Chapter 25
The lakes don’t work, and Suyai is in danger.
We’re past the fourth lake, the last on our way back to the bridge, our underwear wet with sacred water that glides off our skin. The temperature begins to drop as the sun hides behind the mountains, and it’s only that, the severe cold of a god overshadowed, that breaches past the numbness.
Because the eye of water didn’t work. The other lakes didn’t work. Nothing worked, and I had to see my best friend projected in the sky by the Aya Runa.
I ran to Mare when it happened, seeing his little hand rub his eyes to focus his stare upward.
Suyai wasn’t hurt like the others. I could tell right away.
Her injuries didn’t come from blunt-force weapons, and a lot of the injuries, the bruises, the bones jutting out, she sustained were from blocking hits.
She must have had what the others didn’t.
The ability to fight back.
Why? I couldn’t process the image fast enough to figure it out. I wasn’t capable of it. I couldn’t do anything other than stop Mare from seeing the same image that brought me to my knees.
He fought against me. He beat his small fists into my stomach when I pulled him close, and he begged.
He called out her name and pleaded to see her, but I couldn’t.
I whispered into his ear that I couldn’t, not right now.
I whispered that he had to trust me, that it would be okay, that she would be okay.
With every word out of my mouth, he calmed down until I was just hugging him rather than forcing him in place.
Me, though, I couldn’t calm down. My heart beat its way out of my chest, but when I looked down, there was no organ pulsating on the ground. Only Mare was crumpled atop the dirt.
The next projection broke me. They made Suyai spar against one of their own, and I knew it had to be one of their own.
The Aya Runa member who beat Suyai possessed a power enhanced by the Feline, unlike anything I’d ever seen before.
A power more potent than the whisper network imagined the Aya Runa to wield.
Those bruises, those bones jutting out… I saw the divine creation of each one.
Somewhere in my haunted memories, Mare is still shivering from the ice water between our bodies.
I am still whispering to him. The princess is still reaching out, still trying to touch me, and I always flinch away.
Somewhere, those memories live on forever, each one of us tiny figurines acting out the moment everything changed.
Now, in the quiet and dark of a clear sky, with the mountain air turning the water on me to ice, I return to my body.
“You said it would work,” I whisper, then repeat it louder so the princess knows exactly who I’m talking to. “You said it would work.”
“I said I had to try–”
“Mare, go back to camp and get out of these wet clothes. The princess and I are going to talk.”
“But–”
“I’ll explain everything to you. I promise. But I need to talk to her first,” I say, unable to listen to the painful rasp of his voice.
Mare stays in my arms for a few more seconds, tightening his grip on my arms to a punishing degree, then obeys. He pushes out of my arms, his leather sandals barely making a dent on the ground despite his heavy steps. He’s mad. Good. I’m mad too.
I can’t wait until he’s out of earshot, so I whisper when I want to shout.
“You said this would work. Why didn’t it work?”
“Don’t you dare put words in my mouth,” the princess hisses. “I said I had to try.”
I can’t think straight enough to remember that conversation. It’s too long ago. The soldier and the princess in the cave are too different from the two motherless women speaking now. Yet, I can’t stop the memories of the feelings after, the hope, the love. It’s not a memory I deserve to keep.
I repeat myself, knowing it’s out of a hopeless need to get a different answer than the truth.
“Why didn’t it work?”
“I don’t know!” she shouts. “I don’t know, but the Guardians won’t speak to me.
They never have, not until you showed up, and they said one thing.
One cursed thing. They told me to trust you.
But they didn’t speak when my mother was drowning me, and not now when I did it myself. They don’t want me. They don’t–”
“They’ve talked to me,” I interrupt, and her eyes go wide. “They’ve all spoken to me, in the lake, in Lima, but you’re telling me you, the Inka’s legendary princess, haven't heard a word from them your whole life until it was about me? You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“I–”
“And you didn’t think to mention that when you told me your plan? You didn’t think to tell me how little you had to offer?” I say words I don’t believe. I hiss and I spit and I taste metal in my mouth from where my teeth gnash against my own flesh.
“Sinchinrei–”
“I believed in you,” I stop talking when I realize I’m out of breath. Have I been shouting? I can’t get myself to care. “The Guardians, they told me…”
They told me to help you. I breathe deeply. I need to think before I act. I need to calm down. I spit blood onto the ground and wipe my hand across my mouth. It’s disgusting and primal and unbefitting of the princess’s presence.
“What am I supposed to do when the old Inka is dead, and now the new one has no samay?” I try, steadying my voice. We can talk this through. We can figure it out.
“What are you talking about?” the princess whispers, low and confused and so unlike her. “I will not be the new Inka.”
Her denial is a stone dagger to my shoulder.
It’s both a betrayal from someone I loved and a lesson in pain.
It triggers a panic I haven’t felt since I was a child, a panic I thought I banished when I learned to defend myself.
Suddenly, with the force of stone digging into skin, I miss my mother.
I miss the hope that we would one day talk, that she would give me advice on how to be a good Apukispay, that she would help me deal with royalty.
