Chapter 24
Kasik turned to Nina and grasped her chin in one hand. “You cannot blame yourself. They made the choice to come here knowing
the danger this forest holds. The Tuta Kulla is a thing all onto its own, and—”
“You misunderstand,” Nina interrupted, her eyes flashing. “It was me who killed them. This . . . this power I possess. The same power I healed you with.”
Kasik may not have known her well enough to be able to speak without words, but he peered into her brown eyes, at her face
tilted up at him, her body leaned into him, her voice firm and clear, and knew she wasn’t lying.
“I am an Ikara,” she insisted. “I am the woman from your story, and a god’s power lives inside of me.”
Every interaction, every encounter they had, he now viewed it—her—through new eyes.
At the acllahuasi, when he had seen the grit in the set of her jaw. When she’d watched him murder a man without so much as
a flinch. The way the achiyanga had simply stood before her. Had it seen in her something monstrous and kindred?
The stories he was told as a child, of those with power who had destroyed the world time and again, only for the gods to remake
it and the end to remain just the same.
Chaos and destruction.
Then he remembered Maicu’s words about legacy and loss and the sacrifices required to make change. It dawned on him all at
once.
“This is why he wants you,” he whispered, mind racing. “This is why the emperor sent for you. Have you known about this power all along?”
“No, Kasik, no. I—” She placed a hand on his arm, and he yanked out of her touch. Stepped away from her reach. The fire burned
his back like a knife between his shoulder blades. Still, he preferred it to the way her eyes filled with hurt. “I knew something
about me was different, but it was only when we came here that Shayim showed me what I could do.”
Kasik ran a hand down his face and turned from her. It was miraculous, his healing. He had felt the rot from the inside out,
the burn of death taking root, and still he had refused to see the truth of it. “You should have let me die,” he whispered
miserably. “You should have never interfered in something you don’t understand.”
“You make it sound as though any of this has been my choice.”
When he turned to her again, she was wearing that same expression he had found her with. Determination in the downward tilt
of her eyes and lips. Anger in the clench of her jaw. “We always have a choice,” he said tenderly.
“You as well,” Shayim interrupted. He turned abruptly. The old woman stood tall, her brown eyes glowing in the firelight.
He had almost forgotten there were others in the room. “What will you choose to do with this knowledge?” She gestured at Nina,
at herself, at the ayllu surrounding them.
Kasik glanced at Hatun beside her and felt the phantom blows of the man’s boot in his stomach. He was in a room full of enemies,
and the path of his life depended on his answer.
Shayim flicked her eyes to Hatun. “Leave us,” she ordered, and surprisingly, Hatun obeyed without a whisper of dissent.
Kanu’s words rang through Kasik’s mind. “Kanu seemed to think you are a rebel ayllu. Is he right? Am I such a fool that I
thought you all innocent?”
Shayim stood taller, her eyes hardened as she met Kasik’s judgment. “We are not a rebel ayllu. We are a resistance.”
Kasik barked a laugh, the sound sharp in the tense silence. He expected her to say something more, but when she didn’t, he
sobered with disbelief. “A resistance? Against what?”
“There is much your emperor has not told you.”
Kasik went to argue, but Shayim held up a hand, and the authority with which she did so stopped him immediately. “I know you
think it is not your place to know, but it does not absolve you of your hand in it,” Shayim said. “You must be aware of what
your master does, and when you decide to follow his commands, it will be with all the information, and with all your own free
will.
“Do you know that the acllahuasi is filled with Ikara?” she continued. “Girls with mythical power that we’ve been told is
unnatural and nonexistent, but the truth is that your emperor hunts them. He takes them from their families and stores them
behind stone walls, drugs them with tainted leaves, and then trades them in exchange for fealty. And then he takes our boys
and hones them into weapons to defend against any who dissent.”
Shayim paused, waiting for Kasik to interrupt, to argue, to admit disbelief, but there was nothing he could say that would
accurately portray the level of his skepticism. If he hadn’t seen the t’ira die the way they did, he would have walked out
of the tent and dragged Nina with him. Instead, against his better judgment, he stayed and listened.
“We are where his power comes from. Without the Ikara, he is just another lofty, greedy man. And the kunay,” Shayim said, shooting him a sharp glance, “is no better. He is just like Dimas, compelled to hunt Yuri to the ends of the
earth and deliver her to the emperor.”
“And I am Yuri,” Nina whispered, her eyes distant with some memory that Kasik could not see.
“Weeks after I used my attay for the first time, they came and took my brother. Then recently, I used it again. Without knowing,” she added and glanced at Kasik.
“They came again, but I thought it was for Sacha. The way he looked at her . . . I offered myself in exchange. I threw myself to the wolves.”
Shayim looked at Nina with sympathy. “You couldn’t have known. This particular gift is not passed through blood, and while
your mamay might have thought there was something different about you, she could not have guessed the depth of it.”
“If all this is true, then what do they want with Nina?”
