Blood & Fur

Chapter Ninety-Two: The Cost of a Life

Aclla led me back into the main room, and likely to my death.

I could tell from the barely disguised tension in her hands. Another man would have mistaken her hesitance for that of a virgin about to lose her purity to a foreign conqueror, but the glimpse of fear I caught in her eyes told me otherwise. She was about to make a move on my life; one she didn’t expect to survive.

What could she possibly have in mind? A hidden dagger disguised beneath her clothes? Poison? I could scarcely believe it. Aclla had witnessed me fight the amazons, heal my wounds in an instant, and create miracles. She and her hidden master had to know standard methods of assassination wouldn’t work.

I suspected it would involve a spell of some kind. Aclla herself was already a conduit of some kind for whoever saw through her eyes. Could she serve as a bridge for my hidden enemy to strike at me directly?

“Would Your Majesty mind if I pleased him here?” Aclla asked me. My consorts and other handmaidens were long asleep in their respective rooms, including my own bedchambers. “I would not wish to interrupt his lovers’ slumbers.”

I considered her proposal, and then nodded slightly. “I do not mind, Aclla.”

She wanted me alone, or as alone as an emperor could be. Aclla smiled thinly and then knelt in front of me. “Allow me to pleasure you then, Your Majesty.”

“Aren’t you a virgin?” I asked with a frown. Did she intend to lower my guard with sex, or to strike at me in the throes of passion?

— NSFW scene starts —

I didn’t answer or move. I simply observed Aclla without a word as her golden fingers touched my skin with the softness of cotton and then began working on my shaft with delicateness. She wrapped her hand around my flesh, then gently slid it up and down with expert care. I allowed myself to relax a little, or at least pretended to.

I quickly wove a subtle Veil similar to the one I cast during the war meeting. To Aclla, it would seem that I had closed my eyes; while, in truth, they remained fully open. I watched her with close attention as she massaged me.

My manhood began to throb soon after. Aclla’s free hand made no move to grab a hidden blade or another weapon as she tucked her hair behind her ear. She knelt at my feet and then kissed my manhood until her lips swallowed it whole. A thrill traveled through my body when I sensed her tongue caressing my most intimate parts. My veins pulsed and my breath shortened.

Aclla hadn’t lied; she had been well-trained.

However, although she proved most professional, I noticed that Aclla’s gaze had grown distant and unblinking. I recognized that look anywhere; that of a person retreating inside their own mind so as not to deal with unpleasantness.

She took no pleasure in this.

And who could blame her? She was pleasuring her people’s tormentor whose soldiers raped her fellow Sapa women a few hours earlier. This was likely the height of shame and humiliation.

I so wished to tell her that we shared the same enemy, that she could stop debasing herself, but I worried too much about who put her up to this to do so. I groaned when her tongue licked my veins and fought to retain my focus.

Like a viper, she was bound to bite soon.

I waited in vain, however. She slowly wore me down one suction at a time, and my hand soon moved on top of her head to help with the motion. She thrummed a moan between my legs and quickened her pace until I felt pressure building up within me. The dam broke all of a sudden and I erupted inside her mouth. She swallowed with such a quiet sound it only further heightened my pleasure.

My breath slowed down as my orgasm ebbed like the sea. Aclla removed her lips once I finished, licking my seed off them with a look as impish as it was fake. I dispelled my Veil and pretended to meet her gaze.

— NSFW scene ends —

Aclla didn’t say a word. She simply rose to her feet and then removed her clothes to expose herself. Her golden skin glittered in the moonlight, heightening her lascivious curves. She sat on the table and exposed her legs like an unwrapped gift. I sensed no hostility from her, and she carried no weapon. She was offering herself to me, wholly and simply.

Had I been mistaken? Had Aclla simply meant to win my good graces? Had paranoia blinded me?

All these questions quickly crossed my mind, but I trusted my gut. I sensed danger even as she massaged her intimate parts. My instincts told me that I was an inch away from a trap I could not perceive.

What way could she have to strike at me? What spell would require such an elaborate distraction and somehow slip past the Nightlords’ notice?

Only then did it hit me.

I had been using it for months, after all.

Seidr.

Mother had been aware of the Embrace, or Seidr. I’d never asked where she learned of that information, but if she knew it then I could assume creatures as ancient as the Mallquis probably heard of it too. Aclla had been trained in the arts of love to serve as a concubine since birth; what else did they teach her during that time?

