Chapter 7
Idon’t recognize the Inka and her husband up close, despite having seen them a few hours earlier, but that’s not surprising.
I spent all my focus during the ceremony memorizing their daughter’s face.
The Inka’s signature headdress, the black textile headband structured with rims of gold and topped with six golden rays interspersed by three feathers, distinguishes her.
Without it, I wouldn’t believe she’s the Inka at all.
The Inka’s face is tan, tanner than the heavens can portray during projections, and littered with brown moles. Her pitch black eyes are almond shaped, made all the more prominent by the thick coal liner around them.
The image drilled into the heads of all children of the empire comes to mind.
It is legend that when the Inka fought the False King to take the throne, something beyond the heavens happened.
Her hair turned so white it surpassed anything documented up to then, and, suddenly, a miracle.
Her infinite void eyes blanched. She made a sacrifice; her Guardian protected purity, her divinity, and an incalculable amount of her years on earth.
It’s a decision she lives with now, after waiting for her color and connection with our Guardians to return, knowing she won’t be on the throne for long.
I can’t guess the power her daughter must wield to go from a head full of white hair back to the black I saw during the ceremony. Yet, she’s still alive and breathing, thriving even.
The unnatural age is obvious in the Inka’s face, her long hair, and her drying skin.
The princess is vitality and mimicry. It’s a combination too impossible to believe.
But I believe it now. It is only logical that the child of an Inka of this strength wields incredible power too.
The Inka’s hair is black, and her curls are barely contained in two long braids falling over her shoulders.
They’re longer than the physical years she’s lived could produce.
The sideways glimpses I caught of her hair during the ceremony didn’t do it justice.
It falls past her belly button, from the little I can tell from the baseline of her blood red tunic.
That is the ultimate show of divinity.
She has no need for mimicry anymore when she has such a powerful army protecting the empire. We defend this family and this land. Mimics and non-mimics alike gather under her orders. We fit together seamlessly, precisely aligned stones like those that currently surround me.
She is the opposite of the False King’s human sacrifice after human sacrifice to the Guardians to ensure the prosperity our empire is known for.
He spilled the blood of hundreds at once to beg the Guardians for help in times of drought and poisoned crops to no avail.
That all changed once our Inka came in. She refused to perform sacrifices, and life began to flourish once again in the empire.
That’s the story her hair tells.
Like a statue coming to life, she moves. She shifts her head to one side and tilts slightly forward to take a full look at me below her.
Her husband, Panaka Harawi, follows suit, and I brace myself to hold the weight of their attention.
The man does not have curly hair. It is straight and thick.
His hair is held back by a single ornate gold clip resembling a feline.
Out of the feline’s head, the canines are emphasized.
It piles his hair into a roll on top of his head, but just like the Inka, it is barely contained.
Its thickness and the humid sea air make it expand outward in a wild frizz.
It is a mystery to me how a single fist-sized clip keeps it in check.
The clip is positioned in such a way that it looks like the fangs are moments away from crushing his skull with a single, effortless bite. It is yet another show of closeness to our Guardians, the physical manifestation of their connection. It is trust and fear, respect and deference.
It is a privilege to have your teeth dig into my skull, and it would be a privilege if you bite down. That is his message, divine in its own way.
I know from past projections that his hair is at least to his pecs, a reminder of the fact that he only became Panaka recently, only two decades prior, fathering the legendary princess but not the Inka’s oldest two sons. It is as long as his rule so far.
I am tired of waiting. I am tired of this intimidation act. The diviner declared it, and I’m filled with nothing but the impulse to force the same words out of the Inka’s mouth.
Guardians’ Hero.
It is when I stand taller, as if they’ve been waiting for me to react, that they speak.
“You are Sinchinrei,” Panaka Harawi begins. “How did you know to take action today?”
From what I can tell from the steps below them, Panaka Harawi, unlike the Inka, has no freckles. His wrinkles are more pronounced, though, with many plunging into the deepest layers of skin around his mouth. They are evidence of his jovial good nature as rumored among the empire.
Their wrinkles, their posture, their relaxed mouths. I haven’t seen anyone so assured other than my mother.
