There was no response, but he didn’t need one. The look in her eyes was enough to tell him exactly what she thought.
Hours later, when the rain finally stopped and the sun had begun its descent,Kasik wasn’t surprised when Nina refused to ride Capac with him again. It wasn’t as though he was particularly excited about being pressed against her after their argument, so he had decided to walk beside them and swallow the worry about the time they were wasting.
If only Illari hadn’t been stolen. If only the acllahuasi had transportation of their own. If only he had left for Tullumay one day earlier, then all this could have been avoided.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Nina sitting stiff as a board atop Capac. It would make everything hurt that much more when she finally dismounted.
“You don’t need to hold yourself so stiffly,” he said, breaking their silence. Nina kept her eyes forward and ignored him, and Kasik fought the urge to roll his.
When she finally spoke, it was not at all what he had expected. He was coming to understand that would be the normal with her.
“Is it gold? Or maybe a fancy room in the kancha? Oh!” She gasped dramatically. “Perhaps they’ll let you pick a wife as well! That’s a valuable reward for a lonely boy.”
And they were back to that. Kasik felt his face flame with frustration, but he kept his eyes on the road ahead and the trees around them as hesaid, “It isduty. Something you wouldn’t understand.” He wanted to say more, to defend himself and Maicu, but he had never been very good at controlling his emotions, and he couldn’t allow himself to give her the satisfaction.
Nina, however, had no qualms about showing everything she was feeling and saying whatever was on her mind. “I am more familiar withdutythan you think, Kamayuq. Perhaps it is you who doesn’t understand what it is to serve out of love and not out of obligation.”
Kasik stared at her, jaw clenching. Nina stared back, unashamed, her eyes hard and her shoulders back. She looked like an empress on her beast. Confident and in control while her servant yielded to her every command.
But it was her words that hit a nerve Kasik did not realize was exposed. Had he ever done anything out of love? Was he capable of it?
There was nothing he could say, and it seemed Nina thought that as well, because she had turned back to the road, dismissing him entirely. They walked on in another heavy silence. Kasik couldn’t help but think that it should have been Samaq beside him, and his men behind them.
They would have been almost to Tullumay, where Lord Anri would have greeted them with enthusiasm and a large cup of chicha, which would have led to a rich meal and countless stories of a thriving ayllu.
It was something he had been looking forward to for quite some time, and now there he was, wondering, not for the first time—
“Why you?” Nina asked suddenly, as if she had plucked the words from his mind.
He glanced at her, waiting to see if she would say more, but she was still looking ahead and her lips were pressed tight. Kasik sighed. “Is there someone else you might have preferred?”
“I just meant that you’re young, and if I’m to be the emperor’s wife, I would have thought he would have sent someone with more experience.”
He didn’t owe her an explanation, didn’twantto explain it, but he found himself doing so, anyway. “The emperor is my friend. He trusts me, and I’m experienced enough.”
“Is that why you have a title? Because you’re the emperor’s ‘friend’?”
“I have a title,” Kasik said through gritted teeth, “because I have trained for years to prove my worth and loyalty to the emperor, just as my tayta has served the emperor and his family for years.”
“And your mamay? Does she serve the emperor as well?”
“My mamay is dead,” he said quickly, the words harsher than he had meant them to be. He touched the stone around his neck, which had belonged to her, and imagined she must have loved him enough to want to keep him safe. The actual weight of that feeling was lost to him.
Nina finally looked at him. “I’m sorry,” she said softly. “That was rude of me.”
Kasik shrugged. “You couldn’t have known. It happened a long time ago.”
“And your siblings?”
“No siblings,” he answered truthfully. It was just him and his tayta, who was more absent than he was present. Kasik had mostly been raised by the kancha staff, and then Master Wara once he began the lessons that would shape him into the perfect tool. But he didn’t tell Nina any of that.
“When did you join the emperor’s army?”
“I was seven years old when I learned to wield a tumi, but we don’t have official roles until the age of fifteen.”
“What’s a tumi?” Nina asked, brows furrowed. Already, Kasik was beginning to understand her facial expressions, something he had been taught to notice from a young age.It will help keep you alive, Master Wara had said. Hopefully, it would help keep others alive as well.
Kasik pulled the weapon at his hip out of its holder and twirled it in his palm. “This is a tumi.”