I see how it is. I assessed her with a new gaze. She was a poisoned gift from the start.

Either Aclla would try to drain away my lifeforce to death the same way Sigrun could siphon off the strength of others, or she would serve as a living conduit for whoever saw through her to strike at my soul. Quite the clever move, I had to say.

Which begged the question: what should I do about it?

The safest route would be to deny Aclla sex or at least an exchange of fluids, which Seidr required to function. On one hand, this would avoid any risk and delay the assassination attempt; but on the other hand, I suspected I had a lot more experience with the Embrace than she did. My Teyolia burned with sunlight and I could weave the inner fires of others like a spider wove its strands.

Moreover, a bridge worked both ways. If Aclla was meant to serve as a vessel for her master to strike at me, then I could use her to finally see the face of my enemy. Whether it was indeed Ayar Cachi or someone else, this would be a unique chance to learn more; and perhaps even make contact.

Finally, using Seidr would let me show my true self to Aclla. I could share my feelings with her and show her that I wasn’t her people’s enemy. This was a chance I could not let pass.

My mind made up, I removed my clothes and pretended to play along. My hands seized Aclla’s waist while her arms coiled around my neck. Her kiss was warm, yet without passion. She played through the motions, and when I aligned my manhood with her thighs she stared at the wall behind me rather than at myself.

A pang of shame seized me. If she hadn’t lied about the virgin part, then this was her first time; something special that would soon turn into a painful ordeal.

What should I do? Pleasure her first to make it at least bearable?

Who was I kidding? There was no way she would find my bloodsoaked hands any more pleasurable than the cold grip of death. Every caress of mine would feel like another humiliation.

My best bet was to finish this quickly. The quicker this ended and I contacted her master, the sooner she could forget it like a bad dream. Perhaps then we could even start again on better terms, or I would let her go to find love elsewhere once I’d destroyed the Nightlords.

Hence I slid inside her in a single stroke. She groaned and tightened around my shaft, a drizzle of blood anointing my manhood. Her legs coiled around my back and drove me into a deep embrace.

I thrust and so she did, like the ebb and flow of water. At first, I sensed nothing. No attempt at a connection, no caress of the soul, no ephemeral contact that would signal a meeting of the Teyolias; only a joining of the flesh. Doubt briefly began to mount as I stared into her eyes.

Aclla did not blink.

The trap’s jaws closed on me in an instant. Aclla’s Teyolia connected with mine not in the clumsy way of my first attempts nor the practiced and subtle grip of Lady Sigrun, but with the aggressiveness of an assassin going straight for the throat.

A flood of memories barreled against my mind in a flood. I saw through eyes that weren’t mine and experienced thoughts that belonged to another. I stood along the shores of a sacred lake nested in ancient mountains that rose like the world’s fangs. I was naked under the moonlight, the cold wind blowing on my pale brown skin.

I was small, and the men around me were so big. Feathered priests surrounded me from all sides, their hands holding gold dust shining between their fingers. My half-brothers Manco and Cachi watched me without a word, both older than I was, yet so tiny compared to the dusty shadows watching over us all. They did not look at me, for I was of lesser birth and beneath their notice. I had no value. Not yet. I felt so weak, so exposed, so frail and fragile. I could not hold back the tears.

I was a child, not yet ten; half of which I’d spent in a convent after they took me away to serve the gods.

I was a tool, and treated as such.

The priests blew gold dust at me, and then I screamed.

The pain clung to me like fire. The gold burned. It burned my skin so hot that my tears turned to steam. The metal wove itself deep into my flesh, into my bones, while the ancient ones watched from high above with shriveled skin and empty eyes. I was blessed; I was cursed.

I was shining like the sun.

My skin, my beautiful skin which my mother loved to kiss in the morning, was torn away from me, replaced with glittering and imperishable metal. The pain and heat were so unbearable that when their hands pushed me into the lake, its cold waters offered me no comfort. I wade through mist and boiling waves, only to be dragged out and caked in another layer of gold. I heard chants whose words were woven into my soul, and was then pushed back again into the lake once I grew too hot to touch.

I was metal in the hands of smiths, hammered and watered.

I was a treasure. I was a gift. I was a slave.

Once the last of the gold was part of me and no inch of my original skin remained, my vision faded and blurred. The mountains of my ancestors seemed to split apart to reveal a great long road leading into the shining sunset; but the light at the end was too pale to be the sun. It was a fading mirage without warmth or pity.

