So much had changed since that day, but not her resolve.
“I’m sorry,” he said simply. No other words, no explanation. He hoped she could see the sincerity in his eyes, hear the hope in his voice. He was tempted to say more, to burden her with all his secrets, but he couldn’t. Not until he spoke with Master Wara. Not until he had a plan.
They couldn’t be friends, but he didn’t want to be her enemy.
He could tell by the way she averted her eyes and pushed a clump of hair behind her ear that it wasn’t what she had been expecting to hear. All at once, the fight had drained out of her, and he hated that he was the one to disarm her.
“Lead the way, then,” she said in lieu of an acceptance, but it was good enough for him.
There was nothing to marvel at within the halls of the kancha, except for the tapestry Nina had been standing in front of for so long that Kasik was beginning to grow stiff. Everything else she had seen thus far was nondescript stone in varying shades of brown and beige. Torches were spread over even intervals to light the way. All the doorswere closed, and he saw how Nina had glanced at each of them as they walked by. Her lips had moved soundlessly, and he assumed she was trying to count her steps to navigate her way to an eventual escape.
Now she was silent. Utterly transfixed. Kasik had to admit the tapestry was a sight to behold. It covered the entire wall, and the colors were bright enough that it looked as though you could run a hand over it and come away with real blood smeared across the tips of your fingers. He stepped closer to it, to her, so that their sides were almost touching. The silence between them was tense, a palpable reminder of what they were to each other.
Friends. Enemies. Strangers.
“I didn’t think I would see you again,” she said quietly. Even so, her voice echoed, the stone whispering her words to him again and again.
“I wasn’t meant to be here. My men, they—” He stopped, uncertain why he felt the need to share.Certainthat she wouldn’t care. “Emperor Maicu requested that I continue to guard you until the ceremony,” he said instead.
“The ceremony,” she repeated. Kasik thought she would ask more, that she would demand to know the things that he knew, but she kept her eyes on the tapestry, quiet and withdrawn.
He took the opportunity to study her profile, each of her bold features outlined by the shifting torchlight. There was always the slightest furrow carved into her brow, not in anger but in thought, as if she was constantly questioning every word and every sight. He wondered if she would figure out his secret before he had the chance to tell her.
The truth of her fate sat in his chest like a weight. Kasik knew he should tell her, but he could not decide if it would help. She had told him she intended to fight it, and he saw the way she surveyed her surroundings keenly. Perhaps she would escape on her own sometime in the next four weeks before Inti Raymi, and his choice would be made for him.Perhaps none of this would matter. Certainly, he and his feelings least of all.
“This is your creation story,” she said suddenly. “The one you told me that night.”
The way she saidyourset his teeth on edge. It was the same way she spoke of the emperor, as if he wasn’t hers. As if she was outside their purview and therefore their control.
Kasik turned his eyes away from Nina’s face and back to the tapestry. At the top were the indistinct shapes of four gods—Viracocha in the middle, woven in threads of dark brown and black, with what looked like hands spread to either side, where from his fingers sprouted golden threads that were connected to Inti on his right and Killa and Pachamama on his left. Like leads used to steer and control.
Below them were crude depictions of humans and flora and fauna shoved between mountains so jagged they looked like weapons. And underneath them, rivers of blood, the thread so rich a color that when Kasik had first seen it, he had reached out to see if it was wet.
And woven throughout, in specks and strands, were the golden threads from the gods’ hands, inextricably tying them all together. A story of reciprocity, of inevitability. Ofbelonging. An unmovable force.Thatwas what Nina was fighting.
“It is. The gods—Viracocha,” he said, pointing to the shadow of a shape whose eyes were holes in the weaving. “Inti.” The sun god was bathed in the golden threads, and where his face should have been was a sun with missing eyes. Kasik slid his fingers over the tapestry, feeling the jut of each thread. “This is Killa and Pachamama.” The former was made up of silver threads, a stark contrast to the black and gold around her, and the latter was a soft shade of green, easily forgettable in the chaos of the whole picture.
Like the green Shayim’s people wore.Kasik had not realized it before.
Nina reached out a hand and gently brushed her fingers over the bundle of golden threads at eye level. They were attached to the shape of a human, its limbs a bit spindly, but upon closer inspection, Kasik noticed they weren’t just strange looking—they were unnatural. Inhuman.
He watched as Nina’s fingers crawled from one thread to another, closer to the middle where the depiction of Yuri and Dimas stood. Dimas was entirely black and seemed to glisten, like the achilla. Yuri’s hands were awash in gold, and the river of blood that saturated the entire bottom of the tapestry began at her feet.
When her fingers brushed over the black threads of the counterbalance, she yanked away with a gasp.
Kasik grabbed her hand and pulled it closer to inspect it. “Are you all right?”
But Nina pulled out of his touch and stepped back, a look of bewilderment clouding her eyes. “I’m sorry,” Kasik said again. It seemed as though all he did was apologize, but he hadn’t meant to touch her. At some point, it had become second nature to reach for her, and when he tried to wipe the feel of her from his palm, he found he could not.
She was like a stain on his soul.
“We should move on,” he said abruptly. Nina didn’t meet his eyes, but she nodded. And as he turned away, he caught sight of her bringing her hand to her chest, a furrow on her brow, and wondered if his touch affected her just as it affected him.
31
The bath had been a cleansing affair in all ways. Nina felt sturdier after it, more confident as she selected a pretty blue gown from the chest in her room and slipped it over her head. The golden stitching along the edges sparkled in the firelight. It cinched at the waist and fell to the floor with a flourish. It was the most luxurious thing she had ever worn. Sacha would have loved it.
It was her sister’s face she kept in mind as she dressed and plaited her hair. The room was smaller than she had anticipated, but it seemed as though the whole kancha was composed of many small rooms down many long hallways that were meant to confuse.
