All promises would be forgotten if she failed to restore the Sapa Inca. She couldn’t see why the upgrade had ruined his answering system, his Voice. The old system had worked for centuries: on the rare occasions when the Sapa Inca was consulted in public, for the good of all, the designated supplicant would ask him a question. His machinery would randomly knot a cord into the numerical code for one of a series of programmed answers: yes, not at this time, I will consider it further, I forbid it, I appreciate your good citizenship, you will become an honored sacrifice to the gods, and so on, expressing the will of the gods through the Emperor. The wide range of these answers was not permittable for the mass wedding. Answers other than “yes" would have contradicted the Powerful Lord’s previously-stated wish to have one thousand wives. It would have wasted a great deal of time, and would likely have aroused the suspicions of anyone who heard the same phrases repeated nonsensically. So, following the oligarchy’s instructions, Ilyapa had finally upgraded the Sapa Inca’s system to the new answering method of punching patterns into thin metal plates instead of tying knots into cords, which she had wanted to do long before. With the new system, certain preset response patterns—such as “always yes"—could be set with a dial on the mechanism. The conservatives in the secret ruling group wouldn’t hear of the upgrade until it was too late to test the system properly, at which point they demanded it.
At least the upgrade held out until after all the brides were accepted, but that was her only consolation. Ilyapa had to fix the malfunctioning device immediately, or become known as the person responsible for destroying an entire continent’s leadership. The Amerigan contingent, waiting on the other side of the Wall of Inti in nearby Panamatampu, would see their advantage and glide over the Wall with their strange, rounded flying devices, not afraid of either the gods or the technology of Viracocha’s Land.
She turned from the window to glare at the disassembled gears and parts another time, and one of them glinted strangely at its edge, highlighted by the afternoon light’s angle. Picking it up, Ilyapa examined a subtle crimp in the metal, just enough to intermittently throw the device’s works out of alignment if it were jarred at all. “How could this happen, Sapa Inca?” she wondered aloud. “Your new gears were molded perfectly—I checked them. I checked all of them before I put them together. And they were only used a few times….”
The Emperor declined to comment.
The obvious first choice would be to replace the gear, but it was a non-standard size—a bothersome choice that Ilyapa would not have made herself. It had been chosen by her predecessor before his death. She checked her case of spare gears, but the space where she would keep that size was empty.
Luckily, Ilyapa had the perfect tool to fix the existing gear. Her anxiety lifted. The damage was certainly a concern, and she would have to analyze the new system’s workings later to discern the cause, but for the short term, a small repair would solve everything.
The chest containing her own private tool set, a gift from her university mentor at graduation, sat in its place of honor in a protected corner. She rarely used the finely-made tools, preferring to protect their stone-inlaid handles, but she brought them out for special jobs. The tray of miniature tools held a set of pliers that would do exactly what she wanted without the risk of damaging the gear further.
She knelt and opened the llama-skin upholstered trunk, lifted the top tray of full-size tools from its support ledges, and started to reach into the small compartment beneath, but then pulled her hand back and stared. The lower tray was missing.
It had been there at the start of her journey to Cuyochitampu. She had checked and re-checked, unable to bear the thought of making a careless mistake with this set.
She stood and rushed from her workroom to the larger staff workshop. “Supay! Where is Supay?” she called out. Several devisers turned sharply, startled. Ilyapa rarely raised her voice. “Anahuarque, where is Supay? This is urgent.”
The young woman pointed. “I think I saw him go toward the diplomacy gift stations," she said. “What is it? Can I help?”
“I’m missing important equipment," Ilyapa replied. “I need you to attend the Sapa Inca while I find it.”
“But First Deviser, I can’t, I’m not…”
“I authorize it. I’m his wife, after all.”
Ilyapa strode away, ignoring the shocked looks her employees exchanged. “I'll be back soon," she called over her shoulder, trying to shake off her guilt at making Anahuarque go near the Sapa Inca. Most people were terrified of him and what he represented: the power of the gods and the dead. Ilyapa thought of him as a sad bundle of remains, and only feared the oligarchy. The living people who controlled her world were fearsome enough on their own. She had to find her assistant and her tools.
In the next devising room, teams worked in stations along the walls, each set of people completing gifts meant to impress and awe the visiting Amerigans without giving them anything particularly useful. The oligarchy wanted to impart the grandeur of Viracocha’s Land, but not compromise its power. A difficult balance.
Supay was at the far end of the large room, conferring with the group responsible for a tricky decorative entertainment device, a jeweled column that could quietly beautify a corner when at rest, but open outward into spinning displays that, when lit properly, would reflect throughout a room to create a festive environment. The Amerigans were known for liking parties and dances. Frivolous, but easy to indulge.
She broke into the conversation without acknowledging anyone but her assistant. “Supay, my miniature tools are missing, and I need them immediately. Do you know where they are?”
The tan of his face turned reddish. “I forgot to tell you. I’m sorry. Second Deviser’s assistant came for them. The Coya has a special project, and Second Deviser needed the tools quickly.”
So quickly that he couldn’t ask permission to borrow my personal set? Ilyapa thought. And now I can choose to offend the Emperor’s first wife, or cause an international incident. She wasn’t sure which would be worse.
“You must tell me when things like this happen, Supay. I’m offended.”
“I am so very sorry," Supay replied. “I meant to tell you immediately, but then people kept asking me for help, and….”
She relented. “I understand. And you couldn’t deny Khuno’s request, of course. I will have to go and get the pliers I need, assuming they aren’t in use.”
It really didn’t matter if they were in use or not, since she had to have them. Ilyapa started the walk to Khuno’s workshop. Their division of labor had been established for years: he worked on transportation, where less subtlety was required to make devices work, and Ilyapa, while actually in charge of all devising, focused her attention on the more difficult, intricate work. This allowed the two of them to hate each other quietly, at a distance. She wondered why, given their usual division of assignments, he hadn’t asked her to use her own tools on whatever was so dainty about the Coya’s project.
When she entered Khuno’s realm, a young apprentice sitting on a stool near the entrance hopped down and dashed away. She held back a smile at his nervousness about being caught sitting. Khuno, of course, was nowhere in sight. She would have to cross yet another oversized space to get to his private workroom; the relentlessly new buildings here were not of the intimate scale she was used to. The smells of metal and oil, stone dust and sweat still managed to fill the room’s large volume. Khuno strangely preferred working with men, saving women for romance, so his area boomed with too many low voices and made her edgy.