A golden condor glared at me beyond the horizon.

Inkarri’s murderous talon struck at my soul in a flash of lightning.

I once used the Ride spell to invade Chindi’s mind, and what the Condor King did was a little different. I sensed an ancient and rotten presence forcing its way into my very essence through the door which Aclla’s mind opened to him. A great bird of gold rushed through the corridor of her memories to strike at me, the observer, with savage precision.

The strike was so quick and sudden that I barely managed to see it coming. My shadow arose within Aclla’s mindscape in the form of a great black owl with ebony wings and feathers of darkness. My Tonalli, the very essence of my soul, clashed with that of my foe through the Teyolia bridge which Aclla unwittingly provided.

Had this mindscape been real, it would have appeared as if two great birds appeared over the mountains to slash and rip at one another. Our claws rent hills asunder and the flap of our wings called forth hurricanes.

Inkarri would have likely extinguished my soul in an instant had I not practiced Seidr for months. His spirit would have lunged at mine and spiritually mutilated my Tonalli the way I threatened to do with Chindi. He would have torn my memories, sliced through my feelings, and left me a babbling madman imprisoned within my own flesh.

But I was prepared.

“This is useless, Inkarri,” I snapped as our talons clashed in ephemeral skies. “I am not your foe!”

“Then why lead an army to our doorstep?!” the condor king replied, his head lunging at my heart. There was no hesitation, only lethal precision. I dodged and his beak snapped on empty air. “You speak nothing but lies!”

“The Nightlords planned your destruction long before I was even born!” I had seen their plague weapon and put an end to it. “I sabotaged them and did everything in my power to give you a fighting chance!”

“Yet you have allowed your men to rape our wives and daughters, while your dreadful masters feed on my descendants as we speak!” Inkarri retorted with boiling fury. His words spooked me, but not enough to throw me off my game. I dodged and we soon danced in the sky, two birds of fate facing one another. “We have consulted the stars time and time again! We have seen the tides of blood which you bring, high enough to sink our mountains!”

I pushed him back with a mighty gust that blew Aclla’s lake of memories to the wind. The Condor King shouldered it with determination.

“There is no future for the Sapa so long as you draw breath, emperor of death and darkness,” Inkarri declared as he returned to the fight with renewed zeal. “Whether friend or foe, it matters not! Your very existence will bring ruin to us all!”

“You should be concerned about defying your fate rather than fearing it!” I snapped back, dodging his talons.

“I am changing our fate, by taking you out! I will do whatever it takes and commit any sin to protect our people, for it is the duty of the dead to protect the living!” Inkarri lunged at me with all of his people’s fury. “Even if you are innocent, even if you speak the truth, even if I am mistaken… then I will bear this guilt across the centuries! It simply must be done!”

He will never listen, I realized. He had made up his mind from the start. He would not listen to me, and he would never relent. He’s a stubborn fool through and through.

This wouldn’t have been the first time Inkarri tore a soul asunder either. His blows were too sharp, too calculated for a first assault. He was ready, prepared, and experienced. More than that, he was strong.

But I was something greater than strong.

I was fear.

I unveiled the full glory of my Tonalli. My spirit grew, grew, and grew until it obscured the false moon in that mental sky. I towered over the condor like an eagle overshadowed the sparrow. The ancient ghost shriveled beneath me as the vast gulf in power between us became impossible to deny.

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The Mallquis had avoided death for centuries, but I had conquered it. I had perished and returned, again and again. While he dined on the breaths of living mortals, I had bathed in the ashes of the very gods who created us.

I had only been going easy on him in an attempt to parlay. I was done giving him the illusion of a chance.

Inkarri was half-dead, but I was half a sun.

“You are nothing to me, Condor King!” I said with the crackle of Tlaloc’s lightning and the flood of Chalchiuhtlicue. “Nothing but prey! You have no chance to prevail!”

“I know,” Inkarri conceded, his eyes alight with both fear and resolve. “Yet, for my land, I must try.”

“You will try and you shall fail!” I thundered, and demons answered the call for blood.

A rift opened up in the illusory lake below us with great jaws with filled teeth and darkness. The dark pyramid of Xibalba appeared deep at the bottom, the frightful city eager to claim another soul for its collection.

“Fall,” I said.

