Chapter 46
Snow soaked into the fur around Kasik’s neck and weighed him down as he pressed himself against Capac, urged him to go faster.
It was only when he slipped from his seat that he realized his body was failing him, that the tea Chaska had given him was
not enough. He landed on the cold earth with a thud and a groan. Capac, breathing heavily above him, nosed Kasik’s head worriedly.
“We cannot stop. We cannot let them win,” Chaska said as she attempted to lift him from the ground. Together, they slipped
in the freshly fallen snow and got him to his knees, where he took a moment to breathe away the dizziness, and then to his
feet, where he leaned heavily against Chaska for support.
Then he lifted a leg to mount Capac, and the achipuma, better than any achipuma there had ever been, lowered his body to accommodate
Kasik’s weakness.
“Good boy,” Kasik whispered into his ear as he slowly, painfully, slid onto his back. This time, Chaska tied a rope around
his and Capac’s bodies, so that Kasik could not fall off. He trusted Capac to follow Chaska.
The skin on his ribs and stomach was tender to the touch. He noticed the purpling when he finally got the courage to look
and regretted it immediately, intimately aware of all the ways a man could die, ways that he himself had inflicted on others.
Perhaps this was his penance, to die as he had killed, as he was meant to die before Nina had healed him.
When his vision began to blur, he knew he didn’t have much time.
And yet Chaska was there, pushing him, encouraging him, reminding him to keep going.
She spoke to him to keep him awake, told him of her home, of the way she had wormed her way into the position she was in by convincing everyone that she was vain and unbothered and distracted.
All while sneaking and learning and telling.
And she told him about that night, finding the door within the wall. It was Lord Anri she had met outside. The resistance
belonged to them, and she was their nusta. Maicu was nothing but a tool. A pawn that had delivered their greatest asset right
to their doorstep.
“He has been convinced that giving Nina to the gods will earn him their favor, but it is Atik’s voice that whispers in his
ear—not the gods. The sacrifice of her power will usher in the pachakuti. It will bring the gods back to the mortal realm.
They believe it is their time to rule once again.”
For a moment, Kasik was back in the tent beneath Shayim’s cunning attention.
They yearn for the pachakuti—the turnover of time—to return them to power, and they use mortals like Maicu to do it.
Snow began to fall in earnest as they rode, a sheet of cold that blurred the edges of Kasik’s vision even further. He couldn’t
feel his hands or his face.
It felt like he was floating. Like his body would be swept away into obscurity, like there would be nothing left of him but
a memory. He hoped Nina would remember him. That his death would not be in vain. All he had to do was hold on.