‘We are all puppets of a higher power, quipucamayoc.’

‘Show yourself!’

‘Chu Yuen, please …’

Chu opened his battered backpack, gingerly lifted out the ColU, and set it on the ground before Inguill. Unwrapped from layers of soft woollen packing, it was a slab of glass-like material the size and shape of a large book, Mardina thought; a constellation of lights winked in its interior, and cables, tubes and support structures protruded at its rim, obviously meant to connect this component to a larger structure, but crudely truncated.

Inguill stared. ‘What are you?’

‘I am not human. I was made by humans. I am a device.’

‘Not by artisans of the Inca.’

‘No—’

‘And nor by Romaoi.’

‘No, quipucamayoc. A discussion of my origin will reveal much. I am a ColU. The Romans call me Collius. Once I was part of a much larger engine. My task was to farm, to dig the soil of other worlds.’

Inguill was evidently trying to master her fear, Mardina saw. ‘You fit into no category of thing I have seen before.’

‘You are shocked, and it is understandable,’ the ColU said. ‘Believe me, I am merely a made thing. I am like a quipu. I am a device for storing and manipulating information. I am more sophisticated – that’s all. I have machines to enable me to speak, and others that enable me to hear, through devices carried by the boy, Chu Yuen. Who serves me faithfully, by the way.’

Inguill pursed her lips. ‘What do you think, tocrico apu?’

Ruminavi looked just as scared as Inguill was, but more cunning, Mardina thought. ‘I think that that would be a fine trophy to present to the Sapa Inca and his court. A talking jewel! And if it can sing or recite poetry – can you tell fortunes, Collius?’

‘I can do far more than that, Inguill, as I think you know.’

She stared at the device. ‘Can you restore the order that has been lost?’

‘That is my goal, quipucamayoc,’ the ColU said softly. ‘Mardina Eden Jones Guthfrithson is a descendant of those I was created to serve.’

Mardina was startled to be brought into this, and blushed.

‘I can understand that,’ Inguill said. ‘Everybody needs someone to protect. To give purpose to one’s life, one’s work. For me it is the Sapa Inca, who personifies the Tawantinsuyu and the billions under his protection …’

‘And billions yet unborn,’ said the ColU.

‘Yes. Yes, you’re right. Oh, put that thing away, boy, put it back where it’s safe.’

Chu picked up the processor unit reverently, and stowed it away in its layers of packing in his bag.

Quintus grinned. Evidently, Mardina thought, with Inguill disconcerted by the vision of the ColU, he felt more confident, more in control. ‘So, quipucamayoc. We are exchanging gifts. Your turn again, I think …’

‘Well, let me overwhelm you.’ Now she lifted a heavy frame out of the trunk; Titus had to help her lower it to the ground. Mardina studied this curiously. It was a frame of ornate wood within which fine wires ran, up, down, side to side, front to back, with knots of some kind of thread in a multitude of colours resting on the wires. Mardina saw that the positions of the wires, the knots, could be adjusted with the use of levers and switches.

Inguill saw her looking. ‘What do you think of this, child?’

‘It’s beautiful.’

Inguill smiled. ‘It is. Most well-designed devices are. But what do you think it’s for?’

‘It looks like a kind of quipu. I’ve only seen simple ones before, like the ones used by the inspectors when they come to assess the mit’a obligation of the ayllu. They reminded me of abacuses. This is more complex.’

‘You will have to show me an abacus. But you are right, child, that’s surprisingly perceptive.’

‘Thanks,’ Mardina said drily.

‘This is a quipu, a kind of quipu, capable of storing a large amount of information. The knots record numbers, the colours names. And it can be interrogated by means of these controls.’ She looked around at them. ‘You should not overestimate this. In Cuzco the Great Quipu Repository is a building of four mighty towers, with jars full of quipus stacked floor to ceiling. That is our record store; this can only be a digest. Nevertheless – ColU, can you read a quipu? Could you read this?’

‘With some instruction, and with the help of Chu Yuen – yes. But what will I learn?’

‘It is our history,’ said Inguill said. ‘A kind of compendium, by many authors. It depicts what we know of the ages before our own history began with Yupanqui, eight centuries ago. And it tells of our glorious campaign of global conquest, including the subjugation of the Romaoi and the Xin. And finally our expansion to the planets, and even the stars, with the use of the energies of the warak’a.’

‘I will study it closely,’ the ColU said, ‘and instruct these others.’

Mardina felt unreasonably excited by this, by the gift of a history book. ‘We might be able to figure out the jonbar hinge—’

‘Hush, child. Not yet.’

Inguill, of course, missed none of this exchange.

Titus snorted. ‘Well, I for one am always ready for a history lesson. Why, I remember once on campaign—’

‘Shut up, Titus Valerius,’ Quintus said mildly, watching Inguill, evidently intrigued. ‘I suspect it’s no accident that the quipucamayoc has given us a history text, for history is what this meeting is all about, isn’t it? History – or histories?’

Inguill nodded. ‘I have the feeling I know a good deal less than you do, at this moment. On the other hand I have the power to do a lot more about it. Rather than press you for a response – I have one last gift.’ Again she dug into the trunk.

This time she produced a scrap of white fabric, grimy with rust-coloured dust, torn from a garment, perhaps – and stained by what looked like brown, dried blood. She smoothed this out on the lid of the trunk.

Mardina leaned over to see. The fabric itself looked strange, with thick threads that were shiny where they were ripped. And stitched to the scrap was a kind of insignia, she thought, a triangle of thick cloth, edged in gold around a background field of blue-black. In the foreground was an arc of a red-brown planet, girdled by a swooping line, the schematic path of some kind of aerial craft. The craft itself was shown as a clumsy affair of tubes and boxes and shining panels, roughly stacked. Hovering over all this was an eagle, wings outstretched, holding some kind of branch in its talons – an olive? And there was Latin lettering around the edges of the triangle.

‘The eagle is the best-worked element of the thing,’ Titus Valerius murmured.

‘That’s true,’ said Mardina, entranced, puzzled.

The ColU inspected the insignia through the slate carried by Chu. ‘Quipucamayoc, where did you get this?’