As the anti girl brought the two strangers to the edge of the village, some of the people looked around, scowled, and spoke sharply to their guide. But she replied just as sharply – and she made an alarming cutthroat gesture with one finger. Grudgingly, the adults nodded and turned away. A couple of children, naked and wide-eyed, would have come wandering out to inspect the newcomers, but they were called back sharply by the adults.
The girl turned to Mardina and Clodia, held up her hands to stop them coming any further, and mimed that they should sit in the dirt. Then she ran into the village and returned with a couple of wooden mugs, and a handful of coca leaves that she set before them, before nodding and hurrying off.
The mugs contained what tasted like diluted beer. Mardina and Clodia drank deeply and gratefully. They both ignored the coca leaves.
Clodia groaned, ‘I wish they’d spare some of that roast. The smell is killing me.’
‘Hopefully we’ll be out of here before we die of hunger, Clodia.’
‘Maybe if I make a prayer to Jesu loudly enough they’ll offer me His charity.’
‘What do you mean?’
Clodia looked at her. ‘Didn’t you see that ornament around our guide’s neck?’
‘Well, it looked like a cross, but—’
‘And look over there.’ Clodia pointed beyond the village, to the clearing’s far side, where a crude wooden cross stood, a larger version of the girl’s pendant. A kind of dummy figure made of rolled-up bales of straw hung from the cross, fixed by outspread arms, legs strapped together.
‘Jesu,’ Clodia said triumphantly.
‘You’re right,’ Mardina breathed, astonished. The cross was a double symbol of Jesu’s career, shared by Romans and Brikanti alike: of the crucifix on which the Romans had shamefully put Him to death, and of the Hammer, the carpenter’s weapon with which the Saviour had led a rebellion against the forces that had oppressed His people. ‘A figure of Jesu, here in the forest. So we live in a world now where the technological city-dwelling empire builders are pagans, and the savages in the jungle follow Christ—’
The girl who’d brought them here came running up again now, holding her fingers to her lips to hush them. Mardina saw that the villagers were growing agitated too.
Beckoning, the girl summoned the visitors to their feet. She led them quickly back into the jungle, a good way away from the place they had come in. Once back in the forest the girl moved silent as a shadow, and Mardina and Clodia followed as best they could. Mardina judged they were heading back to the edge of the forest, and the ayllu.
And as they walked, Mardina glimpsed soldiers passing through the shadows of the trees. Led by the tocrico apu, they were heading for the anti village. No wonder the villagers were growing nervous. If Ruminavi was aware of the presence of the girls, he showed no sign of it.
The anti girl left them at the edge of the forest, and hurried away into the shadows before either of them could try to thank her, or say goodbye.
Ruminavi did not return to the ayllu that day, and Mardina had no way to question him about the whole strange incident, the reason they had needed to be hidden.
Not until the next time he returned.
CHAPTER 47
In the Roman camp time was recorded, by order of Quintus Fabius. From the beginning the Romans had counted the cycle of the habitat’s artificial days and nights, measuring the time they spent in this place.
So Mardina knew it was a month before Ruminavi came again to the village, this time alone, in his deputy-prefect finery but without his squad of soldiers. And he sought out Mardina, who was walking with Clodia with firewood from the edge of the forest.
‘You two,’ he snapped. ‘Come with me. Now.’ He headed out of the village, away from the line of the road, towards the largest of the local tambos. When they didn’t follow him immediately, he glanced back over his shoulder. ‘Look, you trusted me last time, and you were saved, weren’t you?’
Mardina called, ‘Saved from what?’
‘Come on, hurry …’
As they had before, they hesitated for a heartbeat. Then they dumped their armfuls of firewood and ran after him.
They caught him up by the low fence that surrounded the tambo. The imperial storehouse was a sprawling structure that was the centre of a complex of buildings, including an inn for travellers, a grander hotel for visiting imperial officials, and a small rail station. At the gate in a wall of moon rock Ruminavi produced documentation to prove his identity, vouched for the girls, and led them into the complex to the storehouse itself.
Before the storehouse, in a shaded corner out of sight of the main complex, stood a kind of stone plinth, only a hand’s breadth high, its sides engraved with the faces of some fierce god. There were many such enigmatic structures dotted about this god-soaked artificial world, and Mardina would not have given this one much thought. But the prefect, she saw, was working a kind of key into a lock in the plinth’s surface, that he’d brushed clear of dust.
Mardina repeated, ‘You saved us from what, apu?’
He grinned. ‘Well, when I’ve saved your life again I’ll explain it all. The last sweep wasn’t satisfactory, you see, in terms of tributes for the particular mit’a we had been assigned to collect. So the Inca’s courtiers sent out the awka kamayuq parties again. And that’s what I’m saving you from …’ At last the key turned. ‘Ha! Done it.’ He got to his feet, breathless, and grasped a handle set into the surface of the plinth. ‘Help me, you two. Look, here are more handles, there and there.’
Clodia asked, ‘Help you with what? What is this thing?’
‘A door in the world …’
As the three of them heaved, the plinth toppled back – to reveal a steel-walled tunnel leading down into the ground, set with scuffed rungs. There was a smell of oil, the sharp tang of electricity.
‘The underbelly of the world,’ Ruminavi said admiringly, and he rapped a rung with one knuckle. ‘Which we call the xibalba, the underworld. Two centuries old, and still as sound as when it was built. And there’s a lot of it, miles thick in some places. Down you go. I need to be last in, so I can lock us tight once more.’
Again Clodia and Mardina hesitated. Again they gave in, and followed his lead.
Mardina went first. ‘Just understand this, apu. I trust you only marginally more than I distrust you.’
‘Understood.’
‘And if any harm were to come to Clodia because of all this, her father will pull you apart like a spider in a condor’s beak.’
‘I don’t doubt it – down you go, Clodia, hurry, they are close! – but it is harm to Clodia especially that I am trying to avert. Are you at the bottom? The light dazzles up here … Good. I’m on my way.’
He clambered briskly down the rungs, and pulled the lid closed. As the heavy plinth fell back in place, the lid slammed shut with an ominous clang. To seal it, Mardina saw that he turned a wheel rather than use his key – good, they had a way out of here, whatever Ruminavi did.
At the bottom of the shaft, Mardina found herself standing in a corridor dimly lit by fluorescent tubes, many of which had failed, creating islands of darkness. There were piles of litter here and there, heaps of tools, a few discarded bits of clothing. The walls themselves were scuffed, dented and scarred, scratched with graffiti. It was a dismal prospect.
And the corridor seemed to run to infinity in either direction. Mardina felt Clodia’s hand slip into hers.
Ruminavi heaved a sigh. ‘Well, we’re safe now. Come on, there’s a rest station just down here.’ He led the way, his booted feet clattering on the bare metal floor, his voice echoing. ‘The troops and the assessors think I’ve gone to spy out the forest. I know how long they plan to be at this ayllu; I’ll bring you back out when they are safely gone.’