Diana Pho - Steampunk World

Finally, the silence indicated that everyone was asleep, including her group’s leader. Ilyapa rolled over silently, rising to her hands and knees and then to her feet. She crept down the corridor between the splayed bodies of her co-wives, gritting her teeth, so tense that she thought she might lose control of herself and scream.

But she didn’t. She passed silently behind the guards as they joked around the fire. Around a corner, she stole a torch from a sconce and found her way down to the bathing pool, where she held the flame above her head as she crossed through the water, which seemed even icier than before. Her clothes and jewelry were where she had left them. No one was watching the building’s entrance; all of the guards were stationed inside.

Once outside, she had to choose between risking a witness to her absence and taking too long to get back to her workshop, so she hired a small llama-pulled cart, handing its sleepy driver one of her silver bracelets.

At her work building, Ilyapa circled around toward a back entrance. Off the main walkways, the distance between torches scared her. In the darkness she ran her left hand nervously against the building’s stone wall as she walked, flinching with every change in the surface’s texture. She imagined spiders lurking on it, waiting to creep across her skin. The small portal she wanted was also dark, but once inside she found that enough low fires had been left glowing to let her navigate to Khuno’s workroom.

She wanted her pliers.

The area was shockingly unguarded. Was this really the same place she'd been warned out of earlier in the day? Maybe their project is finished now , she thought. But then why did they block my repair of the Sapa Inca ?

She took a torch from the wall closest to Khuno’s private space, and slipped into the room. It was a risk to have the light, but there was no other way to find her pliers. At first, she couldn’t take in the specifics of the cluttered space, but as she sought the work ledges where tools would most likely be left, reflections flickered from a large, shiny thing at the room’s center.

The project? She couldn’t tell what it was. Lifting the torch, she stepped forward and looked down at the thing, which had legs, a torso, a head…It was a giant metal man, twice the height and width of an ordinary man. A device, clearly meant to move and function. The impressive llama armor she had seen earlier would look like the work of clumsy children next to the grandeur of the metal man’s lavish decorations, so ornate as to stop just short of gaudiness. Every surface glittered with inlays of amethyst, mother of pearl, lapis lazuli, citrine, and more, the abundant gemstones made into patterns in the device’s gold exterior. Ilyapa wished desperately to examine it—to open it up and see the inner workings and deduce what it could do. Clearly this was the project, but to leave it alone here? Unbelievable. She had to be missing something. A trap of some kind? Hidden guards?

Then she heard voices nearby, a man and a woman laughing in sensual tones. The voices sounded familiar. Khuno and…? She knew the woman’s voice.

She ran to the nearest workbench, crouching behind it. If they came into the room, they would see her light. The only way to put it out would be to take off her ascu and smother the fire, leaving her naked and the room full of burnt wool smoke. She didn’t know where they were, so running away would be difficult. Rising to a half-crouch, she looked for possible exits. There was the door she had entered, and another door on the side, closed with a hanging reed mat, which, she now realized, had a slight glow around the edges. She crouched again.

I am an idiot.

With her heart stuttering, she considered her options. Khuno clearly felt secure enough to leave the Coya’s project here with no one watching it. Why? Why would he take even the slightest risk of displeasing the Coya by neglecting the project for sex?

Another burst of laughter from the next room answered her question, as she recognized the woman’s voice.

The Coya was in there with him.

Ilyapa had to leave immediately. She stood, taking a breath to prepare herself for the escape and trek to her workshop, and saw that a leather tray sat on the ledge by her right hand. Her tools. If she took the whole tray it might be missed, but by the gods she would have her pliers. She snatched them up and left, trying not to picture what Khuno and the Coya were doing to each other behind the reed mat.

Supay was dozing in Ilyapa’s workshop, loyal enough to stay despite her broken promise to return soon. Ilyapa hated to wake him, but there was too much to do and discuss, and she had only a few hours left before someone might find that she was missing. She shook him.

After some grumbling and muttering, he opened his eyes. “Wha'd you do to your hair?” Supay murmured.

She scoffed. “That’s the least of my worries. Wake all the way up, and I'll tell you what I know.”

While giving Supay a few moments to follow her instructions, Ilyapa began to unpack the pieces of the Sapa Inca’s old Voice. If they wouldn’t let her fix the new system, she would restore the old one.

The next morning, Ilyapa rose from the cold, hard floor with the other sequestered wives in her group, after sneaking back in and snatching a brief, turbulent sleep. Her neck was so stiff and sore that she could only turn it halfway to the left and a quarter to the right. Although she had tried to hold her hair up out of the water on her return, the lower halves of her long, skinny braids were still wet. She hoped no one would notice. Luckily, between being rushed into matching outfits—she wondered how many people had been pressed into making them—and lectured repeatedly on the way they were to behave in the procession, her wet hair was the last thing anyone wanted to think about.

Then the Coya arrived at the front of the great room where all of the wives were gathered, so thoroughly bedecked with precious metal and jewels that seeing her in sunlight might hurt. The procession director clapped his hands above his head, and his assistants made shushing noises.

The Coya spoke. “Honored sisters, I welcome you to my family.” Her face, cold and remote, looked anything but welcoming. “Today you represent Viracocha’s Land to the foreigners allied with the dirty Spanish and their weak pawns in Panama. We have long held the Spanish and their diseases away from our land, so our strength is unquestionable, but you must make them know the value of our precious Sapa Inca, who even from beyond death is denied nothing. He who has as many warriors, as many llamas, as many wives as he requires. He who decides our destiny. The Emperor Everlasting.”

The Coya looked around the room. “I hope you are all worthy of such a powerful lord.” With a sour expression on her face, she left.

Ilyapa still could not imagine the woman’s plan. If the Sapa Inca couldn’t speak, it would be an embarrassment for all. What was the Coya trying to do? And Khuno? How did they intend to use the metal man?

Well, they wouldn’t get their way, she hoped. She and Supay had returned the Sapa Inca and his workings, fully functional, to his oligarchy attendant—generally known as his “advisor.” Bachue didn’t care for the solution of restoring his old-fashioned Voice, but she agreed that it was better than no Voice at all. Concerned about plots, loyalties, and repercussions, Ilyapa and Supay had decided not to mention their suspicions about the Coya, but they both intended to watch as events played out, and report on the situation if necessary.

Ilyapa paced up the ramps toward the broad expanse atop the Wall with the wives, between two narrow columns of battle llamas in their sparkling light armor. Ilyapa was near the front due to her position, only outranked and preceded by the few teenaged noblewomen who had been available for marriage to the Sapa Inca when it was called for. The rest, behind her, were mostly country girls. They had all been instructed not to talk, and that was the one thing about the situation which suited her well. The Coya didn’t have to walk with them, of course, and she would arrive separately.