‘Do you feel helpless, Collius?’

‘Not I, Chu Yuen. Not I. Come now, we’ll go back to camp. You must be hungry after the day’s march …’

CHAPTER 54

The palace of the Sapa Inca was, Mardina learned, not so much a palace at all as a city in itself, a fortified town within a town. Protected on all sides by thick stone walls faced with green tiles and sheets of gold, it was shielded from above by a stout steel grill, and by squads of axis warriors wearing some kind of rocket pack who flew continually in pairs over the compound – Cura said there was even an air shelter to be pulled over the whole compound should Cuzco’s main dome fail.

But Mardina and Clodia were led past barriers and guards, straight into this most secure of sanctuaries. They were guided along a kind of ornate tunnel to a central block, and then through corridors and halls whose walls were covered with bewildering displays of coloured tiles, some depicting people or animals, others showing only abstract designs.

They had said goodbye to Ruminavi for now, but his wife Cura rushed them along. ‘We must hurry,’ said Cura. ‘It’s a shame not to give you time to take in everything better … And a shame of course that you’re not more appropriately dressed, but that will be forgiven.’

Clodia said, ‘These are the best clothes we have, from the ayllu.’

‘Believe me, nothing you brought will be suitable for Hanan Cuzco. And conversely you will be given everything you need here.’

‘But our luggage—’

‘That will be kept in storage until it’s time for Mardina to leave. That’s the official plan at least …’

The girls exchanged glances at that. Mardina would be leaving, then, but not Clodia, if the Incas got their way.

They came to a heavy door, armoured, guarded and evidently airtight, and passed into another chamber of dazzling beauty through which they hurried, dragging themselves along rails and ropes. The deeper in they moved, Mardina noted, the more people they encountered. They all seemed slim and tall – even those not obviously axis-adapted – elegant, dressed in colourful finery, with elaborately prepared hair. Most had huge golden plugs in their earlobes. Many were very beautiful, even the servants, and Mardina remembered how the prettiest children of the provinces were taken away from their families to serve here. In the lack of gravity, they swarmed and swam in the air. To Mardina, rushing after Cura, it was like passing through a flock of exotic birds.

And where the girls from the ayllu passed, there were stares and sneers and pretty laughter behind raised hands. Mardina glowered back.

Clodia said, ‘There seem to be many soldiers here. I thought everybody loves the Sapa Inca—’

‘Who protects and feeds them – of course they do,’ Cura said. ‘It’s his family that’s the trouble. On the death of an Inca his successor should be chosen by a council of the panaqas, factions within the family. But Incas generally have many sons by many wives – although the children by his full sister should have precedence. So while an Inca is healthy there is squabbling and manoeuvring to gain his favour and that of the panaqas; when he starts to fail there is frantic negotiation among the factions; when he dies the succession can often degenerate into a bloody contest; and even when a winner is announced—’

‘People hold grudges,’ Mardina said. ‘I’m told it’s often like that for the Roman emperors, or was, before.’

Cura smiled. ‘Educated people try not to worry about it. The bloodshed generally doesn’t extend beyond the court itself. And it is a way of keeping the line strong; only the toughest survive.’

Now they had to work harder, pushing through crowds that were mostly streaming ahead the way they were going.

‘I’m getting winded,’ Mardina said. ‘What is it we’re going to see?’

‘Why, it’s the procession of the Inca himself. You’re lucky to have arrived on such a day, to see it in your very first hour here. Once a month he travels around Cuzco – I’m surprised you haven’t heard of this even out in the antisuyu.’

Mardina glanced at Clodia. ‘I think most people out in the country gossip about who stole whose potato, rather than goings-on at court.’

‘Well, that’s their loss. And this particular month, every year, the Sapa Inca comes to the Hall of the Gaping Mouth.’

‘What’s that?’

Cura smiled. ‘You’ll see.’

She led them through one last entrance – huge doors flung open – into a hall containing another three-dimensional crowd, more colourful, gorgeous people flying weightlessly everywhere, and axis warriors aloft, eyeing the populace suspiciously. The hall in some ways was like any other they’d passed through, brilliantly lit by vast fluorescent lanterns, the walls glittering with coloured tiles.

But the floor here was different, for it was panelled with vast windows that showed the blackness of space below – a scattering of stars, a brighter point that might be a planet, the whole panorama slowly rotating as seen from this axis of the habitat.

Mardina was entranced. The vacuum itself was only a pace or two away. ‘We must be at the lowest level of the palace – the outer hull. What a sight …’

‘Look, Mardina,’ Clodia said.

‘Makes me almost nostalgic—’

‘Look. Above the windows, further down the hall …’

Mardina looked up, drifting into the air to see over the crowd. Now she saw that to the floor’s central window panes were attached upright glass tubes, a dozen of them. And in each of the tubes was a person – young, fourteen or fifteen or sixteen years old maybe, six boys and six girls. Their clothes looked expensive, their faces gleamed with oils, and each wore a dazzling headband studded with precious stones. All drifted weightless in their bottles. And each passively looked out with an empty expression, confused, even baffled, Mardina thought, as if they had no idea what was happening to them.

Clodia’s observation was terse. ‘They look fat.’

Cura said, ‘Well, of course they do. They have enjoyed the Inca’s hospitality – oh, for a month or more, since their selection for this procession. And of course only one will be chosen.’

‘For what?’

But before Cura could answer there was a blast of horns. The people swarming in the chamber pressed back against the walls and ceiling as best they could.

And through this living archway a procession advanced.

First came a party of men and women dressed in brightly coloured tunics in identical chessboard patterns. They moved in as stately a way as possible, Mardina thought, given they needed to use ropes and guide rails to advance. They glared at anybody in the way; they physically pushed people back or had the warriors remove them. They even swept bits of debris out of the air.

‘Every one of them, even performing those menial tasks,’ Cura breathed, ‘is a noble, a highborn …’

Next came a troop of noisy musicians, drummers and singers and players of horns and pan pipes, and dancers who wriggled and swam in the air.

Following them came warriors, dressed in armour of heavy plates and with crowns of gold and silver on their heads. The armour, in fact, looked too cumbersome to wear in combat, and it took the soldiers a visible effort to propel their bulk through the air.

And then came a kind of litter, pulled through the hall by dozens of men and women in bright blue uniforms. The man carried in the litter looked almost lost in a heap of cushions to which he was strapped by a loose harness. His clothes were even more dazzling than his attendants’; it looked to Mardina as if his jacket had been woven of the feathers of gaudy rainforest birds. He wore a gold crown, and a necklace of huge emeralds, and a headband from which hung a delicate fringe, over his forehead, of scarlet wool and fine golden tubes. He was younger than Mardina had expected, slim, and not very strong-looking; perhaps the family faction he had behind him was tougher than he was.