My Word reverberated in the mindscape with the strength of gravity itself. Inkarri plummeted into the sinister jaws of the great fear which he had tried so hard to keep at bay: the hungry kiss of death.

But a Mallquis, by its very nature, could not cross past the Gate of Skulls and beyond. Strands and strings halted the Condor King’s fall. I sensed the lifeforce of hundreds, if not thousands of mortals keeping their ancestor anchored to the world of the living.

No matter. I did not have to kill Inkarri to defeat him. I lunged at him with my talons to mutilate his spirit the same way he tried to wound mine. I would pluck out the feathers of his thoughts until I learned all of his secrets.

“You will help me bring down the Nightlords,” I stated bluntly. “Your sorcery will serve my purposes one way or another.”

“I cannot… no, you mustn’t…” I saw a flash of fear and regret flicker in Inkarri’s eyes of light. “I am sorry, Aclla…”

The condor uttered a word of power, and pain surged through the mindscape.

The Teyolia connection collapsed in an instant. I was jolted back to reality, my hands and manhood recoiling from a terrible heat. Aclla collapsed with her back onto the table, her face staring at the ceiling. Her skin had grown so hot my seed and her blood both turned to steam from simple contact.

“Aclla?” I asked upon regaining control of my senses. I loomed over her when she failed to answer. “Aclla?!”

Blood was pouring from her nose and mouth. Aclla’s eyes were as hollow and unblinking as those of a corpse, staring into the distance at something I could not see. She was still breathing, but began to spasm in place.

A stroke!

“Aclla!” I shouted so loud as to wake everyone, before biting my finger to draw blood beaming with sunlight. “Medics! Medics!”

Aclla died at sunrise.

By the time Necahual and other healers reached Aclla, I had already poured blood down her throat to replace what she lost. I gave her life, I gave her fire, but what was there pouring water into a pierced bag?

I immediately sensed the void in her heart the moment I attempted to heal her the way I closed Nenetl’s wounds. An invisible force had doused the flame of her heart on its way out of her mind, triggering a curse so old it had grown intertwined with Aclla’s very flesh and soul; both as an insurance against betrayal and a conduit for her master to see through her eyes.

Was that why she tried to kill me despite knowing the risks? Because Inkarri threatened to snuff out her life anyway if she didn’t at least try?

She would never have the chance to tell me.

We tried everything, but the battle was over before it even began. No poultice nor potion could heal the soul. By the time Necahual returned to me from the field hospital with a grim scowl and shook her head, rage and sorrow both seized me all at once.

“I am sorry,” she apologized to me and my consorts both, who had gathered to hear the verdict. “Our best was not enough.”

Kind Nenetl, who had taken Aclla as her handmaiden over the last few days, exploded in tears of sorrow. It didn’t matter that they had only met for a few days; my sister weeped for her as if she had been a lifelong friend.

“This is awful…” Nenetl muttered in between sobs. “She was so… so young…”

I pulled my arm around her shoulder to console her the best I could, my face a mask of stone. Someone would pay for this.

“My most sincere condolences, Your Majesty,” Tayatzin apologized as well, his words as empty as his future. “I will inform Ayar Cachi of his half-sister’s demise as well and offer condolences.”

It wasn’t Cachi who sent her, I thought angrily. It was Manco and Inkarri.

They had played us all for fools.

Aclla had been a multilayered trap from the start. Either the ‘conflict’ between the brothers had been entirely manufactured so Cachi would serve as an agent provocateur, or we were never truly in contact with him to begin with.

I should have seen it coming. All the advice that Aclla provided, while useful, hadn’t given us any decisive advantage. She was always meant to serve as a subtle vessel for Inkarri to observe us through her eyes and then strike through the Embrace.

I could see the spider’s web and all of its strands. If Aclla was ever discovered—or better, succeeded in assassinating me—then the blame would fall on Cachi. The Mallquis would then likely have offered the latter as an ‘apology’ to the Nightlords in order to defuse the situation, thus both ridding themselves of an unruly puppet and hopefully avoiding a total war. In their limited minds, this would have ensured that their hands remained clean. Those greedy fools thought they could shortchange vampires with worthless trades.

And when his assassination attempt failed, Aclla paid the price.

My Sapa concubine simply knew too much, so Inkarri ensured she would take his secrets to the grave rather than risk her falling into the Nightlords’ hands, or allow me to capture his spirit and its ancient secrets. That killing spell had been woven into her skin and flesh since that awful ritual. Her life was never her own to cast away.