My mother climbed the ranks not just with strength but with cunning too.
She may have taught me how to fight and train, but she never stuck around long enough for her smarts to stick.
And now she never will.
It’s the taste of salt on my lips that lets me know I’m crying hot, angry tears that burn my raw lips.
“Oh, Sinchinrei…” the princess starts, reaching out toward my face but stopping before she touches skin.
I miss Suyai. I miss Lima, and I miss my mother. I left them behind, for what? An empire with a runaway Inka and a fate without glory?
No. No, I can’t let it all be for nothing.
“There’s one more place.” I try to speak but have to stop to rub my face free of tears.
“The Guardians won’t come here to speak to you.
Fine. But they don’t have the final say.
We’ll still head to Lake Titicaca. We’re only a two day hike away.
Let them try to ignore you when we’re banging on the door of the Sun God.
Let them try to stop you from raising the island. ”
“Champion, there’s nothing that says going to Lake Titicaca and praying to Inti will work when the lakes here didn’t. It’s the Guardians who have the final say. We mimic the Guardians’ powers. We–”
“But the Guardians are below the reign of Inti, as we all are. Inti created the Inka to rule an empire for him and the Guardians to protect it. Well, the Guardians need to restore your samay if they want…” A sob breaks through my tirade, and I have to take a deep breath to steady myself.
There’s no reason to cry, not when I’m going to save the empire and Suyai. I will save the empire and Suyai.
The princess eyes me with a pitiful look that I’m quick to hate. I don’t need her concern.
“Maybe I don’t get my samay back, and maybe I don’t raise the island, but Champion, Rei, maybe we don’t have to do any of it–”
“Don’t you dare finish that sentence. You don’t want to be Inka?
Fine, but I didn’t do all of this to not fulfill the fate I deserve.
You promised you’d help, so we try the lake, or you do the method you know is guaranteed to work.
” The command leaves my mouth in blazing fury.
The command. The command the princess has heard time and time again.
The softness in her solidifies into stone.
In that moment, as she stands taller and shuts down, I notice her scar.
It’s bleeding. I see surface scratches where the skin tore.
She must have used her own nails to rip it open.
She must have done that underwater at the last lake, because it wasn’t like that before.
I want to reach out and touch it, kiss the wound, and pray for it to heal, knowing it never will, not entirely.
But it’s too late for that now. I’m not foolish enough to think it isn’t.
“I told you I’d try, so I will go to the lake and try. Then I never want to see you again. Tell me you understand.”
I don’t nod. I don’t say a word. I remember the feel of her lips on mine. I remember the hesitance in her touch, the timid way she explored my skin, like she didn’t believe softness existed in the world. I remember it all. I’m lost in it like I got lost in her.
Yanami doesn’t care enough to wait. She turns around and walks toward her clothes.
I head in the opposite direction to look for Mare at our base at Pomakanchi.
Mare is looking up at the sky when I get to him. I see the twinkle of the stars reflected in his black eyes. He’s searching for his sister’s face.
I sit behind him and hug him to my chest. He’s stiff, causing his bony joints to dig into my tired muscles. I can’t blame him for the tension he holds, no matter how much I wish he could just relax. I wish I could relax too.
He speaks before I can.
"You're going to save her, right? Because you're the hero. You're going to save everyone." His last sentence isn’t a question, and I’m glad it’s not. I don’t know how I would have stopped myself from responding honestly, and I know exactly what I would have said.
I’ve already failed.
My mother was right, and I got her killed for it. We’ve already lost so much. But it was supposed to be worth it, for us, for me, Mare, and Suyai. For the princess.
Maybe it still can be.
I think back to the woman who beat Suyai without a thought. I’m not strong enough to defeat her in battle. I know it. I can’t defeat her as I am now, but with the Sun Staff, I’ll be untouchable. A golden staff that can cut through anything. I’ll cut through that woman’s throat.
I’ll retrieve the Sun Staff no matter what.
“Nothing happened to your sister. She’s okay,” I lie, the process so unfamiliar and vile and useless. “But I do need to save her. We need to save her, together. I’ll just need you to be strong for a little while longer.”
“I can be strong forever. Like you.” He puffs out his chest, and I hug him harder.
“Good,” I say, and I have to stop when I notice how heavy my voice sounds. Mare doesn’t need heavy. He needs light and adventure and hope. He needs a hero. “Good, kori. We’re going to be leaving tomorrow morning for Lake Titicaca. You know that place, right?”
He turns around in my arms at the mention of the lake, his eyes wide in excitement. “Where– Where the first Inka’s from, where he came out with the Sun staff! Are we finally going to the trials, Rei?”
His excitement loosens something in me, and I can breathe normally again.
“Yes, kori. We need to help the princess there first, but then we’ll get to the trials–”
“And then we’re going to save Susu,” he says, his eyes sparkling. There’s hope there, but there are also tears. He won’t let them fall, though.
“Yes, then we’ll save Susu.”
His cheeks stay dry as mine are flooded. His smile wavers, but he keeps it on. He turns fully and hugs me.
I don’t let go of him all night.