Chapter 17
Ollantaytambo is divided into kanchas, familial blocks, that we have to weave in and out of to get to the main square. Everything from the stone and adobe houses to the constant trickle of flowing water around us brings me back to my childhood.
But danger suffocates all the whimsy of my memories.
Mare is limping again. His leg healed enough overnight for him to walk, but the hike down the mountain and to the town in the valley reopened some of his wounds.
We did the hike in one hour, something that felt necessary with the threat of duendes on my mind.
Now, I’m not sure that time was worth the cost.
“Let’s stop,” I say, grabbing Mare’s arm. “Sit down, Mare. We can clean your cuts here and change the dressing.”
Mare grumbles but sits down on the cobblestone street next to one of the thin canals. The water feeds the city through an intricate ancient aqueduct system sourced from the Patakancha River. It’s the holy blessing we need.
He unwraps his leg, and I stand next to him as a cover.
We look out of place, but the bustle of the town has kept us hidden and safe so far.
Our clothes are ripped and dirty from our running, but the people around us are in no better shape.
We’re quiet enough to be ignored while taking advantage of the safety in numbers.
“Clean it up, kori. I can’t do it for you,” I say as I stand guard.
I hear his small grunt of pain and the sickening slick of the tunic patch disconnecting from his wound.
I nod and smile at a passerby when all I want to do is instruct Mare on correct wound care.
He whimpers, and I can’t stop myself from looking.
I expect to see his face scrunched in pain and his hands pink with blood and water, but I don’t. Instead, I see him using his hand to cover his mouth. He’s breathing deeply, and his other hand is holding the princess’s right hand tight.
The princess’s left hand is busy cleaning his wound for him.
I hear more steps coming toward us, and my instincts force me to look away. I need to keep us safe, not obsess over the princess’s sudden gentleness.
The noise is a woman with two llamas carrying bags full of food.
The llama’s hooves thump against the rocks.
The woman’s clothes, layers and layers of polleras, colorful skirts common in the Andes, a white embroidered shirt, and a pink and blue k’eperina, rustle with her every step.
Her k’eperina, a large piece of woven cloth used as a cape that would have been perfect for us in the kollka, isn’t being used as a carrying bag at the moment, but she has it pinned so that it can be later.
She’s covered in beautiful decorative textiles around the most important part of her wardrobe, her lliklla, a rectangular cloth laid around her shoulders with the top corners pinned in between her collarbones.
From the glance I take of the iconography on her clothing, I already know she’s married and lives with her husband and two children.
Her house is somewhere at a higher altitude, somewhere you can see the stars clearly, and she works with weaving and dyeing fabrics.
Her lliklla says more than that with its intricate iconography, I’m sure, but she’s gone before I can get more information.
We’ll each need one, llikllas for the princess and I and a poncho for Mare, if my plan is going to work.
They’ll act as disguises and help us stay in the safety of the community.
We’ll either need to weave some ourselves with iconography that details some joint fictional past or steal ones that we’ll have to pretend to know inside and out.
I run through possible plans in my head, and it only just manages to keep my mind off the memory of the princess tending to Mare.
I fixate on her steady hands, her long fingers, and the tiny indent of her teeth into her lips as she bites them in concentration.
I breathe deeply and rid myself of the image.
“Okay?” I hear the princess ask Mare.
“Yes, Miss Yanami,” he answers, voice only a little shaky. I take this as my cue to turn around and help him up. He takes my hand with little prompting and stands. Then he reaches his own hand out to the princess, who is still kneeling on the ground, looking at her hands in silence.
They’re still pink with his blood.
“Give her a moment, Mare. She has to clean up,” I say.
My words seem to snap her into action. She rinses her hands off in the waterway and shakes them dry. Mare holds out his hand, but she doesn’t take it. She stands and shakes her head. I wonder what image the princess is trying to rid herself of.
A thank you is on the tip of my tongue, but it never makes it out. The princess is walking ahead of us before I can open my mouth.
Coming to Ollantaytambo was the only plan we could settle on, but neither of us is completely happy about it.
