Well, that was easy, Nina thought. “No. We believe the gods’ protection isn’t ours to command. If they offer it, it is because we have earned it.”
The words tasted like ash on her tongue. Nina’s family had done everything right, had paid every price asked of them, and still they had been torn apart. Maicu’s threads dimmed, and Nina shook free of her anger. How attuned the stone was to her intent.
It would be doing Maicu a favor to remove it from around his neck. It would be a display of his power, of hisfaithin the gods. That was what she told herself as she moved closer and stretched a hand toward the stone. The air near it was colder and it seemed to pulse. Nina suppressed a shiver and glanced at Maicu.
“May I?” she asked demurely. Maicu hummed his permission, and Nina placed one finger on the stone. “It’s beautiful.”
“As are you,” Maicu said, his breath tickling the top of her head.
Nina’s heart was pounding so loud she could barely hear his murmured words. She slipped her finger from the stone to the cord and followed the path of it up to the bit of chest that was exposed by his tunic. In contrast to the stone, his skin was shockingly warm. Nina swore she could sense the blood traveling beneath. With another subtle prod, she could once again see his golden threads.
With a shaky breath, she met Maicu’s eyes and asked, “May I try it on?”
36
Kasik had been instructed to rest, but his body had no intention of letting him do that. Mind racing, he made his way through the kancha and out a side door that let into the royal gardens. They were shrouded in darkness, the moon half hidden by a sea of ashen clouds, and mostly dead. Winter was quickly approaching, and with it, Inti Raymi.
Soon, the kancha grounds would be full of esteemed guests invited to celebrate the winter solstice and the end of the Harvest with the emperor. It made his skin crawl to think of it.
He had no plans when he left the kancha, only that he could not be within it while Nina was alone in Maicu’s bedrooms. It was selfish, but he was glad to be given the night off. Glad to be away from them before he did something foolish. The only thing that kept him from running back inside was the knowledge that Maicu would not touch her.
His plan involved Nina remaininguntouched.
A rock skittered across the stone path. Kasik immediately ducked and then cursed himself for being so skittish. It wasn’t as if he was doing anything he wasn’t supposed to, but he was thinking about something forbidden and the evidence of that was clear in the lines of his body now hidden behind the half-dead foliage. His breath puffed in front of him. It was chillier than he thought; it would be full winter any day.
All that was forgotten when he saw a body-shaped shadow dart from one side of the path to the other, toward the backside of the kancha where he knew there to be nothing but forgotten trees and the outer wall. Quietly, he unfolded into a running crouch, careful to lift his feetand avoid kicking loose stones. The shape did the same. It was as if they were floating over the ground.
He thought of the kukuchi that Shayim warned about, and the brevity in her voice when she spoke of them. The shadow moved like a wraith, silent and deadly. It made Kasik consider the possibility of there being one behind their walls without anyone knowing.
Kasik hid behind a wide stout bush, peering through the skeletal branches and hoping the shape didn’t see him. But they were preoccupied with skimming their hands along the outer wall, wasting their time looking for something that he knew was not there.
Then, suddenly, the wall shifted, and Kasik clamped his hand over his mouth to cover his shocked inhale.
A space large enough for a body opened up. On the other side, Kasik saw trees and the distant, almost undetectable flicker of a torch. The body slipped through and turned back to place their hand against the wall again.
It was then that Chaska’s face flashed in the moonlight before she disappeared behind the stone.
After pushing every stone and shoving his fingers into every crevice of the wall, Kasik found nothing that explained the way it had slid open beneath Chaska’s touch. He could think of no other explanation except that Chaska was the same as Nina: an Ikara, a descendant of Killa and Pachamama. A being he had been taught no longer existed. He’d encountered three of them now in such a short span of time, including Shayim, and he was beginning to understand that there were likely more of them.
Eventually, Kasik gave up and began the walk back to his room.He needed to rest, to think, to come to terms with the fact that he knew absolutely nothing at all.
It wasn’t as though Chaska was a friend—she seemed to barely tolerate him—but he had known her for more than a year, had seen her day in and day out when he was at the kancha and had dined with her most days. They didn’t speak often, but he thought they had spoken enough for him to take her measure.
The empress was aloof. Spoiled. Uninterested in politics, or so it had seemed. Kasik stopped in his tracks, remembering another time when he had seen her sneaking through the kancha grounds. It was a wonder he hadn’t recognized her gait. Had Samaq been involved in whatever Chaska was hiding?
Though he could no longer see the wall where she had slipped through, Kasik turned back to stare at it and considered whether he should continue trying to find the hidden door. What if it was Samaq on the other side? He hadn’t witnessed his friend leave the kancha or Vira. It was possible that Samaq had defected and was whisking Chaska away as he stood there.
Perhaps I should tell Maicu.The thought was fleeting, but it plagued his every step back into the kancha. Usually, he stayed in the kallankas with Samaq and his men, but without them, the place felt unwelcoming. The men were timid around him, their typically loose lips pressed tight and their eyes surreptitiously sliding to him. He had stepped one foot in only to step back out, the din of conversation continuing the moment the door closed behind him.
But staying in the kancha meant potentially running into his tayta, which was, as luck would have it, exactly what he faced as he turned down the hall that led to the room reserved for him. It was too late to turn around, but Kasik was tempted to regardless.
“It’s late,” Atik said by way of a greeting. It was unclear what his tayta spent the majority of his time doing. They rarely saw each other outside the evening meals that Maicu insisted he attend, or times like these, when Atik seemed to go out of his way to find Kasik and demonstrate exactly how little he cared for him.
“Hello, Tayta. Is there something you needed?”
Atik pushed off the wall and blocked Kasik’s path. In the dark, his eyes looked completely black, like orbs of achilla had replaced them altogether. Kasik wondered if they had always looked like that, or if it was something he was only recently noticing, along with many other things.
“Where have you been?” When Kasik made to walk past him, Atik stepped to the side and blocked him. “Where is Nina?”