Shayim looked back at Kasik, and her eyes hardened. “The gods have a plan for her, but I cannot See it. All I know is that
it has been five hundred years since their banishment, and they grow weary and forgotten. They yearn for the pachakuti—the
turnover of time—to return them to power, and they use mortals like Maicu to do it.”
“You lie,” Kasik seethed. “You speak of gods and power and resistance and yet here you are, hiding in the dark. Cowering while
the emperor continues his reign unopposed.”
“I do not lie.” Shayim lowered her voice, and her eyes bored into Kasik. It was as if she was seeing beyond this moment, perhaps
even beyond his life. Shivers crawled up his spine. “It is only that you refuse to see. Do you want to know what Aliyma would say to you if she was here?”
Kasik had pushed the first mention of his mamay away, unwilling to face it, but he couldn’t ignore it for a second time. He
shot to his feet and paced to the edge of the tent, watching as his shadow flickered in the firelight.
“Your sister?” Nina asked, voice soft with thought. “Why would she have anything to say to Kasik?”
“Because she was my mamay,” he said to the dark.
When he turned, he pinned his glare on the Seer, watched every shift in her features.
The tent was tense, the quiet deep enough to swallow all sound until Kasik could hear his own heartbeat.
He thought it might give away how badly he wanted to beg for more.
Even a morsel of information about his mamay would soothe the ache, but he would not give her that satisfaction.
“And Shayim thinks to use her memory against me, as if I am so easily weakened.”
“Love is not a weakness,” Shayim said softly. She dropped onto the edge of the bed with a sigh. “Just as hiding is not cowering.
Taking action against threats we do not yet understand would be unwise.”
“What of your power?” Nina shifted toward Shayim. Color had returned to her cheeks, and the firelight burnished her skin.
Kasik could not reconcile the girl sitting before him with a girl capable of slaughtering two men in cold blood. “Can you
not See threats before they come?”
“I only see the threads of life before me, and even then, the details are vague, but I can See that there is a war coming.”
Kasik scoffed. He couldn’t help it. “Now there is a war coming? What threat will it be next?”
Shayim’s lips quirked. Kasik knew he was being childish, but he didn’t care. “Twenty years ago, I told Emperor Yachua that
I had Seen something strange in his threads, in all our threads. A flash of a man bleached of color, like an apparition that I could only See the impression of, but could not
ascertain when, or how, or from where they would come. The kukuchi, we had called them.” Shayim paused, eyes distant as if
reaching into the past. “The gods mean to use the chaos to their advantage. It will change everything.”
“That is . . .” Nina started, but her brow furrowed, and her words drifted off.
“Convenient,” Kasik finished for her. “And that is your excuse for shirking your responsibilities to this land, to your people? A fear of some distant, unclear threat? Your delusion puts them in danger. Whatever fight you think there is, you cannot fight it and win. The emperor has power—true power—and you consign all your people to death by going against him.”
Kasik stood so that Shayim had to crane her head to meet his eyes, which she held unflinchingly. She was not afraid of him,
not by any means. “I will keep your secret, if only so that the deaths of your people do not belong to me. They solely belong
to you.” Then he turned to Nina, who watched him warily. “We’ll go now,” he said.
“Kasik.” She said his name so softly, it was almost his undoing. “We should wait until morning. Ask Shayim your questions.”
But Kasik had had enough. There was no more time to wait. He whirled away, unable to look at her a moment longer without saying
the wrong thing. “We cannot stay, Nina. And I do not want to ask questions.”
“Now who lies?” Shayim mumbled. Kasik ignored her.
When he spoke, he looked only at the wall of the tent. The green fabric blurred in his vision. He told himself it was frustration
and exhaustion, nothing more. At his back, he heard the whisper of the tent flap shifting aside and knew that Shayim was gone.
“You will come willingly, or I will be forced to drag you away from here.”
“You cannot force me to do anything at all.” Nina’s voice was low and lethal. He could imagine the hatred that lined her mouth
and the betrayal in her eyes. He had seen it earlier when he had told her she couldn’t stay. This time, it was strengthened
by the truth of what she was capable of.
Kasik’s anger toward her was irrational. It was better blamed on the fact that he had thought he had no family besides his
tayta, and suddenly he did, and he was being forced to confront the possibility that everything he had believed his whole
life might be a lie.
That Atik, cruel and inflexible, was a liar, something that seemed incongruent with his narrow-minded, rigid worldview.
He knew all this, and yet he turned and stepped closer to where Nina stood with her shoulders back and her chin held high, his voice low so no one else could hear. “Will you stop me like you stopped those men? Will you let your power turn you into a monster?”
“If I am a monster for protecting them,” she said, gesturing to where the entrance of the tent and Shayim stood, “then so
be it. It is the gods who have made me this way, and I will not be made to suffer guilt because of it.”
“Your power doesn’t make you who you are. Your choices do, and the choice of life or death does not belong in the hands of man.” Kasik gave her his back, daring her to stop him.
“I’ll gather the achipumas while you say your goodbyes.”
And then he walked away, uncertain if Nina would follow.