Chapter 30
Kasik caught only a glimpse of Nina before the door closed, forcing him to give the empress his full attention. She always
looked at him with such disdain, as if the mere sight of him was a damper to an otherwise pleasant day. Like a disappointed
mamay, though she couldn’t have been more than a year or two his senior.
“She needs to be escorted to the bathhouse. Do you think you can manage that?”
“Yes, Empress Chaska,” he gritted out. What he wanted to say was I managed to keep her alive for several days in the depths of the Tuta Kulla, but that would raise too many questions. Instead, he asked, “Do you need an escort to wherever it is you’re going?”
Chaska smiled as if amused, the tips of her pointed head circlet winking in the torchlight. “Emperor Maicu is expecting her
at the evening meal. Do not be late.”
She turned away with a flourish, the hem of her gown swishing against the floor as she disappeared around the corner.
Kasik waited until she was completely gone, and then he faced the door and took a fortifying breath.
This was not where he was supposed to be. This was not what he was supposed to be doing. Everything he had been told was a
lie—he couldn’t help but wonder if the emperor had lied about Samaq and his men as well. Perhaps to keep him there under his
thumb, and Kasik had led him to believe that he was so easily manipulated.
It was becoming more and more evident that he had always been under the control of someone. Maicu. His tayta. Kasik’s own ridiculous notions of honor and duty. What was loyalty if the men he served were loyal to no one but themselves?
And what did it mean for Nina and the secret of her fate?
Kasik ran a hand down his face. It wasn’t a problem that needed to be solved at that moment. There was plenty of time until
Inti Raymi and the sacrifice, and he wasn’t in the right frame of mind to solve problems as large as these. He’d had little
sleep last night, and he still had to speak with Master Wara. His teacher would know what to do; he always did.
Steeling himself, he knocked.
There was a moment of silence, and then another. Kasik knocked again, this time louder, though there was nowhere Nina could
go where she wouldn’t have heard.
He was just about to throw open the door when it opened on its own.
Nina stood before him, the features of her face shuttered, her thoughts closed to him except for the anger lining her mouth.
He had to clear his throat before he spoke. “I have been instructed to escort you to the baths.”
She was silent a moment, and her scrutiny was worse than his own. “Are you sure she didn’t use her power to compel you to
escort me to the baths?”
The question was sharp, and ridiculous, because Chaska didn’t have that kind of power.
And neither did Nina, if what she was implying could be believed. Kasik had to admit that it was unlikely. When he had awoken
in the tent bound and healed, the achilla had been hanging from his neck as it always was. There would have been plenty of
time to remove it and compel him to . . . what, exactly? Leave her? Love her? Join her?
Whatever there might have been between them was gone, replaced with apprehension. He couldn’t think too much about all the things he wanted to say for the risk of spilling it all. They needed to come to an understanding first.
Kasik stepped forward, and she stepped backward, a dance of avoidance that made him want to reach out and pull her into him.
The emperor’s red matched the warmth blooming in her cheeks as he closed the door behind him and leaned against it. Her hair
was a tangled mess, and he was almost certain that was a smudge of dirt on her left cheek. She had faced the empress like
that, dirtied and distraught, and he knew she had done it with her head held high, her chin jutted out stubbornly, just as
she stood before him when he first laid eyes on her.
So much had changed since that day, but not her resolve.
“I’m sorry,” he said simply. No other words, no explanation. He hoped she could see the sincerity in his eyes, hear the hope
in his voice. He was tempted to say more, to burden her with all his secrets, but he couldn’t. Not until he spoke with Master
Wara. Not until he had a plan.
They couldn’t be friends, but he didn’t want to be her enemy.
He could tell by the way she averted her eyes and pushed a clump of hair behind her ear that it wasn’t what she had been expecting
to hear. All at once, the fight had drained out of her, and he hated that he was the one to disarm her.
“Lead the way, then,” she said in lieu of an acceptance, but it was good enough for him.
There was nothing to marvel at within the halls of the kancha, except for the tapestry Nina had been standing in front of for so long that Kasik was beginning to grow stiff.
Everything else she had seen thus far was nondescript stone in varying shades of brown and beige.
Torches were spread over even intervals to light the way.
All the doors were closed, and he saw how Nina had glanced at each of them as they walked by.
Her lips had moved soundlessly, and he assumed she was trying to count her steps to navigate her way to an eventual escape.
