The next several days passed without incident. There were no run-ins with bandits or strange creatures or animals. He saw no other people as he traversed the emperor’s road. Kasik began to appreciate the freedom—no men seeking his approval or awaiting his commands. No tayta to be disappointed by his mere existence. No emperor seeking his friendship.
He missed Samaq, but he couldn’t help but wonder what secrets his friend was keeping from him, and what he had tried to tell Kasik that day in the training ring. What would Emperor Maicu do once he knew that his empress was meeting in secret with a walla, and that Kasik had known it all along?
Perhaps he could stay in these woods where he was just a man with a beast and never have to find out.
It was a fanciful thought, one that surprised and thrilled him in equal measure.
But there was a mission to be completed, and Kasik intended to do it to the best of his abilities. Two more days, and he would be halfway to completing his mission to collect the girl and deliver her unharmed.
5
Ten days had passed since Nina arrived at the acllahuasi, and each morning, she woke with only hazy memories of the day before that sifted through her fingers like sand with each step she took toward the prayer room. And when she drank her tea, she forgot that she couldn’t remember anything at all.
But that morning was different. Qori was nowhere to be found when Nina woke, and the streaks of morning light from the tiny window by the ceiling were not in their usual spots on the floor. Her mind worked through what it meant, and then it meandered toward thoughts of home.
Tiny particles floated in the air, bringing forth a memory of Sacha lying in the bed they shared, her thin fingers swirling through the streaks of light and parting the dust while she hummed a soft song.
How she missed her sisters and her home. Her mamay and tayta. How had she, for even one moment, allowed herself to forget them?
A closing door echoed down the long hall. Nina listened for other sounds, but the acllahuasi was deadly quiet, which likely meant everyone was at morning prayers and she was missing them. Why hadn’t Qori woken her, and why couldn’t she remember if she had told Nina of her plans not to?
She jumped out of bed and dressed, quickly throwing her thick hair into two tidy braids. The hall was empty as she jogged in slippered feet to the prayer room, which she found empty as well. On the small table by the door was a single mug of cooled tea. Nina found herself reaching for it, for the energy and bliss it provided. She snatched her hand back and swallowed down the burn of anticipation.
When she finally made her way to the dining quarters, she took a moment outside the door to calm herself and prepare an excuse. But nobody looked her way as she opened the door and quickly entered the room, much less asked a question. The only sounds were the soft scuff of clay on wood. The click of metal against clay. The whisper of shifting fabric. Nina sat down at the closest table, a strange feeling beating against her chest.
“You sit over there,” a girl said to her, pointing with her spoon at a table across from theirs.
Nina glanced nervously between the table and the girl and nodded. “Of course,” she said, because it was only after the girl pointed it out that Nina remembered that shedidsit at that table every morning with Qori. There was already a bowl of corn porridge waiting for her, but no Qori.
After switching tables, Nina thought she would feel less out of place. Less strange, but the eeriness only grew with the silence in the room.
It wasn’t that she didn’t enjoy the quiet. Back home, there were times when she would escape the company of her sisters and the never-ending chores to venture to the middle of the fields and stretch out on the ground, eyes closed and arms spread wide, and simply listen. To the birds singing in the distance, to the corn stalks caressing each other, to the rustle of insect wings.
But this quiet was unnatural. The girls didn’t speak to her, but they also didn’t speak to each other. They didn’t laugh or hum or move too quickly and spill their food. They didn’t apologize when they bumped into each other, or bribe each other to switch chores, or complain about their itchy robes.
Had it always been like this, so quiet and strange? Would anyone even notice if she simply got up and left the room?
Or the acllahuasi?
The thought came unbidden. Nina paused with a bite of congealing porridge halfway to her mouth.Couldshe leave? She had offered herself to the kunay in exchange for her sister, but the kunay wasn’t there, and the arrangement hadn’t been made known to the mamakuna, as far as she knew.
It didn’t seem like they would notice her absence, or come after her if they did, and why would they? She was a nobody from Limac, a small farming ayllu on the outskirts of a bustling and newly formed empire. The only time her people had anything to do with the emperor or his men was during the Harvest, and Nina and her sisters were well-versed in hiding from them.
They had caught her off guard this time, but they wouldn’t again.
Nina could go home. She could see her mamay and tayta. Hug her sisters. Swim in the sea. Befree. Nobody would have to know.
The plan grew in her mind as she finished her morning meal and made her way with the other girls to the sewing room. It was only when she was halfway there that she remembered she hadn’t drunk the morning tea that filled them with faith and brought them closer to the gods.
Perhaps Nina was faithless, but she was filled with clarity unlike anything before.
The sewing room was like the other rooms in the acllahuasi: colorless and cold. The smallest amount of light filtered in from a thin slit of a window near the ceilings.Too high to climb outof, Nina thought fleetingly. The rest of the light came from torches in the corners. Cushioned benches lined the walls, and in the middle was a large table piled with baskets of sewing equipment.
Qori sat on one of those benches, dark head bowed over a deep red fabric bunched in her lap. Nina breathed a sigh of relief and joined her only friend, expecting to field questions from her, at least. But Qorihardly glanced up. Her fingers didn’t stop moving as she pushed the needle through the fabric, in and out and over.
“Where were you this morning?” Nina whispered, glancing at the three girls sitting across the room from them. They kept their heads bowed and didn’t appear to be listening, but Nina scooted closer to Qori all the same.
“I’ve been here.” Qori nodded at her lap. “It’s for Empress Chaska. Mamakuna has entrusted it to me.”
