All the joy we feel is ripped away from the room, and the Inka, the damned Inka, sees it. She smiles, but it quickly turns to laughter, something cold and dark that digs into the hole in my heart.
“That won’t protect her. We use our own methods to achieve cooperation,” Tutay sneers. I’m glad she could speak up while I process the Inka’s detached words. The Inka seems incapableof showing a morsel of love or loyalty toward her children. That makes our job harder.
The Inka laughs again.
“Protect? Why protect a coward who will protect herself more than her family? I can’t give her a good chase, but maybe you can. Maybe you can teach her what real fear feels like. She was always so determined not to learn it from me.”
“You’re disgusting,” I whisper the meaningless words, and this time the Inka doesn’t deign to respond. I imagine the child, Yanami, 21 years old, if the rumors are to be believed, always protected by palace walls. But what are palace walls good for if not keeping people inside as well as out?
“If you were a better person, you’d be worried about her,” Tutay says.
“If I were a better person, I wouldn’t be Inka. But I don’t have to explain that power structure to you,” she responds.
Tutay is the only one who wouldn’t flinch at that, but I still see her tense up. I can’t speak anymore. I can’t comfort Tutay with my voice or hold her with my hands. I’m too exhausted from last night’s session with Cashan.
Tutay won’t come to me for the softness I always take to her. No. She comes to me for the roughness she can enact on me. If I had it in me to wish, I’d wish I were strong enough to take it again.
“Return the body and remaining children to the families,” Qajay tells Tutay. “Then meet us in the throne room. We’ll do the new projection from there.”
“Boring,” Tutay mocks.
I close my eyes because the sound of the dead child’s body dragged across the floor is enough for me.
Izhi helps me up once the macabre symphony is over. “You should rest,” they tell me.
I shake my head. I can’t speak, but I don’t need to explain or justify myself. I think of growing up without a mother and realize I never expected to feel more privileged than the Inka’s spoiled children. Izhi takes me in their arms and helps me to the throne room with everyone else. They let me lean on them when I refuse to sit. I take in their warmth while everyone sets up for the new projection.
We don’t have much time left.
Tutay has a solution to that once she returns.
“Call me the stupid one all you want, but am I the only one who remembers Intiraymi is coming up?” She leans carelessly against the entrance. “Tell the roaches they have until then to give up the princess now that we know what she looks like, or we’ll spill the blood of Inti’s chosen on his holy day.”
It’s cruel and smart in the way only Tutay can be, and I find myself smiling. The Inka is nothing more than a story. Let’s see how it holds up against our narrative.
Chapter 17
Ollantaytambo is divided into kanchas, familial blocks, that we have to weave in and out of to get to the main square. Everything from the stone and adobe houses to the constant trickle of flowing water around us brings me back to my childhood.
But danger suffocates all the whimsy of my memories. Mare is limping again. His leg healed enough overnight for him to walk, but the hike down the mountain and to the town in the valley reopened some of his wounds. We did the hike in one hour, something that felt necessary with the threat of duendes on my mind. Now, I’m not sure that time was worth the cost.
“Let’s stop,” I say, grabbing Mare’s arm. “Sit down, Mare. We can clean your cuts here and change the dressing.”
Mare grumbles but sits down on the cobblestone street next to one of the thin canals. The water feeds the city through an intricate ancient aqueduct system sourced from the Patakancha River. It’s the holy blessing we need.
He unwraps his leg, and I stand next to him as a cover. We look out of place, but the bustle of the town has kept us hidden and safe so far. Our clothes are ripped and dirty from our running, but the people around us are in no better shape. We’requiet enough to be ignored while taking advantage of the safety in numbers.
“Clean it up,kori. I can’t do it for you,” I say as I stand guard. I hear his small grunt of pain and the sickening slick of the tunic patch disconnecting from his wound. I nod and smile at a passerby when all I want to do is instruct Mare on correct wound care. He whimpers, and I can’t stop myself from looking.
I expect to see his face scrunched in pain and his hands pink with blood and water, but I don’t. Instead, I see him using his hand to cover his mouth. He’s breathing deeply, and his other hand is holding the princess’s right hand tight.
The princess’s left hand is busy cleaning his wound for him.
I hear more steps coming toward us, and my instincts force me to look away. I need to keep us safe, not obsess over the princess’s sudden gentleness.
The noise is a woman with two llamas carrying bags full of food. The llama’s hooves thump against the rocks. The woman’s clothes, layers and layers ofpolleras, colorful skirts common in the Andes, a white embroidered shirt, and a pink and blue k’eperina, rustle with her every step. Her k’eperina, a large piece of woven cloth used as a cape that would have been perfect for us in the kollka, isn’t being used as a carrying bag at the moment, but she has it pinned so that it can be later.
She’s covered in beautiful decorative textiles around the most important part of her wardrobe, her lliklla, a rectangular cloth laid around her shoulders with the top corners pinned in between her collarbones. From the glance I take of the iconography on her clothing, I already know she’s married and lives with her husband and two children. Her house is somewhere at a higher altitude, somewhere you can see the stars clearly, and she works with weaving and dyeing fabrics. Her lliklla says more than that with its intricate iconography, I’m sure, but she’s gone before I can get more information.
