“You will never be free of me.” Atik pressed a finger into Kasik’s chest, right over his heart. “Who I am will one day be all that you are.”
The words sent a chill down Kasik’s spine. They were murmured with such conviction that he couldn’t help but believe them. He was silent as Atik reached up and straightened the shoulders of his tunic and the leather cord around his neck, his cold fingers sending a trail of foreboding down Kasik’s spine.
“The emperor is waiting,” he said, and then he strode away, leaving Kasik to follow.
Maicu was waiting in his sitting room with a wide smile and outstretched arms as Kasik and Atik entered.
“Have you brought her to me safely?” he asked, grasping Kasik’s shoulders warmly. In that moment, with the full brunt of Maicu’s praise directed toward him, it wasn’t difficult for Kasik to remember the days before Maicu had become emperor, when they shared in their triumphs and downfalls together. When they were just friends. Now Kasik was full of doubt and curiosity and questions.
“Did you know about her attay?” he asked carefully, holding on to a tiny sliver of hope that he didn’t. It wasn’t that Kasik was offended that he hadn’t been given the full spectrum of information; it was that he felt like he had been tricked. That his life was expendable.
Nina could have killed him at any moment, but she hadn’t. She had only used her attay to heal him and save Shayim’s people. He would forever remember the way those men had died in silent agony. The way their twisted limbs and blank eyes had lain in a puddle of blood.
Maicu’s eyes sliced toward Atik, then back to Kasik. He dropped his hands to his side and wiped the smile from his face. “Is she unharmed?”
Kasik inhaled deeply to calm himself. There was no point in proving his tayta’s opinions of him, though all he wanted to do was rant and yell. “Yes. There was an incident at the acllahuasi with one of the walla, but I took care of it.”
“You took care of it?” Atik asked skeptically, his arms crossed over his chest and a smug smirk on his face.
“Yes. I removed his head from his body. I took care of it.”
For a moment, Maicu looked almost remorseful. For whom, Kasik couldn’t say. The look was gone in a flash, and then Maicu was prodding Kasik to sit, to relax, to discuss the details. Kasik sat stiffly, carefully considering what to say and whatnotto say.
“Her attay. Have you seen it firsthand?” Maicu leaned forward, hands folded in his lap, eyes filled with a type of hunger Kasik had become accustomed to seeing. Maicu was always hungry, always seeking and frantically prodding. It was such a difference from the innocently curious child he had been.
Kasik couldn’t lie, not about this when he had to lie about so much else. Halftruths, he decided, were the only path. “We ran into two ofyour menin the Tuta Kulla.” He looked at him pointedly, waiting for Maicu to put the pieces together.
With a sigh, Maicu sat back, the plush chair creaking underneath him. “The t’ira,” he said.
“She killed them,” Kasik said regretfully.
Again, Maicu’s eyes slid to Atik, and it was his tayta who spoke. “She’s strong,” he said eagerly.
“She’s the one,” Maicu whispered back, his eyes distant.
Kasik could only guess at the path of his thoughts, and he could keep his own to himself no longer. “You didn’t tell me. You sent me on a fool’s errand without any foresight, any protection. How can I perform my duties properly without all the information?”
“You had plenty of protection,” Maicu said, pointing flippantly at the stone that had escaped from beneath Kasik’s tunic. “And you seemed to have managed just fine.” Maicu gave him a chiding smile, as if this whole thing was nothing more than a joke and Kasik and his ignorance were the brunt of it. “I had faith that you would succeed”—Atik snorted, and Maicu sent him a scathing look—“and you have. That’s all that matters. Your loyalty has saved us all, Kasik. Never forget that.”
“Saved ushow? Fromwhat? Nina only killed those men to save us. She isn’t—”Dangerous,he was going to say, but she was, wasn’t she? He had said, to her face, that her power was monstrous. Perhaps it was too harsh. Perhaps his tayta was right, and he was guilty of letting his emotions get the better of him.
Maicu leaned forward and looked directly into Kasik’s eyes. “What I’m about to tell you—”
Atik abruptly pushed away from the wall and stepped toward their seats. “Emperor Maicu—”
“Please, Atik,” Maicu said, raising a hand to silence him. Atik let out a huff and turned his back.
When Maicu looked at Kasik again, his eyes were brimming withsincerity. “I trust that what I am about to tell you will never be repeated. If this was made public, there would be panic across the territories.”
Kasik had the brief thought that perhaps it was better not to know whatever it was Maicu had been hiding from him, but it was a coward’s thought. “You have my word,” he said earnestly.
Maicu took a breath. “Several weeks ago, a farmer came into the city speaking of an unfamiliar balsa in the water coming toward the shore.” Maicu’s voice was hardly more than a whisper, as if there might be enemies listening at the walls. “He said it came closer and closer, and that there were beings on it. Men that looked like us, but their skin was as pale as the moon, some of them with hair the color of straw.”
Kukuchi,Kasik thought, his heart pounding as he listened intently.
“We brought him in for questioning and found the location he spoke of. The balsa was unlike any of ours, made with a denser wood and flying a brightly colored tapestry tethered high above on a pole. There was no one on it, but we found evidence of them. Strange clothing and weapons. Unfamiliar foods. It was as if they had come from a different world.”
Shayimwas right, Kasik thought. Her Seeing was coming to pass, and she didn’t even know it. At some point, Kasik had leaned forward to match Maicu’s position. They were two childhood friends again, boys plotting against the world once more. “I can take my men to find them. Samaq and the others, they—”
