Mare is also wearing ceremonial clothes, but they’re not anything too ostentatious since he’s so young and doesn’t hold a rank. His tunic is noticeably from the coast, but if anyone sees him, they’ll assume he’s a kid ruining his nice clothes. If someone sees me, they’ll know I’m part of the Inka’s elite guards.
I start to unwrap the intricate chumpi around my waist, jostling my ceremonial mace in the process. Extra rations drop to my feet as I do, and I sigh in relief. More coca, which will do all of us some good at this altitude. The last thing we need is someone getting sick fromsorroche, altitude sickness.
“No one there,” Mare whispers conspiratorially as he runs back to my side.
A small weight is lifted off my shoulders even as my core tightens with the unused energy for a fight.
“Time to get our princess,” I mutter, but Mare hears me anyway. He nods his head with a determination only a ten year old could have and mouthsya-na-mito himself over and over again until we reach the cave, and he says it out loud.
“Miss Yanami, no need to be scared. It’s safe out there.”
The princess’s cheeks darken to a deep red, noticeable even in the shadows.
“I’m not…,” she catches my eyes above Mare, and I give her a look I hope gets across the meaning ofYou’re really going to argue with a ten year old?“I mean, thank you, Mare.”
“No problem, ma’am,” he says and runs outside again.
Ma’am, the princess mouths. I feel that in the creak of my bones. Mare makes me feel 80 years old sometimes.
I want to tell the princess this, to share in the whirlwind that is Mare, but when she looks at me, the soft confusion she had while talking to him is gone. She’s blank again. No, I can’t share anything with this princess right now. She’s as cold as the one in Lima, with an edge like an ice sword. I step out of the way to let her crawl out into the fog.
She’s a wisp of a thing. Her ceremonial tunic flows around her with the wind and turns her sharp silhouette into something fluid. Her long white hair looks different in the daylight, more out of place without moonshine to light it up. The vibrant colors are muted by layers of white fog. She stares at the town below, but all I can look at is her. She’s beautiful.
And unmistakably Inkan royalty.
“I need to get you out of those clothes,” I say.
“Excuse me?” She whips around.
Her cheeks are still red, and mine start to match. I realize what that sounds like, but I’m never one to back down.
“I need to get you out of those clothes,” I repeat, ignoring the princess’s flustered expression. “And do something with your hair. Right now, anyone would be suspicious of you. You’re obviously from the coast and not Andean. That’ll be enough to have someone look at you twice, and then they just need a second more to figure it all out. Just do what you need to get your mimicry back to normal, and then we can sort out clothes.”
“Right, you just want to see how I do it. Of course,” the princess says and nods to herself.
I feel a billion steps behind, accentuated by the physical steps she takes to walk away from me.
“I don’t care if you need to do whatever it is in private, or, or,” I don’t know how to finish my sentence because she just keeps walking, step after step, going higher up the mountainside and quickly out of my view. I run to catch up to her and can hear her breathing heavily just from the effort of walking away from me. She wasn’t born and bred with this mountain altitude like I was.
I grab some coca leaves from my pouch. She stops to look at my hand, refusing to look me in the eyes.
“Come on, take them and chew before you pass out.”
“I’m fine,” she says but takes some anyway.
Her look of suspicion as she smells them first and then slowly puts them in her mouth doesn’t make me angry. It makes me tired. I don’t have it in me to be offended at her distrust.
“Look, I don’t know what I said that was wrong, but I just want all of us safe. You won’t regenerate your mimicry to raise Isla del Sol? Fine. I’m not going to force you or anything.” She visibly tenses. I ignore the way she looks even more suspicious after I say that. “But we have to do something with how you look. If you don’t want to change back your hair then maybe some Feline mimicry for your face?”
She continues to look at me, but the only difference to show she was listening is the change from suspicion to wry disbelief.
“Uh, you can mimic the Feline, right?” I ask.
She bursts into laughter.
Right. Of course, she can mimic the Feline. Her canines are literally filed to a painful point to represent her connection with the Feline first and foremost. She doesn’t have to laugh at me like that, though. My indignation must show on my face because she sobers up and goes back to her normal, detached self.
“Of course I can mimic the Feline,” she says. “I’ve been able to change my body since I was a toddler.” She throws out thatinformation like it’s something any normal mimic could do, not like it’s a show of immense power. “I won’t, though.”
