Girl, Serpent, Thorn

by Melissa Bashardoust

  It was strange to hear someone else breathing in these narrow tunnels, and to know she wasn’t alone. She’d grown so used to these passages that she didn’t need light to know where she was going, and so she hadn’t realized how dark they were until she slid the panel shut again. In the thin beam of light that seeped in through the wall, Soraya examined her gloves to make sure there were no holes or tears before she tentatively held her hand out to Azad. She had planned to tell him he didn’t have to take it if he didn’t want to, but before she could even speak, he had taken hold of her hand.

  She led him through the passageways, past stairways and doors that would open into different rooms in the palace, turning corners by instinct. When they reached the set of stairs that would take them down beneath Golvahar, she remembered to warn him to watch his step. Once they had descended, she let go of Azad’s hand to find an unlit torch in its sconce, along with a piece of flint that she knew would be in a crack in the wall. She hadn’t needed the torches in a long time, but she was grateful for them now as the fire illuminated their surroundings.

  They were in a rounded chamber at the hidden heart of Golvahar, with three pathways leading onward—one straight ahead, one to the left, and one to the right, which was blocked by a door. Azad stood in the center of the chamber and looked around at the stone walls that encased them. Soraya flattened herself against the wall and tried not to look at the arch of his neck, the flicker of light and shadow caressing his throat.

  “These tunnels run all through the palace?”

  Her head snapped up to meet his waiting gaze. “Everywhere except for the newer wing on the other side. I’ve read that there used to be tunnels underneath the entire city, too—a way to smuggle in supplies in case of siege during the early Hellean wars—but they haven’t been used in so long that I’m not sure they still exist.”

  “Who built the passageways in the palace?”

  “No one knows for certain. The common theory is that a paranoid shah wanted to ensure he always had an escape route.”

  The corner of his mouth lifted. “Paranoid or clever?”

  “Perhaps a little of both. But either way, I suppose I owe him my thanks. I would be confined to my room otherwise.”

  Azad gestured to the door. “Is that the way to the dungeon?”

  Soraya nodded. “I asked my mother once why that door was locked, and she told me it was probably so no prisoners could escape.”

  Azad went to examine the locked door. After an experimental try at the handle, he backed away and threw his shoulder against the door. The wood didn’t even budge, and so he tried again, and again, but ended up unsuccessful and breathless—and probably bruised, Soraya thought. It had been foolish to think they could break through a door that was meant to deter prisoners.

  But Azad was still standing in front of the door, head tilting to one side. “I wonder…” he murmured.

  He fell silent until finally, Soraya couldn’t help asking, “What are you thinking?”

  “If I were a paranoid yet clever shah with a network of secret tunnels at my disposal,” he said, “I wouldn’t keep a secret dungeon key on my person, where it could be stolen. I would hide it somewhere no one would think to look for it, but where I could easily find it.”

  “You think the key might be somewhere here?”

  Azad shrugged. “That doesn’t help us much. It could be buried or inside the walls. It would take anyone ages to find it, if it’s even here at all.”

  But Soraya stopped listening when he said “inside the walls,” because at hearing those words, an image flashed in her mind. Azad was right—it would take anyone ages to find the hidden key. But Soraya had grown up in these tunnels. She knew all their secrets, all their hidden grooves and notches, which meant that if there were any mysteries here, she would remember them.

  Without saying a word to Azad, she went back toward the opening of the chamber and knelt on the ground. The colder months had always been difficult for her. Her golestan would wither away, and she would grow bored of her books, and so she had little else to do but explore the passages that belonged to her. When she was a child, she had noticed that one of the bricks here had an X carved into it. It would have been easily missed by anyone else, but at that age, the brick had been at her eye level. Now, on her knees, she found it again, running her fingers over the carved lines. A mystery she had never solved—until today.

  The brick gave way under her hands, and she pulled it out. Inside the gap was a small silver key.

  When she brought it back to Azad, he looked at her with something between awe and admiration. “How did you know it was there?”

  She didn’t answer, but only smiled and fit the key into the lock. Let him still have some sense of wonder about the mysterious shahzadeh.

  Azad carried the torch behind her as Soraya led the way into the unfamiliar passage. There were no stairs or side passages here, which she hoped meant that this tunnel would lead them straight to the dungeon. She noticed, too, that the ground was inclined downward, taking them lower and lower beneath Golvahar.

  Finally, they reached what appeared to be a dead end, but Soraya quickly found the edge of the stone slab in front of her and tried to push it to the side. It only budged a little, after years of disuse, and so Azad placed the torch in an empty sconce on the wall and came to help her. Soraya’s breath caught in her throat as his arms reached around her, his hands on either side of hers against the stone. The slab moved more easily now, but Soraya was too worried about his proximity to her to feel any kind of excitement.

  “That’s enough,” she whispered, her voice a rasp, when they had created a gap large enough for them both to pass through. She waited until he had moved away from her before she let herself breathe freely again.

  “Let me go first,” he whispered back to her, and she agreed, not for her own safety, but in case any passing guard collided with her as she emerged from the wall.