“The princess,” I say, and I know they know which princess I mean out of all their children, “she noticed the danger before anyone else. Once I saw her alarmed, I could not help but…”
But what? I need the right word, just a single word, to encompass the magnitude of what I felt. I can’t ramble in front of them. I have to make them understand.
“I could not help but protect her.”
They don’t respond. They’re the right words, but they didn’t satisfy their needs.
“I do not mean any disrespect to the Inka and her power, but I was the only,” and that word floods me with pride, “one who could have helped in the moment.”
Then I get down on one knee and bow my head. It is natural in the face of power, but my muscles burn in rejection. Respecting authority isn't a weakness, my aunt always used to say, but it’s a lesson I’ve always struggled to follow. Still, I kneel, to show the beginning of my sentence is true.
My fingernails scratch at the stone ground.
I look up to see the Inka’s lips split. “Stand up.”
I snap up like a barely constrained spring. I need to relax. I have nothing to prove. I know I’m the Guardians’ Hero, and they know it too. So why are we playing these games? My shoulders are up to my ears, but I force them down and down. It turns my body into a solid wall, impenetrable.
Though who am I to say what the Inka can or cannot break through?
“You are now a representative of the Inka, and you will not, if you do not wish to disgrace us, kneel for anyone. If you are unable to perform that simple task, then there is no reason to continue this,” the Inka says.
Representative of the Inka?
“I’m your hero–”
“You were not told to speak,” she interrupts, but it only makes me want to quiet her instead of the other way around.
It’s my right.
My swirling emotions make me dizzy, and it reminds me of the wind that threatened to deafen me right outside this room.
Every thought in my head contradicts the other.
The Inka means nothing to me. The Inka is my whole purpose.
The Inka is the strongest force in our empire.
The princess will put her to shame, just as I will to my mother.
I am here to serve them better than my mother has. You are here to serve something else. The foreign thought startles me.
I take a deep breath, and my vision refocuses.
I focus on the ceramic tile wall depicting the rising sun to avoid facing her and doing something stupid. I have never seen such a deep red as the one where land meets sky on the tiles. I stare and stare and the world drops into place tile by tile.
I’m the hero, and nothing can change that. I fulfilled the fated action. The diviners all saw it. I’m responsible for the safety of our empire, and guardians be damned, I want to hear them say it.
I tear my eyes away and glare with the intensity of the sun.
The Inka is ready for me when I face her full on. Or, she is the perfect depiction of readiness, divinity, and strength, but she also wears the same expression my mother often does. I don’t pretend to know the Inka, or my mother really, but I know that look.
Eyes that are both cool and on fire. They are my mother's eyes the day the diviners declared the calamity.
So why are they looking at me like I’m the harbinger of their end?
“I’m the Guardians–”
A foot hits the back of my knees, and my bones make a dull thud as they hit the floor.
It doesn’t hurt as much as the jagged stone ripping into my tunic and cutting my knees.
I don’t know when she did it, but the Inka must have motioned forward guards I never noticed were in the room.
The shock of pain ignites something far worse in my blood, spreading through my body like liquid barbed wire.
I had half an hour before the pain hit, and I don’t need a clock to know my time is running out.
“You are not in a position to be speaking over the Inka, Sinchinrei,” a cool voice says. The wave of pain that erupts beneath my ribs almost distracts me from the voice, but of course, I can’t miss it. Despite not noticing her in the room, I could never ignore my mother’s voice.
Which is why I catch the barely there whisper at the end. “Don’t mention your mimicry.”
I know what she really means. Don’t mention your lack of mimicry.
Her hand lifts my head by the back of my hair. That, plus the unrelenting pressure holding my hands behind my back to lean me forward, strains my neck enough to make it hard to breathe.
It isn’t enough for me to keep my mouth shut, though.
“I thought I wasn’t supposed to kneel for anyone anymore?” I can’t help myself. I never could.
“That is enough,” my mother says.
But is it?
“I did not come here to speak to the Apukispay. I’m here to–” Another wave of pain, and damn do I fight it. I hope the Inka sees the fire in my eyes that’s so infamous for showing up when I’m in pain.