We need both safety and information. The lively town of Ollantaytambo offers both of those to our knowledge.
I wanted to run to the nearest soldier’s post with questions, while the princess wanted to hide in the cave for eternity.
Walking calmly into town was the compromise.
Up to now, the town itself was filled with people who didn’t look our way twice.
Now, though, the market is swarmed with soldiers.
Soldiers who are in various stages of healing, faces stained with marbled blue and green bruises.
Soldiers who are covered in torn and dirty garbs, no gold in sight.
Soldiers who are meant to be my brothers and sisters, but instead are pointing halberds and maces at all those trying to walk into the market to make their living.
My hand instinctively reaches for my mace, and it’s that one impulsive motion that gets us in trouble.
A soldier to my left turns to us and drops their halberd down to block our path.
The people around us scatter with gasps, and I can’t help but judge their cowardice.
Letting soldiers into town to run everything is unheard of this far from the capital of the empire.
Every community is dedicated to Inti and the Inka, of course, but they remain autonomous to a degree.
We keep our original gods and customs. We keep our local systems in place.
But now that we’re stopped, I take the time to really take in the market.
I look at the soldiers’ faces instead of just their stances.
They’re tired. The man in front of me is all threatening demeanor, but his face is sagging with an exhaustion that should have been obvious to me from the get-go if I wasn’t full of violence fueled adrenaline.
“Lima refugee?” he asks, and my whole body tenses.
He sighs softly at that and lifts his halberd.
Mare grabs my hand, and I hold it in turn, not looking away from the soldier’s face for a second.
“We’re trying here, okay, so I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt, but you have to know that anyone not chosen by the Aya Runa can’t have weapons.
Don’t bring any issues to this town when things are finally quieting down. ”
“Of course, we don’t want to cause any problems,” the princess cuts in for me when I stay silent.
The man chuckles. “Lima accent through and through, huh? Well, just register at the chaski’s house, and you won’t have problems here. Ollanta isn't the worst place to get stuck in a lockdown.”
“Lockdown?” Mare asks before I can. Maybe Suyai is right, and I should try to dissuade some of his more impulsive behaviors, like talking to random soldiers when we’re on the run.
The soldier makes eye contact with me and then the princess, giving us a half-smile, half-grimace and shaking his head in apology. “I’m sure your, uh, sister, can explain…”
“My sister’s not–”
“We’ll talk about this later, kori,” I say, sticking to the Quechua pet name for Mare and playing up the ancestral Andean twang in my speech. “Let’s go,” I try again, noting the way the princess has kept her mouth shut since the accent comment.
The soldier’s halberd comes down once again.
I push Mare behind me and glare at him before feeling pressure at my back. The princess is taking my mace out of its straps on my back. Right. It’ll be me and my body from now on.
“Thank you,” the soldier says, kindly, as if he’s not taking away the only protection we have. Leaving town and hiking the rural mountains seems more impossible than ever, unarmed. “Go and register up ahead.”
We all nod, even Mare, and walk away in silence.
“This is supposed to be my family’s estate,” the princess whispers, more to herself than to us.
We argued the whole way down, but neither of us thought of something like this. I see her retreat into herself as she lets go of Mare’s hand. She gives me the gold we separated from our ceremonial costumes to barter with, not touching a single part of my skin in the process.
I look into her eyes and hope I appear less lost than I am.
She tightens her lips and then releases them, and I see a hint of one of the infamous fangs she’s rumored to have.
Part of the plan is for me to talk to locals and gather information, but there’s a tension growing in my body that begs me to stay close to her and Mare.
A man shouts from behind me as he rushes by with a k’eperina on his back full of woven goods.
Once I turn away from the princess and Mare, who’s forced her back to holding his hand, the main square comes to life around me.
My mind shifts into a heightened awareness, cataloguing the people around me, their strengths, potential weaknesses, and any openings I could exploit for the plan.
The princess ushers Mare to a shaded area filled with women setting up shop.
I need to be quick. The longer we’re here looking like we do, the more likely we are to be shuffled into whatever registration system they have set up.