Naamah's Blessing

the conflict to come.
    “Lord Pachacuti has sent
chasquis
to Qusqu to demand the
Sapa Inca
Yupanqui’s surrender,” he announced to me in Nahuatl. “Swift runners stationed throughout Tawantinsuyo to relay messages. Once he receives a reply, he will move.”
    “How long?” I asked.
    “Soon,” Eyahue said. “Days. The
chasqui
system is very efficient.”
    “What do you think the
Sapa Inca
will do?”
    He sucked his teeth. “I think he will refuse. I do not think Yupanqui will believe Lord Pachacuti’s threat. It is as I said before, lady. Neither Temilotzin nor I think you can stop this from happening.”
    “Nor do I,” I said. “Not here, anyway. My thanks, Eyahue.”
    “Is there aught else I can do?” he asked.
    I shook my head. “For now, no. I’ll send word if there is. This is Machasu,” I added, indicating my new handmaid. “You may trust her.”
    “Oh, aye?” Eyahue eyed her with shrewd interest. “Got rid of the other one, did you?”
    “It seems she had other duties.” I trusted the old
pochteca
to a degree, but not enough to give him leverage over us. He was too garrulous and too much the opportunist. When the time came, I would tell him.
    After Eyahue’s departure, I dispatched Machasu on a pair of errands; the first to seek an audience on my behalf with Prince Manco, and the second to carry word to Ocllo that I needed to arrange a meeting between Cusi and Bao.
    While she was gone, I sat cross-legged in the courtyard and breathed the Five Styles, trying to clear my mind and focus my thoughts.
    I wondered what Bao was telling the others. I did not think they would be pleased to receive the news that the entirety of my plan was to stake everything on a long-kept Quechua secret and one young woman’s sacrifice. And yet it seemed to me that all the signs indicated it was our only hope.
    But the gods knew, I’d been wrong before. If I hadn’t misread my destiny in the first place, we wouldn’t be in this dilemma.
    I prayed that Cusi, who was even younger than I had been, had not mistaken her own destiny; and then I felt horrible for it, and wished again that there was another way.
    If there was, I could not see it.
    And so I turned my thoughts to the matter of my conflicting oaths. I couldn’t see a way out of this bind, either. So long as Raphael was hell-bent on taking Desirée as his bride, I could not keep my oath to one without breaking my oath to the other.
    It seemed likely to me that the sacrifice would be the last ritual before Raphael called on me to open a gateway between the worlds so that he might attempt to summon Focalor. Mayhap the Quechua ancestors would intervene before that final step. I could not imagine how such a thing might come to pass. But Raphael had mocked the Quechua for worshipping their dead—and yet he himself had claimed that worship fed power.
    I made a note in my thoughts to ask Ocllo if she knew exactly
how
the ancestors would be called out of death into life to save their descendants.
    Or mayhap, I thought reluctantly, it was simply what was destined, the further price that Bao had spoken of.
    Once my
diadh-anam
was extinguished, the door would be closed forever. I would be powerless and estranged forever from the Maghuin Dhonn Herself, and Bao… my twice-born magpie would die a second death, returning to the Ch’in afterworld of Fengdu, where I prayed the Maiden of Gentle Aspect awaited him.
    Raphael would still have his army of ants, but if the desiccated bodies of the ancestors rose to denounce him, the Quechua would turn against him. Raphael ruled in Vilcabamba with their consent, as he planned to rule in all of Tawantinsuyo, worshipped as a God-King. As terrible as the ants were, they wouldn’t suffice to keep an entire hostile empire at bay.
    There might be a few casualties, awful, unthinkable casualties, but all it would take was one well-thrown spear to kill Raphael. If I could get my hands on my bow, I’d gladly kill him myself.
    And then it would be over.
    Ah, gods! With the revelation of Cusi’s intended sacrifice so fresh in my mind, it seemed terribly selfish to pray that matters would not come to pass thusly, but I couldn’t help it.
    If she was right, at least she had the solace of eternity.
    I wouldn’t.
    So I prayed wordlessly to the Maghuin Dhonn Herself to guide me; and I prayed to Blessed Elua and his Companions, most especially to my patron gods Naamah and Anael, over and over.
    “Did I not say you would have need