Aclla was born a slave and died a tool.

I simmered with cold anger. I could have almost understood this turn of events if Aclla had become an assassin out of duty and patriotism; if she had chosen death rather than betrayal, the way I once took my own life rather than become complicit in the Nightlords’ schemes.

That wasn’t the case.

I’d seen her memories. The ritual Aclla underwent to become a living conduit for Inkarri took place in her childhood, years before a war with Yohuachanca was even a question. This and the tales I’d heard about these holy Sapa virgins implied that her empire specifically prepared girls like her to serve as weapons. Aclla was no unique case created to deal with exceptional circumstances.

Her condition was the rule for many. There was an entire class of Sapa women molded and shaped as spies and weapons to be sent to foreign rulers as poisoned gifts from childhood. They had as much choice in their lives as our emperors.

Inkarri and the Mallquis had no more regard for the lives of their followers and agents than the Nightlords did with their own soldiers. They all saw mortals as tools to wage war with.

And that, more than anything, sickened me to my core.

“Your Majesty?” Tayatzin asked, though I barely paid attention. “I apologize for bothering you at such a time, but your meeting with Ayar Manco is scheduled soon.”

“Ingrid and I shall go,” I replied without emotion. I was going through the motions, my mind clouded by questions and dark thoughts. “Take care of Aclla’s remains until our return.”

I hadn’t yet decided what to do with her, but I would certainly not return her to the Sapa. She had deserved better, and still did.

The meeting with Manco had been arranged at a neutral point between armies: a small hill overseeing the chasm opened up by the quake earlier. I was allowed to bring an advisor and two guards, while the rest of my army and troops—including Itzili—would be forced to watch from afar.

These conditions would have seemed somewhat fair if the Sapa hadn’t tried to assassinate me hours ago; not to mention that organizing our encounter right next to the rift created by their vile magic sent a certain message in itself.

They are no more sincere in their negotiations than I am, I realized. Peace was never an option.

“Has my lord decided on a negotiation strategy for this meeting?” Ingrid inquired as we made our way to the meeting point on Itzili’s back. “Should we focus on recovering our imprisoned soldiers even if we have to return more of our captives?”

Ingrid meant well, yet I had hardly thought over it. This whole exercise had been a charade from the start, meant to either divide the Sapa or show a generous side to them. Not only was I now convinced there never was a true schism to exploit in the first place, but the Cizin plan sounded much more appropriate.

“Let us see who these people are first,” I replied. That, I thought, would be the most important part.

Ingrid studied my expression, and then gave me a short nod. “A deal doesn’t matter as much as the good faith of the people making it, doesn’t it?”

Nothing escaped the sharpest of my consorts. I wondered if she already figured out what happened to Aclla; and what I had in mind.

We arrived at the promised spot to find Ayar Manco waiting for us with a small escort of his own. True to his word, he arrived on his moving throne with a single advisor: my own mother.

Inkarri was nowhere to be seen.

Manco’s shoulders were free, unbound, and the condor that had shadowed his steps had vanished. I doubted I managed to wound him heavily enough to prevent his ancient soul from haunting the world of the living. It was more likely that he simply accepted his limitations and decided not to push his luck by confronting me again.

The fact that his fellow Mallquis allowed Manco to face me on their empire’s behalf, however, spoke to how little the man’s life mattered in the grand scheme of things. Those ancient mummies wouldn’t allow any vital pawn of theirs to confront their people’s worst enemy.

Mother was right, Manco was indeed as much of a puppet as I was.

And yet he remained his masters’ voice. Their spokesperson. Their godspeaker.

I climbed down from my mount and joined Manco. A wooden table had been set up for us in the middle of the two groups. It was long, very long, to prevent either of us from threatening the other with a weapon. Manco and I sat on each side while our respective advisors each stood behind us. I didn’t spare Mother a glance. I suspected she had been sent as a token escort to protect Manco from any spell I might cast, which I had no intention to use.

For her part, Ingrid assessed the other side with a calculating gaze. She wanted nothing more to ask about her sister’s location, but held back for fear of incriminating herself and accidentally threatening Astrid’s life.

Our time would come.

“His Majesty Manco greets you, Emperor Iztac, at this conference,” Mother said as the Sapa Emperor whispered words into her ear. After spending years among the Sapa, she had more than enough experience to speak both of our languages. “His Majesty Manco is grateful and hopes that we can settle the affairs of our people with words and reason.”

