Mardina frowned. ‘The Sapa Inca – I thought his name was Quisquis.’

‘So it is, the latest Inca – distant descendant of Huayna Capac, of course, separated by seven or eight centuries … My chronology is poor.’

‘I don’t understand,’ Mardina admitted.

‘I think I do,’ Clodia said. ‘I heard of this. When the Sapa Inca dies—’

‘The Sapa Inca does not die,’ Cura said firmly. ‘He lives on in his palace, he has a household of servants, and he is reunited with his ancestors and descendants on feast days.’

Clodia stared at the figure in the throne. ‘How many palaces like this are there?’

Ruminavi knew the answer to that. ‘Thirty-eight.’

‘Thirty-nine Incas, then. Thirty-nine emperors since Yupanqui.’

Mardina stared into the mummy’s painted face. Here was a tough warrior who had built an empire with tools of stone and bronze, and long after his death had been lifted into a realm he could never have imagined.

‘This is my future,’ Clodia said. ‘To become like this.’

Ruminavi smiled. ‘A malqui, stuffed and preserved? Not if the plan works out.’

Once again Clodia slid her hand into Mardina’s.

CHAPTER 53

The Roman century came to the ocean coast at a beach, not far from the delta of a great river.

Quintus Fabius ordered his men to stay in the cover of the forest, rather than move out into the open. Grumbling, they complied, and began the daily process of establishing camp – for the twenty-first time on this march, they had fallen just a day behind the schedule the centurion had set for them.

Quintus himself, ordering Chu Yuen with Collius to accompany him, walked out into the light, onto the sandy beach. They were close to the marshy plain of the delta, where tremendous salt-loving trees plunged deep roots into the mud. The river was a mighty one, draining a swathe of this half-cylinder continent, the antisuyu, and when Quintus looked ahead he could see the discolouration of the fresh water pushing far out into the ocean brine.

And when he looked up to left and right, in wonder, he saw how the ocean rose up beyond what ought to have been the horizon, splashed with swirls of cloud, tinged here and there by the outflow of more huge rivers – and merging at last in the mists of the air with the other half of this world sea, which hung like a steel rainbow above his head.

Inguill, with a couple of Inca soldiers, was waiting for him here, as Quintus knew she would be. ‘You’re late.’

He shrugged. ‘Within our contingency—’

‘Before time runs out for Clodia Valeria?’

Tall, thin, pale, intent, she looked out of place on the beach, in this raw natural environment. She belonged in an office, Quintus thought, her fingers wrapped in those bundles of string she read. But she was in command.

She turned now, and pointed. ‘Down there are your transports over the ocean.’

Quintus saw a series of craft drawn up on the sand, flat wooden frames with sails furled up on masts. ‘Rafts?’

‘They are adequate. They are built by the Chincha, who are a people who once lived on the western coast of the continent you call Valhalla Inferior. Now they live here. Their rafts are of balsa and cotton. They were the best sailors in our world, until the Xin came calling on our shores in their mighty treasure ships. The Chincha craft will suffice to carry you over to the cuntisuyu if the weather over the ocean stays fine – as it is programmed to do.’ She glanced up at a sky empty of Condors. ‘And of course you will be less conspicuous than in any other form of transport. On the far side you will be escorted to a capac nan station. There are freight wagons sufficiently roomy to hide your men, all the way to the hub. It won’t be comfortable, but you will be safe enough and will not be betrayed.’

‘Well, we’ve trusted you this far.’

‘And I you,’ she said drily. ‘Some would say I have already betrayed the Sapa Inca, my only lord, simply by keeping secrets from him.’

‘Speaking of secrets,’ the ColU said now, ‘I have studied your records, quipucamayoc. I believe I know the nature of the jonbar hinge that separates your reality from ours.’

They both turned to the slave who bore the ColU. He dropped his gaze as always.

‘Tell me,’ Inguill snapped.

‘Yes,’ Fabius said with a grin. ‘Tell me where we Romans went wrong! Perhaps I can put it right beyond the next hinge.’

‘There was nothing you could have done. Nothing anybody could have done. There was a volcano, Quintus. A devastating explosion on the other side of the world. This was some hundred and eighty years before the career of Cusi Yupanqui, Inguill, your empire builder.

‘The Romans and the Brikanti were already in the Valhallas, the Romans for more than a century. Inguill, your own culture had yet to rise up, but already there were civilisations here – cities, farms. The Romans planted colonies in the antisuyu forest, but had only minimal contact with the continent’s more advanced cultures.

‘Then the volcano erupted, on this world. A great belch. The site of immediate devastation was far away, but the ash and dust and gas must have wrapped around the planet.’

Inguill’s eyes widened. ‘I know something of this. The Tiwanaku, later a people of our empire, who lived by a great high lake, suffered a “dry fog” obscuring the sky, crops failing, swathes of deaths. All this they wrote down in their histories, which our scholars retrieved in turn when the conquest came.’

The ColU said, ‘These western continents suffered, then. But because of vagaries of wind directions and seasonal changes, the eastern continents suffered far more – Africa, Asia, Europa. I have found little evidence for what happened to the Xin. But, Quintus, Rome was grievously damaged. There was mass famine within the Empire, and invasions by peoples from the dying heart of Asia, who brought plague. The Empire never recovered its former strength, and certainly abandoned its holds in the Valhallas, giving up its wars there with the Brikanti.

‘And meanwhile, in Valhalla Inferior, under Cusi Yupanqui and others, the Intip Churi rose up—’

‘And when we began to push into the jungles of the antisuyu, we found Roman colonies.’

‘Yes. Though much degenerated, they preserved some of the skills and traditions of the old world. The Incas took what they wanted from these Roman relics – notably the secrets of the fire-of-life and of iron-making. The Incas’ strongest metal before this contact was bronze. I doubt that a trace of the blood of those Romans survives today, Quintus. But their legacy transformed the Incas.’

‘All because of a volcano,’ Quintus said heavily. ‘And I wonder if those devils who require us to build their Hatches had something to do with that. For all these changes in the fabric of the world seem to be accompanied by huge violence, vast destruction.’

Inguill smiled coldly. ‘The intervention of destructive gods. We know all about that, Quintus. Well – history is fascinating to me, as you both know. But it is the future that concerns me now. Will you be ready to disembark in the morning?’

They wandered along the beach, discussing details.

Later, Chu Yuen murmured to the ColU, ‘You did not tell them all that you had learned, Collius.’

‘I told them what was necessary. I considered that a fee to be paid to the quipucamayoc for her assistance with this flight.’

‘But the evidence Inca philosophers have found of kernel energies at the volcano site – your suggestion that the eruption was made even worse by yet another war inflicted on mankind by the technologies of the Hatch builders – Quintus almost guessed it.’

‘They don’t need to know that. Not now, not today. Inguill and Quintus must work together; they have much to achieve. I don’t want them to feel helpless.’