Quintus saw complicated expressions chase across the man’s face. ‘Thank you for that, sir. But – are you saying I won’t be in the century when we give battle?’

‘I’ve a much more important task for you, Titus. Remember – the battle we fight today is only a diversion. The whole purpose of this is to get Collius, and your daughter and her companion Mardina, out of this habitat, and then to Mars, where – well, as I understand it, Collius intends to challenge the strange entities at war over human history. Now, Titus, when everything blows up, I need somebody in place, up in Cuzco at the habitat exit, to make sure the final escape takes place. And indeed to provide protection on the way. Although if it does turn into a battle up there, we’ll have failed.’

‘That’s where you want me to go, then, sir? But how?’ He glanced down at himself. ‘I am an overweight one-armed Roman legionary in uniform. I might be spotted, you know, even by these slow-witted Incas. I remember once on campaign—’

Inguill said smoothly, ‘We’ve worked this out, your centurion and I. I’m going up shortly myself. I’ll be on hand, with Villac and our other allies, to make sure Collius’s party get to where they need to be. And you’ll be at my side, Titus. As my yanakuna, my slave. A punishment for some outrageous behaviour or other.’ She grinned. ‘You’re ugly enough, and surly enough, to make that convincing.’

Titus looked doubtfully at Quintus. ‘My place is at your side, sir.’

‘No, Titus. Your place is at your daughter’s side. Take care of Clodia. After all, she is putting her own life at risk in this game we play today, as much as any man of the legion. And remember, I won’t be leaving this place.’

‘You won’t?’

‘Of course not,’ Inguill said. ‘We can get a handful of you out, but there’s no way we can break out fifty men.’

Quintus said, ‘And their wives and, in one or two cases, young families. It was always a dream that we would all be able to leave. No, the men’s place is here, now, Titus, where Jesu in His wisdom has delivered us. And my place is leading them.’ He peered into Titus’s eyes. ‘I can see you haven’t thought it through this far. Well, I wouldn’t have expected you to. Trust me, Titus. Do as I say. Your daughter isn’t coming back here, ever – so just be at her side, wherever she goes next, and protect the rest. That’s your duty now.’

Titus was visibly struggling with this. But he growled, ‘Very well, sir.’

Inguill blew out from puffed cheeks. ‘Well, thank Inti that’s resolved. We need to get moving, before it’s too late. Look …’ She pointed upwards. ‘Your activities have been noticed, at last.’

A Condor craft hung high above the air, a very obvious eye in the sky.

Quintus grinned. ‘The moment approaches, then.’ He clasped Inguill’s hand. ‘You must go. Goodbye, then, quipucamayoc – I appreciate all you’ve done for us.’

She pursed her lips. ‘I don’t see it as a betrayal of the Sapa Inca emperor, you know, as much as a challenge to these history-eating monsters we all face.’

‘I understand that. And so we’re on the same side. Go now – you too, Titus Valerius, and make sure you tell that daughter of yours what a fine Roman I believe she has grown up to be. Now let’s get the century drawn up. Don’t want them thinking it’s a Saturnalia, do we? Give them a blast of the horn, Rutilius Fuscus …’

CHAPTER 56

There were a dozen, in all, Mardina had slowly learned, as their days had passed in chambers of unimaginable luxury. A dozen victims of the planned sacrifice. Or, depending how you looked at it, a dozen children privileged to have been selected for the capacocha ceremony, selected for the glory of living for ever, in the unblinking gaze of Inti.

And today was the first time they had all been brought together. Today the day on which their young lives would be ended – mercifully enough, Cura had assured her, they would never know, never feel anything. ‘Why, what with the drugs and drink and rich food, some of them have been barely conscious for days …’

Mardina struggled for self-control.

The ceremony was to take place in the temple called the Qoricancha. This was a pyramid of blood-red stone, topped by layers of green, sky blue, and a chapel of pink stone at the very top.

With Mardina and other companions, Clodia and the rest of the sacrificial victims were led hand in hand through a courtyard filled with sculptures of gold: trees, flowers, hummingbirds frozen in flight, even a llama with a shepherd, as if a garden had in an instant been dipped in the liquid metal. The victims, floating in the air, many already drug-addled, stared at all this as if they could not believe their eyes.

Then they were taken inside the pyramid, and into a grand chamber whose walls were covered with gold and silver plate and crowded with shrines to the gods, and niches where, it appeared, the corpses of more dead Incas resided. Over their head was a roof set with stars and lightning bolts wrought in silver. For a moment they were left alone, staring at the latest wonders.

Then a solemn young woman led them all down through an open door set into the richly carpeted floor – and then down, down through tunnels lined with precious metals and lit by oil lamps. They were brought at last to yet another room set in the basement of Hanan Cuzco, another chamber with vast windows offering a view of space. Beyond the window this time Mardina could see detail, shelves of some kind splashed with bright sunlight and fixed with scraps of faded colour – human figures, like dolls, perhaps, the details were hard to make out.

It was here that the ceremony would be performed, everybody who counted would want to be here, and finely dressed people were already pouring in. The place was soon crowded. But the twelve children with the priests and doctors who attended them were guided to the heart of the ornate mob, along with the personal companions they had been allowed to bring into Cuzco – in Clodia’s case, that was Mardina, and Mardina in turn clung to Cura.

And with the children in place, here came the Sapa Inca himself, once more borne on his enormous litter, and his orderly bands of attendants and bearers, all highborn themselves – and wherever the Inca went a mob of courtiers followed, colourful, swooping through the weightless environment of the axis, each of them striving to catch the eye of the Inca or one of his senior wives or sons. As ever, grim blue-faced axis warriors, their long limbs like knotted rope, slid through the crowds, watching, listening.

In all this, however, the twelve children were the focus of attention, as they had been for days.

Attendants now gently led them forward to a row of elaborate seats, almost like thrones themselves, into which they were loosely strapped by embroidered harnesses. The children had been brought here from all over the habitat, Mardina knew, and represented many of the ethnicities controlled by the empire. There was even an anti girl, the tattoos on her face still livid, a child who had been even more baffled and disoriented than the rest so alien was the city environment to her, let alone the details of this exotic ritual.

And yet, seeing them side by side, there was a sameness about all the children now, even the anti girl – even Clodia Valeria, who had come here from another reality entirely, from beyond the jonbar hinges. For days – if not weeks or months in some cases – the children had been fêted here in Hanan Cuzco, just like those other blessed children in their bottles, and treated with alcohol, maize corn, expensive meats and seafood, even exotic drugs, all of which luxuries, Cura said with some envy, were usually reserved for the most senior of the elite. As a result they had all put on weight, their skin had taken on a kind of glossy sheen, and the drugs had made them passive, dull-witted, hard to scare and easy to manipulate.