Chapter 28
Whatever Atik whispered into her ear, Kasik couldn’t hear it over the aching realization that he had been so utterly and cruelly
deceived. By his tayta, but also by Nina.
He remembered the part of the story he told Nina, where the Ikara controlled and manipulated the man into loving her. Where
her powers had drawn him in and held him captive until he was forced to kill her.
Kasik thought back to all the times he had felt an unexplainable pull toward her despite his unyielding loyalty to Maicu.
Her stubbornness as she worked to light a fire. Her fearlessness as she threw the rock at the achiyanga. Her carelessness
and whimsy as she danced under the full moon.
It had been against his nature, against his will. The essence of her had sunk beneath his skin and burned like an infection
in the blood. Had it taken root when he was nearly dead and unconscious, when she had used her power to stitch him back together?
Had he been so easy to poison?
Even then, he could feel her lure, feel the sundering in his heart as she looked past Atik, arms pulled behind her, and seethed.
“I will never forgive you for this.” The walla pulled her backward without care. “One day, I will kill you both,” she screamed,
her promise echoing off the stone buildings and beating against his heart.
They watched her go, Atik beside him, the hem of his ceremonial red robes fluttering in the breeze. Kasik despised the color.
Loathed this place. Begrudged that he had been born to this man.
“You lied to me,” he said to the now-empty space before him. He refused to turn and look at the man who had helped give him life. Who had kept so much from him and given him so little.
Nina disappeared through the main doors of the kancha and with her, all unfamiliar sound. Whoever had stopped to watch their
interaction were back to their duties as if nothing had happened. The sounds of walla training filled the silence, the lack
of explanations from his tayta.
“You sound like a child.” Atik lifted a hand and pressed it to his cheek. He smiled when they came away with a thin line of
blood across his fingers. “There was no need for you to know more than you did, and now you understand the truth of her.”
“I understand the truth about a lot now.” Kasik turned to face him, fists at his side. He dug his nails into his palms to
hold back this anger, this misery he felt bubbling in his chest. “Like the fact that mamay’s family is not dead.”
It slipped out before he could stop it, and once the words were between them, Kasik realized what a mistake he had made. He
had given up his hand, exposed a secret that he had promised he would keep. And, once again, shown how little control he had
over his emotions.
“And where,” Atik started, his body preternaturally still, his dark eyes swirling with hunger, “did you learn that?”
What a fool he was to give his tayta this power over him. “There is no need for you to know more than you do,” Kasik said,
throwing his words back at him and barreling on with his own. “Did you keep her against her will?” His tayta turned away from
him, without so much as a flicker of emotion, and began walking toward the kancha doors. Kasik followed, feeling like the
child his tayta ridiculed him of being. “Was she only here to serve a purpose, like Nina? If I am such an inconvenience, why
keep me? Why not send me away to live with them? It’s what mamay would have wanted.”
Atik stopped and turned suddenly, hands behind his back as he stepped close enough that Kasik could feel the moisture from his breath.
“Do not believe for one moment that your mamay spared a single thought for you. The circumstances of your birth were as unavoidable as your very life. It is the gods who brought you to us, and it is the gods who keep you alive.”
Kasik couldn’t understand what it meant, couldn’t parse the expressions on his tayta’s face. “You are here to do as you are
told,” Atik continued. “That is your only purpose. If you cannot do that, then there is no reason to keep you.”
“I will embrace the day that I step into your role if it means that I am free of you.”
“You will never be free of me.” Atik pressed a finger into Kasik’s chest, right over his heart. “Who I am will one day be
all that you are.”
The words sent a chill down Kasik’s spine. They were murmured with such conviction that he couldn’t help but believe them.
He was silent as Atik reached up and straightened the shoulders of his tunic and the leather cord around his neck, his cold
fingers sending a trail of foreboding down Kasik’s spine.
“The emperor is waiting,” he said, and then he strode away, leaving Kasik to follow.
Maicu was waiting in his sitting room with a wide smile and outstretched arms as Kasik and Atik entered.
“Have you brought her to me safely?” he asked, grasping Kasik’s shoulders warmly. In that moment, with the full brunt of Maicu’s
praise directed toward him, it wasn’t difficult for Kasik to remember the days before Maicu had become emperor, when they
shared in their triumphs and downfalls together. When they were just friends. Now Kasik was full of doubt and curiosity and
questions.