If he spoke sincerely, then he was the only one to do so.

At this point, it would be customary to exchange greetings and salutations… but I’d lost patience for those a long time ago. I didn’t have the strength to waste any more time on pointless flattery.

“Your half-sister, Aclla, died from a stroke this morning,” I said bluntly, cutting straight to the chase. “You have my condolences.”

Manco did not react, even when Mother whispered the words in his ear. “His Majesty Manco does not recall anyone with this name,” she translated his response back. “He had many half-brothers and sisters; far too many for him to remember them all.”

It could have been a lie and an attempt at keeping plausible deniability, but I could see another and more worrying possibility: that Manco sincerely didn’t remember Aclla because watching a child caked in gold as part of a horrendous sorcerous ceremony wasn’t anything noteworthy in his mind. From the way he barely reacted in Aclla’s memory of the event, part of me suspected it was the latter case.

Her name simply yielded no reaction.

My mind was abuzz with countless questions, though there was one which trumped all others. The Jaguar Woman had seared it into my mind when she condemned Sigrun to the pyre and my unborn child to a hell underground. I’d heard her answer back, but I wondered what was Manco’s.

“What is the value of a life to you, Ayar Manco?” I asked.

My question hung in the air like a curse. Ingrid flinched and paled, as the memory of it remained so frightfully vivid in her mind. Mother squinted and then translated my words to the false emperor whom she pretended to serve.

“His Majesty Manco asks if you mean this in the context of a prisoner,” she said.

“I am not asking you,” I replied coldly. I stared into Manco’s dark eyes and didn’t even pretend to acknowledge his translator’s presence. “You can understand what I say, am I wrong? You’re just trying to look stupider than you are, or to keep face by not debasing yourself by speaking our language.”

Manco’s gaze did not waver even for a second. Neither did he speak up again after Mother translated my words. He simply assessed me with a cold, reptilian calculation, his head resting on his fist.

He could understand the Yohuachacan tongue. I was sure of it now.

“What is the value of a single human life to you Sapas?” I inquired. “If two dying souls stand before you, and you can only save one, which of them would you pick? And why?”

I could tell that Ayar Manco considered lying and offering me platitudes, but that I wouldn’t believe them. Hence he, perhaps for the first time since we’d met, chose to answer me with all his heart.

“In our land, we do not use currency,” Manco answered me in perfect, melodious Yohuachancan. “We use Mit'a.”

I’d suspected Manco to sound quite articulate in his native tongue, and as it turned out, he spoke fluently in mine.

“We do not use cacao seeds or cotton to trade the way you people do, because the state sees to our needs,” he explained. “Our empire plans for the future in our stead. It trains those in the skills in which they shall excel, and that our future generations will require according to the fate laid to us by the gods in the stars. Those with talents are assigned where they are needed.”

“So I’ve heard,” I replied.

“But do you understand what that means for us?” Ayar Manco marked a short pause, and continued when he decided that I did not. “I would assume not, as this is not how your people think. You believe in glory, in growth, in power. We believe in harmony and reciprocity.”

Ayar Manco joined his hands and gazed at the distant mountains which he called his home.

“Each year, a man or woman of age must give a set number of their days to our empire,” he explained. “They must fulfill the tasks and quotas granted to them. A farmer must produce food to feed others. A warrior must fight to protect others. A mason must pave roads so that others may walk upon them. No one ever does anything for themselves, and in return, the community cares for them.”

My jaw clenched. “And if they don’t wish to do things for others?”

My question seemed to bemuse Ayar Manco. “Then they will be punished for their selfishness, of course.”

“And if your people want to leave the place where they were born?” I inquired, an ugly feeling sinking into my stomach. “To pursue a greater future than the one others chose for them? What if a farmer wishes to become a weaver?”

“They do not,” Ayar Manco replied simply. “Our people stay where they are required to be; and if they cannot fit into a role, we find another use for them. We always find a use for everyone.”

There was something so utterly sinister, so deeply inhuman about the way he spoke those words that it unsettled me as much as the Nightlords’ cruel worldview. There was no savage glee and revelry to be found in the Sapa’s worldview, no grandiose evil; only the cold and heartless calculation of a taxpayer who reduced everything and everyone to numbers on a paper scroll.

I gazed at the face of a state denying the very concept of humanity.

