Quintus straightened his back. ‘We – our ancestors were Roman. We retained their sense of discipline, even in our exile out in the dark.’
‘Really. And that ship that brought you in – don’t imagine we didn’t see it before it scurried off into the dark – it didn’t look like any kind of mining craft to me.’
‘Another relic of our pioneering ancestors, quipucamayoc. All we had left. We sent it back to the ice moons to search again for survivors of our family. While we came here looking for work. (Collius, these lies become elaborate.)’
(‘Please, Centurion. Humour me. We are playing a long game.’)
(‘Hmm …’)
Inguill glared at Quintus. ‘You mutter in your antique tongue, as if talking to a voice in your head. Are you simple or insane?’ She studied the group, deeply suspicious. ‘I don’t like you, Quintus Fabius, if that is your name. I don’t like this rabble you have brought into my world. I don’t like your story, which stinks like a week-old fish head. I don’t like the way you hesitate before speaking every line, as if somebody is whispering in your ear. You don’t fit – and I don’t like things that don’t fit. I have the power to throw you all out into the airlessness, you know.’
Quintus held her gaze. ‘We are at your mercy.’
‘You are, aren’t you? But you have muscle, and evident discipline of a sort. This is a big craft and we are always short of muscle and discipline – especially if it can be applied to the jobs nobody else wants. Very well. I will let you live. I’ll send you to the antisuyu.’ Inguill grinned coldly. ‘You don’t know what that is, do you? In the antisuyu you will be far from my sight. Indeed you will be far from this place, which is the only way out of this habitat. And a deeper contrast to Rome, and indeed your ice moon, could hardly be imagined. But you won’t be out of my thoughts, believe me. You are a conundrum, Quintus Fabius, and it is evident to me that, to say the least, you are not telling me the whole truth.’ She pushed her face close to his. ‘I don’t like you, and you owe me your life. Never forget that.’
Quintus did not reply.
She backed off. ‘In anticipation of the decision, I brought this man.’ She indicated the other clerkish man next to her. ‘His name is Ruminavi, and he is the tocrico apu of the region to which you will be sent – which contains the ayllu to which you will be attached, among others.’ She looked at their empty faces. ‘Do you understand any of this? You are in Tawantinsuyu, the Empire of the Four Quarters – the earth and the sky, and east and west here in the habitat, the antisuyu and cuntisuyu. Under the Sapa Inca each quarter is controlled by an apu, a prefect, and under him or her are twenty-two tocrico apus … Oh! You will learn.
‘Now Ruminavi will escort you to your transports to the antisuyu. Do what the tocrico apu says, and your local curaca, work hard and don’t cause trouble, and you might survive a little while. Oh, and you will give up any weapons you are still concealing. No weapons in Yupanquisuyu, save for the troops and other designated officials.’
There was grumbling in the ranks at this, but Quintus said quietly in thick rural Latin, ‘Lads, we’ll find weapons as we need them, or steal them, make them. That’s always been my plan.’
The ColU said, ‘Make sure they don’t confiscate me. Tell them I am an idol. Or a piece of medical equipment. Or a scrap from the farmed moon, a sentimental souvenir …’
But the men had fallen silent.
Mardina turned, and saw that a door at the far end of the chamber had opened, to reveal the interior of the habitat for the first time. A tube of cloud, brightly illuminated, stretching to infinity.
‘By Jupiter and Jesu,’ muttered Fabius. ‘Into what have you delivered us, Collius?’
As the Romaoi filed towards the internal transport, one of Inguill’s soldiers approached her, holding a block of metal. ‘Found this, quipucamayoc. No idea how one of them smuggled this through the cleansing area. And then managed to drop it on the other side …’
Inguill took the piece. It was a kind of belt buckle, she saw, intricately shaped, and stamped with square, ugly Latin lettering that she had to pick out:
LEGIO XC VICTRIX
CHAPTER 41
Ruminavi, who was a fussy little man with none of the evident intellect of Inguill, said they would be transported in some kind of carriage from this hub to their new home – Mardina imagined something like an elevator car – indeed they would ride in a series of such transports; the carriages would not take all of them at once.
So the Romans were roughly divided into groups of a dozen or less. Quintus, with Titus’s help, made sure the men were in their contubernium tent groups as far as possible, with somebody relatively sensible in charge of each. The legionaries grumbled and moaned as they formed a queue, hanging weightless in the air – a line that would take them into a chamber of wonders, Mardina realised, but soldiers always grumbled whatever you did for them.
When it was her turn, Mardina followed Quintus and Chu and a handful of Romans, and passed through a portal into a box of glass, a box riding on upright rails, which in turn were attached to a tremendous vertical wall that stretched above and below her, as far as she could see. Behind her in this glass box, Ruminavi the apu settled on a seat, surrounded by a handful of spidery axis warriors, and the Romans crowded in. And ahead of her …
She recoiled from the view, closing her eyes. She heard a kind of moaning, high-pitched, like a frightened animal. She thought it might be Chu Yuen, the slave, more intelligent than the average legionary and therefore more capable of wonder, and horror. She hoped it wasn’t herself.
‘Look down,’ the ColU said now, from the security of its lodging in Chu’s backpack. ‘Mardina Eden Jones Guthfrithson, listen to me. Don’t look ahead, or up – don’t look at the wall to which we are fixed – just look straight down.’
Mardina opened her eyes and looked. And, through the transparent floor, she saw what looked like Terra as seen from low orbit, a slice of sprawling landscape, washed-out green and grey under scattered clouds, and with stretches of water that glistened in the sunlight like polished Roman shields. ‘This isn’t so bad,’ she said with relief.
‘Here at the axis of the habitat we are over two hundred miles above this landscape. For that is the radius of this cylinder. The view here is just as if you were in a spacecraft, orbiting.’
‘It seems almost normal, in the sunlight. Except—’
‘What sunlight?’ the ColU said. ‘I know. There are breaks in the habitat’s tremendous walls. Pools that admit what must be reflected sunlight, to illuminate this enclosed environment – surely indirectly reflected, so that the radiation shielding is not compromised. There is one below us and not far ahead – you can look up now, just a little further …’
The sunlight pool glared under the clouds, like a city on fire. It was an eerie, beautiful sight.
Ruminavi said, ‘We call them the windows of Inti. For Inti is our sun god, you see.’
The transport suddenly lurched into motion, heading down the face of the wall on its rails. The passengers were jerked into the air, like pebbles in a dropped helmet, Mardina thought, and forced to grab onto whatever handholds they could reach. Already some of the legionaries looked as if they wanted to throw up.
Ruminavi, safe in his seat, looked on with a malicious grin. ‘Keep tight hold. The acceleration will be high. We’ll be covering a lot of your Roman miles every hour by the time we hit the atmosphere. Of course by then you’ll be feeling the spin weight …’ He laughed out loud. ‘Not so tough now, you Romans, are you? Just like your ancestors who begged on their knees to Tiso Inca’s generals to spare their city from the Fist.’