  With fluid grace, Azad passed through the wall, and a few moments later, he reached his hand through the gap for her. She took it and stepped out into a dimly lit corridor that smelled of sweat and stale air and something else that Soraya couldn’t quite detect.

  After replacing the stone slab in the wall behind them, Azad gestured to the left and said, “This way.”

  Soraya looked from right to left, both paths indistinguishable to her. “How do you know?”

  “The ground.”

  Soraya looked down and saw that the ground continued to incline downward to their left, upward to their right. She nodded and they continued down the corridor.

  The strange smell grew stronger as they walked, until Soraya finally recognized it. “Esfand,” she murmured to Azad. The pungent smoke of burning wild rue seeds weakened divs, sapping their unnatural strength and making them lethargic. In a confined space like a dungeon cell, the smoke would be strong enough to manage a div in captivity. “If we follow the smell, we’ll find the div.”

  The smell of the esfand acted as a beacon, and Soraya was thankful for it, because as they moved deeper into the dungeon, it became a labyrinth, full of twists and turns and dark hallways lined with doors that Soraya tried not to wonder about.

  When the smell grew even stronger, and wisps of smoke became visible in the dim torchlight, Soraya knew they were close. “There,” Azad said, pointing ahead to a set of stairs heading downward. The smoke was clearly coming from below.

  They had to duck their heads in the narrow stairway, and as they neared the bottom, Soraya saw the glow of a torch. Accessing the dungeon had been her main concern, but now that she was here, Soraya remembered that there was a monster in that cell, and she was heading straight toward it.

  The stairs opened into a chamber hewn out of the rock. Halfway into the chamber, iron bars stretched from the top of the curved roof to the ground, creating a cave-like dungeon cell. Hanging from a hook in the wall near the stairs was a brazier, where the thick scented smoke was emanating from, as well as a torch.
The torch created a circle of light, but half of the cell was still in shadow, and from those shadows, Soraya felt something watching them.

  Soraya took a breath of stale air before stepping forward. What would she find inside that cell? According to the priests, divs were pieces of the Destroyer sent out into the world, given monstrous form by the Creator so that people could recognize evil when they saw it. Soraya had seen illustrations of divs in the library, but they all took different shapes. Some were enormous, with horns and fangs and sharp claws; some were scaled and reptilian with skin like armor; some were deathly pale, while others had mottled fur.

  Soraya peered into the cell, adjusting to the dim light until she saw the amber glow of the div’s eyes. She watched as the figure slowly stood and stepped forward into the light. She braced herself for the monster’s hideous appearance, and then she saw it—

  It was a girl.

  6

  At first sight of the young woman, Soraya thought they had made a mistake, and this wasn’t the div’s cell at all. But then the young woman walked all the way up to the bars, her long black hair falling away from her face, and Soraya knew there was no mistake.

  The div’s skin had an odd pallor, with gray and brown patterns on her face like permanent shadows, and the amber glow of her eyes was unnaturally bright. At certain angles, they had a luminous sheen to them, like the eyes of nocturnal animals. Those eyes watched them now with a fierce stare that reminded Soraya of a hawk.

  And now that Soraya was here, seeing a div for the first time, she didn’t know what to say. “I’m—”

  But she barely managed to make a sound before the div held up a hand, her fingers slightly longer than a human’s. In a voice like nectar, a voice the color of her eyes, she said, “No need for introductions, shahzadeh. I know who you are and why you’re here. But I won’t speak to you unless you come to me alone. No guards … and no soldiers.” At that last word, her eyes flitted to Azad, behind Soraya’s shoulder. The div’s eyes narrowed slightly at the sight of him, and Soraya remembered that he was the one who had stopped her from killing Sorush and allowed her to be captured.

  Soraya turned to Azad, who was glowering back at the div. She brushed her gloved fingers against his arm, and he looked at her, his face softening. “Please,” she said.

  He hesitated briefly, then gave a curt nod. “I’ll wait at the top of the stairs and keep watch. If you need anything, shout for me.” He threw one last warning glare at the div, who waved good-bye to him with a smug grin, and retreated up the stairs.

  Soraya waited until he was gone, and then, before she could change her mind, she slipped off her gloves and tucked them into her sash. If the div did know why she was here, she would understand the implied threat of that gesture.

  The div’s eyes darted from Soraya’s bare hands up to her face, and she smiled, a flash of sharp white teeth. Her fingers curled slowly around the bars. “Isn’t it better now that it’s just the two of us? More personal. Now come, Soraya, and ask me your question.”

  The sound of her name on the div’s tongue startled Soraya. The div hadn’t been lying when she said she knew her. It bothered Soraya, though, that they should be on such unequal terms from the start, and so instead of asking the question the div expected, Soraya said, “Tell me your name.”

  Surprise flitted over the div’s face, but then she answered, “Parvaneh.”

  Soraya flinched, as if that one word were an accusation rather than a simple answer to her request. Parvaneh—the word for moth or butterfly. Soraya held Parvaneh’s gaze, almost certain that the div truly knew everything about her—every short, fluttering life that Soraya had stolen with a touch of her finger. The feel of air on the bare skin of her hands reminded her of death.