Now she was silent. Utterly transfixed. Kasik had to admit the tapestry was a sight to behold. It covered the entire wall,
and the colors were bright enough that it looked as though you could run a hand over it and come away with real blood smeared
across the tips of your fingers. He stepped closer to it, to her, so that their sides were almost touching. The silence between
them was tense, a palpable reminder of what they were to each other.
Friends. Enemies. Strangers.
“I didn’t think I would see you again,” she said quietly. Even so, her voice echoed, the stone whispering her words to him
again and again.
“I wasn’t meant to be here. My men, they—” He stopped, uncertain why he felt the need to share. Certain that she wouldn’t care. “Emperor Maicu requested that I continue to guard you until the ceremony,” he said instead.
“The ceremony,” she repeated. Kasik thought she would ask more, that she would demand to know the things that he knew, but
she kept her eyes on the tapestry, quiet and withdrawn.
He took the opportunity to study her profile, each of her bold features outlined by the shifting torchlight. There was always
the slightest furrow carved into her brow, not in anger but in thought, as if she was constantly questioning every word and
every sight. He wondered if she would figure out his secret before he had the chance to tell her.
The truth of her fate sat in his chest like a weight.
Kasik knew he should tell her, but he could not decide if it would help.
She had told him she intended to fight it, and he saw the way she surveyed her surroundings keenly.
Perhaps she would escape on her own sometime in the next four weeks before Inti Raymi, and his choice would be made for him.
Perhaps none of this would matter. Certainly, he and his feelings least of all.
“This is your creation story,” she said suddenly. “The one you told me that night.”
The way she said your set his teeth on edge. It was the same way she spoke of the emperor, as if he wasn’t hers. As if she was outside their purview
and therefore their control.
Kasik turned his eyes away from Nina’s face and back to the tapestry. At the top were the indistinct shapes of four gods—Viracocha
in the middle, woven in threads of dark brown and black, with what looked like hands spread to either side, where from his
fingers sprouted golden threads that were connected to Inti on his right and Killa and Pachamama on his left. Like leads used
to steer and control.
Below them were crude depictions of humans and flora and fauna shoved between mountains so jagged they looked like weapons.
And underneath them, rivers of blood, the thread so rich a color that when Kasik had first seen it, he had reached out to
see if it was wet.
And woven throughout, in specks and strands, were the golden threads from the gods’ hands, inextricably tying them all together.
A story of reciprocity, of inevitability. Of belonging. An unmovable force. That was what Nina was fighting.
“It is. The gods—Viracocha,” he said, pointing to the shadow of a shape whose eyes were holes in the weaving. “Inti.” The
sun god was bathed in the golden threads, and where his face should have been was a sun with missing eyes. Kasik slid his
fingers over the tapestry, feeling the jut of each thread. “This is Killa and Pachamama.” The former was made up of silver
threads, a stark contrast to the black and gold around her, and the latter was a soft shade of green, easily forgettable in
the chaos of the whole picture.
Like the green Shayim’s people wore. Kasik had not realized it before.
Nina reached out a hand and gently brushed her fingers over the bundle of golden threads at eye level. They were attached
to the shape of a human, its limbs a bit spindly, but upon closer inspection, Kasik noticed they weren’t just strange looking—they
were unnatural. Inhuman.
He watched as Nina’s fingers crawled from one thread to another, closer to the middle where the depiction of Yuri and Dimas
stood. Dimas was entirely black and seemed to glisten, like the achilla. Yuri’s hands were awash in gold, and the river of
blood that saturated the entire bottom of the tapestry began at her feet.
When her fingers brushed over the black threads of the counterbalance, she yanked away with a gasp.
Kasik grabbed her hand and pulled it closer to inspect it. “Are you all right?”
But Nina pulled out of his touch and stepped back, a look of bewilderment clouding her eyes. “I’m sorry,” Kasik said again.
It seemed as though all he did was apologize, but he hadn’t meant to touch her. At some point, it had become second nature
to reach for her, and when he tried to wipe the feel of her from his palm, he found he could not.
She was like a stain on his soul.
“We should move on,” he said abruptly. Nina didn’t meet his eyes, but she nodded. And as he turned away, he caught sight of
her bringing her hand to her chest, a furrow on her brow, and wondered if his touch affected her just as it affected him.