“Did you know about her attay?” he asked carefully, holding on to a tiny sliver of hope that he didn’t. It wasn’t that Kasik was offended that he hadn’t been given the full spectrum of information; it was that he felt like he had been tricked. That his life was expendable.
Nina could have killed him at any moment, but she hadn’t. She had only used her attay to heal him and save Shayim’s people.
He would forever remember the way those men had died in silent agony. The way their twisted limbs and blank eyes had lain
in a puddle of blood.
Maicu’s eyes sliced toward Atik, then back to Kasik. He dropped his hands to his side and wiped the smile from his face. “Is
she unharmed?”
Kasik inhaled deeply to calm himself. There was no point in proving his tayta’s opinions of him, though all he wanted to do
was rant and yell. “Yes. There was an incident at the acllahuasi with one of the walla, but I took care of it.”
“You took care of it?” Atik asked skeptically, his arms crossed over his chest and a smug smirk on his face.
“Yes. I removed his head from his body. I took care of it.”
For a moment, Maicu looked almost remorseful. For whom, Kasik couldn’t say. The look was gone in a flash, and then Maicu was
prodding Kasik to sit, to relax, to discuss the details. Kasik sat stiffly, carefully considering what to say and what not to say.
“Her attay. Have you seen it firsthand?” Maicu leaned forward, hands folded in his lap, eyes filled with a type of hunger
Kasik had become accustomed to seeing. Maicu was always hungry, always seeking and frantically prodding. It was such a difference
from the innocently curious child he had been.
Kasik couldn’t lie, not about this when he had to lie about so much else. Halftruths, he decided, were the only path. “We
ran into two of your men in the Tuta Kulla.” He looked at him pointedly, waiting for Maicu to put the pieces together.
With a sigh, Maicu sat back, the plush chair creaking underneath him. “The t’ira,” he said.
“She killed them,” Kasik said regretfully.
Again, Maicu’s eyes slid to Atik, and it was his tayta who spoke. “She’s strong,” he said eagerly.
“She’s the one,” Maicu whispered back, his eyes distant.
Kasik could only guess at the path of his thoughts, and he could keep his own to himself no longer. “You didn’t tell me. You
sent me on a fool’s errand without any foresight, any protection. How can I perform my duties properly without all the information?”
“You had plenty of protection,” Maicu said, pointing flippantly at the stone that had escaped from beneath Kasik’s tunic.
“And you seemed to have managed just fine.” Maicu gave him a chiding smile, as if this whole thing was nothing more than a
joke and Kasik and his ignorance were the brunt of it. “I had faith that you would succeed”—Atik snorted, and Maicu sent him
a scathing look—“and you have. That’s all that matters. Your loyalty has saved us all, Kasik. Never forget that.”
“Saved us how? From what? Nina only killed those men to save us. She isn’t—” Dangerous, he was going to say, but she was, wasn’t she? He had said, to her face, that her power was monstrous. Perhaps it was too
harsh. Perhaps his tayta was right, and he was guilty of letting his emotions get the better of him.
Maicu leaned forward and looked directly into Kasik’s eyes. “What I’m about to tell you—”
Atik abruptly pushed away from the wall and stepped toward their seats. “Emperor Maicu—”
“Please, Atik,” Maicu said, raising a hand to silence him. Atik let out a huff and turned his back.
When Maicu looked at Kasik again, his eyes were brimming with sincerity. “I trust that what I am about to tell you will never be repeated. If this was made public, there would be panic across the territories.”
Kasik had the brief thought that perhaps it was better not to know whatever it was Maicu had been hiding from him, but it
was a coward’s thought. “You have my word,” he said earnestly.
Maicu took a breath. “Several weeks ago, a farmer came into the city speaking of an unfamiliar balsa in the water coming toward
the shore.” Maicu’s voice was hardly more than a whisper, as if there might be enemies listening at the walls. “He said it
came closer and closer, and that there were beings on it. Men that looked like us, but their skin was as pale as the moon,
some of them with hair the color of straw.”
Kukuchi, Kasik thought, his heart pounding as he listened intently.
“We brought him in for questioning and found the location he spoke of. The balsa was unlike any of ours, made with a denser
wood and flying a brightly colored tapestry tethered high above on a pole. There was no one on it, but we found evidence of
them. Strange clothing and weapons. Unfamiliar foods. It was as if they had come from a different world.”