  “How do you know who I am?” Soraya said, her voice wavering only slightly.

  The div tilted her head, and the shadows shifted over her face, like something was moving under her skin. “All pariks know you, Soraya,” she almost purred. “The human as dangerous as a div.”

  “What’s a parik?” Soraya asked, ignoring that last remark.

  “There are different kinds of divs,” Parvaneh answered, “based on different aspects of the Destroyer. The drujes, the kastars, and the pariks, all with different skills and talents. Pariks look the most human, so it’s easier for us to hide among you and work as spies.”

  At any other time, Soraya would have been interested to know more about the inner workings of the divs, but she didn’t know how much longer Parvaneh would humor her questions. “If you know about my curse, then you must know how to end it.”

  Parvaneh shook her head slowly, disappointment on her face. “Why would you want that? You could wield such power.”

  Soraya laughed harshly. “You think I have power?” She stepped closer to the bars, and she felt the poison bubbling inside of her. Maybe it was because this dungeon, so far underground, felt a world apart from her well-ordered life above, or maybe it was because she was speaking to someone as deadly as she was, but for once, Soraya let her true feelings spill out.

  “You think I’m here,” she said, “in a dungeon, asking you to rid me of this curse because I’m afraid of power?” Another step. “My family hides me away out of shame. I spend most of my days in total isolation. If that’s power, then I don’t want it.” She was standing only inches away from the bars now, close enough for the div to touch—and then a flicker of doubt made her almost back away again. Because part of her knew that the only reason she was standing so close, without fear, was her curse. The div was right—she did wield a kind of power. The power to make people afraid. Hadn’t she relished seeing that fear in Ramin’s eyes today? Hadn’t she briefly enjoyed it before shame coated her skin like cold sweat?

  It was the shame she had to cling to, not the power. It was the shame that made her still feel human. She was a human as dangerous as a div, but unlike a div, she refused to enjoy being deadly or to revel in her monstrosity. That was the only thing that kept her on one side of the bars, while Parvaneh languished on the other.

  She looked Parvaneh in the eye and said, “Now tell me: How do I remove this curse?”

  Parvaneh studied her, not backing away from the bars. Her eyes began to move down Soraya’s face to her throat, and Soraya knew that Parvaneh was watching the pattern of her veins as they changed color. And then, much to Soraya’s surprise, Parvaneh reached a hand through the bars, her fingertips hovering a breath above the veins on Soraya’s cheek and tracing them down Soraya’s throat, all without ever touching her. “Such a shame. Such a waste,” she said, biting off that last word as her hand dropped away.

  Soraya’s breath had grown shallow when Parvaneh reached her hand out, so close to touching her, and only now did it come rushing out of her. “Were you the one who cursed me?”

  Parvaneh shook her head. “I had nothing to do with it.”

  “But you know who did? Did the pariks do this?”

  Parvaneh’s eyes gleamed with mischief and something else, something sharp. “They did and they did not. Isn’t that the way all your stories start? I wonder what stories you’ve been told, Soraya. How did your curse happen? Tell me the truth, and I’ll do the same—that sounds fair, doesn’t it?”

  Soraya hesitated, looking for the possible dangers in giving Parvaneh what she wanted. She felt like she was standing on the edge of a great cliff, and a div was telling her to jump—what kind of fool would she be if she listened?

  A desperate one, Soraya thought. She began telling the story her mother had told her, of the div who had found her in the forestland south of Mount Arzur. She told it the same way Tahmineh always had—like it was just a legend, something that had happened to someone else, a long time ago. No names, no accusations. As a child, she had accepted the story without examining it too closely. She would demand it every time she saw her mother, always hoping for a different ending. But as she grew older, less able to distance herself from the words, she found the story too diffic
ult to hear. It was even harder to finish the story now, but Soraya continued to the end, not letting herself look away from those staring eyes.

  “Well?” she said when she was finished, her voice a little too loud. “That’s all. Now tell me what you know.”

  “I promised you one truth for another,” Parvaneh said. “What you just gave me was a story, not the truth.”

  “It’s what my mother told me.”

  “Your mother lied.”

  Soraya shook her head at once, not even able to entertain the idea. Her mother wasn’t a liar. Soraya’s life wasn’t a lie. And yet she couldn’t help remembering how adamant Tahmineh had been when she’d refused Soraya’s request to see the div. Was it possible that she feared what the div would reveal? Or was Parvaneh trying to throw Soraya’s life into chaos with a simple suggestion? Divs can be manipulative. They can destroy you with a single word.

  Soraya backed away from the bars. “You’re toying with me. You would have said that no matter what I told you.”

  Parvaneh put a hand to her chest in mock offense. “You don’t believe me? Let me ask you this, then: Why did the curse not manifest until a few days after your birth?”

  Soraya sighed in frustration. “I don’t know. So my mother wouldn’t die from labor, so she would live knowing that she could never hold her daughter.”

  “And why the firstborn daughter? Why not simply the firstborn child?”

  “Because divs are mysterious and unjust,” Soraya snapped, but the question struck deep. It was under the surface of her thoughts every time she saw Sorush.