The stories he was told as a child, of those with power who had destroyed the world time and again, only for the gods to remake it and the end to remain just the same.
Chaos and destruction.
Then he remembered Maicu’s words about legacy and loss and the sacrifices required to make change. It dawned on him all at once.
“This is why he wants you,” he whispered, mind racing. “Thisis why the emperor sent for you. Have you known about thispowerall along?”
“No, Kasik, no. I—” She placed a hand on his arm, and he yanked out of her touch. Stepped away from her reach. The fire burned his back like a knife between his shoulder blades. Still, he preferred it to the way her eyes filled with hurt. “I knew something about me was different, but it was only when we came here that Shayim showed me what I could do.”
Kasik ran a hand down his face and turned from her. It was miraculous, his healing. He had felt the rot from the inside out, the burn of death taking root, and still he had refused to see the truth of it. “You should have let me die,” he whispered miserably. “You should have never interfered in something you don’t understand.”
“You make it sound as though any of this has been my choice.”
When he turned to her again, she was wearing that same expression he had found her with. Determination in the downward tilt of her eyes and lips. Anger in the clench of her jaw. “Wealwayshave a choice,” he said tenderly.
“You as well,” Shayim interrupted. He turned abruptly. The old woman stood tall, her brown eyes glowing in the firelight. He had almost forgotten there were others in the room. “What will you choose to do with this knowledge?” She gestured at Nina, at herself, at the ayllu surrounding them.
Kasik glanced at Hatun beside her and felt the phantom blows of the man’s boot in his stomach. He was in a room full of enemies, and the path of his life depended on his answer.
Shayim flicked her eyes to Hatun. “Leave us,” she ordered, and surprisingly, Hatun obeyed without a whisper of dissent.
Kanu’s words rang through Kasik’s mind. “Kanu seemed to think you are a rebel ayllu. Is he right? Am I such a fool that I thought you all innocent?”
Shayim stood taller, her eyes hardened as she met Kasik’s judgment. “We are not a rebel ayllu. We are aresistance.”
Kasik barked a laugh, the sound sharp in the tense silence. He expected her to say something more, but when she didn’t, he sobered with disbelief. “A resistance? Againstwhat?”
“There is much your emperor has not told you.”
Kasik went to argue, but Shayim held up a hand, and the authority with which she did so stopped him immediately. “I know you think it is not your place to know, but it does not absolve you of your hand in it,” Shayim said. “You must be aware of what your master does, and when you decide to follow his commands, it will be with all the information, and with all your own free will.
“Do you know that the acllahuasi is filled with Ikara?” she continued. “Girls with mythical power that we’ve been told is unnatural and nonexistent, but the truth is that your emperor hunts them. He takes them from their families and stores them behind stone walls, drugs them with tainted leaves, and then trades them in exchange for fealty. And then he takes our boys and hones them into weapons to defend against any who dissent.”
Shayim paused, waiting for Kasik to interrupt, to argue, to admit disbelief, but there was nothing he could say that would accurately portray the level of his skepticism. If he hadn’t seen the t’ira die the way they did, he would have walked out of the tent and dragged Nina with him. Instead, against his better judgment, he stayed and listened.
“Weare where his power comes from. Without the Ikara, he is just another lofty, greedy man. And thekunay,” Shayim said, shooting him a sharp glance, “is no better. He is just like Dimas, compelled to hunt Yuri to the ends of the earth and deliver her to the emperor.”
“And I am Yuri,” Nina whispered, her eyes distant with some memory that Kasik could not see. “Weeks after I used my attay for the firsttime, they came and took my brother. Then recently, I used it again. Without knowing,” she added and glanced at Kasik. “They came again, but I thought it was for Sacha. The way helookedat her... I offered myself in exchange. I threw myself to the wolves.”
Shayim looked at Nina with sympathy. “You couldn’t have known. This particular gift is not passed through blood, and while your mamay might have thought there was something different about you, she could not have guessed the depth of it.”
“If all this is true, then what do they want with Nina?”
Shayim looked back at Kasik, and her eyes hardened. “The gods have a plan for her, but I cannot See it. All I know is that it has been five hundred years since their banishment, and they grow weary and forgotten. They yearn for the pachakuti—the turnover of time—to return them to power, and they use mortals like Maicu to do it.”
“You lie,” Kasik seethed. “You speak of gods and power and resistance and yet here you are, hiding in the dark. Cowering while the emperor continues his reign unopposed.”
“I do not lie.” Shayim lowered her voice, and her eyes bored into Kasik. It was as if she was seeing beyond this moment, perhaps even beyond his life. Shivers crawled up his spine. “It is only that you refuse tosee. Do you want to know what Aliyma would say to you if she was here?”
Kasik had pushed the first mention of his mamay away, unwilling to face it, but he couldn’t ignore it for a second time. He shot to his feet and paced to the edge of the tent, watching as his shadow flickered in the firelight.
“Your sister?” Nina asked, voice soft with thought. “Why would she have anything to say to Kasik?”
“Because she was my mamay,” he said to the dark. When he turned, he pinned his glare on the Seer, watched every shift in her features. The tent was tense, the quiet deep enough to swallow all sound untilKasik could hear his own heartbeat. He thought it might give away how badly he wanted to beg for more. Even a morsel of information about his mamay would soothe the ache, but he would not give her that satisfaction. “And Shayim thinks to use her memory against me, as if I am so easily weakened.”
“Love is not a weakness,” Shayim said softly. She dropped onto the edge of the bed with a sigh. “Just as hiding is not cowering. Taking action against threats we do not yet understand would be unwise.”
“What of your power?” Nina shifted toward Shayim. Color had returned to her cheeks, and the firelight burnished her skin. Kasik could not reconcile the girl sitting before him with a girl capable of slaughtering two men in cold blood. “Can you not See threats before they come?”