“The same goes for all people and communities who join our empire,” Ayar Manco continued, his words as eerily calm as waters hiding a crocodile beneath. “They are moved where the earth must be turned and metal extracted. Men marry women to produce healthy children so that they may provide for others in turn, and the young care for the old in return for their guidance. Every soul, every pair of hands, has a role to play. This is Mit’a: our obligation.”

He joined his hands and then gave me his final answer, raw, clear, and sincere.

“The value of a human life, Emperor Iztac, is its usefulness to the state,” he declared with the absolute coldness of an ancient glacier. “Nothing more, nothing less. If I had to choose between two lives to save, I would save the most useful one.”

I briefly glanced at Ingrid, who was glaring at Ayar Manco with barely disguised loathing that nearly matched mine. Much like me, she finally realized what kind of man sat in front of us; and what he represented.

Mother said that Ayar Manco had been chosen by the Mallquis because he was deemed more pliable. He had been right about one thing: I’d heard, but didn’t understand. I sensed no hidden rebellious streak in this man, no hidden agenda. I required no Gaze to see into his heart, because he didn’t bother hiding anything.

He was a believer.

Ayar Manco was something worse than a rebellious slave: he was a willing one. He spoke and fought on behalf of a great and rotten pyramid for which lives were little more than bricks, an empire where the living surrendered their freedom to the dead in exchange for their protection; and in this way, shackled their own future to an unalterable past.

It was like gazing at myself in a mirror; a black and twisted kind.

I accepted Manco’s answer with a nod, however much I loathed it; and then decided that I would destroy his Mit’a down to its foundation.

I felt no doubt nor hesitation anymore, except compassion for the innocents who would pay the price for my decision. I was certain many people found peace and prosperity within the Mit’a system, the same way many of Yohuachanca’s citizens lived happy and peaceful lives within the chinks of the Nightlords’ chains. They didn’t deserve the chaos I was about to unleash, no more than most of the people who perished in the wake of my wars and disasters deserved it.

But Aclla didn’t deserve death and slavery either.

I couldn’t look the other way when I had the power to force a change.

I despised this Mit’a system with every fiber of my being, as much as I loathed the Mallquis who sustained it and the fools who defended it. I simply could not abide a world that would strip its people of their freedom and reduce them to numbers on a scroll.

That wasn’t the value a human life should have.

A society built on its people’s suffering should not exist, whether inside or outside my borders. Everyone deserved to be free and to choose their own fate. No one should die by the will of another.

Closing my eyes on the Sapa Empire’s heartless system would be the same as accepting Yohuachanca’s imperial system. They were both different shades of the same gripping hand of fate which I longed to break.

A society enslaving its daughters like Aclla should not exist, no more than an empire capable of creating me. There should be no need for a Cizin in a perfect and just world.

Yet no one was willing, nor able to change it; so that burden fell to me.

Inkarri’s predictions were right in a way. There was no future in which his empire and I coexisted.

I had sensed his resolve during our fight, and I knew his heart was true; but he was fighting for the wrong cause and willing to kill for it. The same went for Manco. They had been twisted by the system in which they lived until they became its thralls.

I would bring down their rotten Mit’a, and pray that the Sapa would one day thrive under better foundations.

“I hope you shall sleep well tonight,” I said, mostly as a subtle hint to Mother that we would proceed with Eztli’s ritual tonight. I suspected she was already aware of our intentions through her sorcery, but it didn’t hurt to hedge my bets. “I will leave my consort and priests to arrange a prisoner exchange. I have learned all that I wished to know today.”

“Did my answer displease you, Emperor Iztac?” Ayar Manco asked with a hint of curiosity. He didn’t seem to grasp the reason for my obvious anger. Like me, he had heard but didn’t understand. “Would you rather have preferred that I tell you what you wished to hear?”

The answer was yes, on both counts.

“You have been honest with me, Emperor Manco, so I shall return this courtesy with my own answer.” Using the word ‘emperor’ carried political weight, since it meant I indeed acknowledged him as the Sapa Empire’s leader; but in my mind, that title was as empty as mine, devoid of sense and respect. “In Yohuachanca, a life’s value is determined by the emperor’s will. It is I alone who decides who lives or dies. My judgment is law.”

I stared at Ayar Manco straight in the eyes, so that he could see the boundless depths of my hatred and loathing for all that he fought for.

“And your life, Emperor Manco,” I said. “Is now worthless to me.”