“There,” he said brightly. “That one even looks like a woman.”
I peered at the rock he’d kissed. He was right. A lonely lemon tree grew beside the handful of rocks, but the boulder he’d kissed was as tall as a woman, with worn carvings that might even resemble the outline of hair and lips, breasts and a whittled waist.
“You’re certain that rakshasi fruit is out of your system?” asked Vikram.
“Yes?”
“Good.” He took a deep breath. “Because, once more, I told you so.”
“You do realize that I don’t need the enhancements of demon fruit to knock you to the ground?”
“I do. But I concede that some bodily harm from you is inevitable. I’m just trying to minimize the damage.”
“How very wise,” I said, rolling my eyes.
Vikram grinned. “You saved my life, now I have saved yours.”
“We’re no longer in each other’s debt then,” I said, walking past him.
“No reward, fair maiden?” he asked, jogging to keep up with me. It was at least an hour’s walk to the front doors of Alaka. “If you remember, I very generously offered you my hand in marriage.”
“And I rejected it. Consider that your reward.”
Vikram stopped, turning to the spot where the door had opened in the air and dropped us into Alaka.
“Silly as it sounds, I’m almost concerned for the vetala.”
I understood that. Even I almost liked the vetala. But he’d made his choice. We’d offered help. The creature rejected it. I didn’t waste time mourning.
“I wish he had come with us.”
I swatted Vikram.
“Ow! What was that for?”
“We’re in Alaka now. I wouldn’t start off any sentence with ‘I wish.’ Save it for when you win.”
Vikram pulled the ruby from his pocket, tossing it into the air so that the gem caught the light.
I looked ahead of us to the outline of the palace, appraising it as I would any enemy on the battlefield. Maya’s stories ran through my head. This was a place where dreams and nightmares borrowed each other’s faces. Somewhere, folded among all that dark gold and all those bright jewels, was my wish. A new reign in Bharata. Nalini’s safety. Skanda’s legacy scrubbed out of history. I saw a promise of freedom so close I could snatch it out of the sky. But I also saw Maya swallowed whole by the dark of the forest. I saw every night I had spent wondering where she was, what had happened. What waited for us wasn’t just a tournament, but a new future. And I would fight for it with my eyes wide open.
I looked at Vikram and caught the same hungry gleam in his eyes.
“Race you to the end?” I said.
He grinned. “What does the winner get?”
“A chance to risk life and death at an impossible game.”
His smile fell away. “That’s a solemn victory.”
I shrugged. “Most victories are.”
“What about the loser?”
“The loser gets no chance at all.”
Vikram eyed the palace. “Then we better start running.”
PART TWO
A GAME
15
THE TASTE OF BREAD
AASHA
The blue star at her throat burned.
“What’s wrong?” asked one of her sisters.
“Nothing,” said Aasha, covering the star with her hand.
“You’re hungry,” said another. “You need your strength, my dear. If you don’t drink down some desire…”
Aasha sighed, shutting out her sister’s words. She knew already what would happen. She’d heard the threat her whole life. Without devouring desires, no vishakanya would be able to fend off the poison in her veins. She’d die. She should eat. She would eat. But in the meantime, she dreamed of what it would be like to eat something other than desire.
When they had set up their tent yesterday, she could smell the feast from the palace of Alaka. All roasted vegetables and golden bread, crackled rice and glistening sweets. But vishakanyas could not digest such things. Aasha had nearly tripped on her silks because she couldn’t tear her eyes from the wispy spirals of the cooking fires. Her mouth watered. She knew the words “spice,” “sugar,” “salt” and “sour.” But they were little more than phantom words. She had no experience to bring them to life.
“We are the entertainment after all,” continued her sister, “so—”
“Is that all we are? Just entertainment?” asked Aasha.
“Technically anyone in Alaka during the Tournament of Wishes is a contestant, but it’s not like the human players who get rules and trials.”
“So we could win a wish?”
Her sister laughed. “What would you want with a wish? You came to us so young that hardship never had the chance to look your way. There aren’t enough wishes in the world to make you any luckier, Aasha.”
Aasha twisted her silk scarf into a knot. She didn’t want luck. She wanted something she had never been given, not since the day the sisters had bought her from her birth family at four years old. The vishakanyas said they had rescued her. They took her home, opened their veins and poured their bitter blood past her lips until a blue star bloomed on her throat and magic coursed through her. They had taught her their trade: of dancing and music, poetry and philosophy, singing and seduction.
They called their powers—to slay with a touch and feed off desires—the Blessing.
When she was younger, Aasha loved the story of how her sisters inherited the Blessing. They said a warrior queen was called into the fray of battle, but didn’t want to leave her sisters defenseless. So the goddess gave the sisters some of her own blood, and their touch grew venomous and deadly. Every hundred years, the goddess would decide if they were worthy enough to keep the Blessing. For the past three hundred years, they had been worthy.
Most of the sisters joined the vishakanya harem after losing or leaving a husband, running away from cruel families or simply stumbling into the Otherworld and seeking employment and freedom. Aasha was the only one who had never lived outside the harem. She was the only one who never made the choice between the taste of bread and the taste of desire.
The first time she was sent to the bedchamber of a crooked human prince, her sisters had told her of the man’s misdeeds. They told her how he had found a woman of the Otherworld and seduced her only to abandon her when she quickened with child. They told her how he defiled the sacred spaces of the rivers and how all his people wished him dead. They told her how he deserved it.
Not one of her sisters mentioned what she deserved.
The taunt of that unlived human life started as a seedling of curiosity. It grew in the dark of her thoughts, gaining shape and strength when she wasn’t looking—a home somewhere with a thatched roof and no silk in sight, an orchard where the trees groaned with fruit, an expanse of skin free of a blue star. Now, it ate up the space around her heart. A living nightmare that snapped her joy. What was that life she had been denied? Maybe it would have been short, but at least it would be hers. But no one cared that she desperately wanted to touch someone and feel their pulse rising to her fingertips and not their life withering at her touch. And no one noticed when she returned home from that first mission, sick and shivering, the human king’s sticky desires glommed to her skin. Her sisters called that first mission a mark of freedom.
In the end, no one cared that her freedom didn’t look like the freedom of her sisters.
16
THE GATE OF SECRET TRUTHS
GAURI
Even from a distance, the red gate looked wrong. It was dull, with a jagged texture, like uneven chips of garnet that didn’t reflect the light but guzzled it greedily. When we stood before it, I realized what crafted the strange gates of Alaka.
Not gems, the way folklore would have a child believe …
Tongues.
Thousands of tongues. Red and bloated, severed at the root and piled like stones until they towered above us. A metallic ta
ng hung in the air. Like iron. Or blood.
Vikram paled. “That’s not supposed to be there.”
“Where did you read that?” I grimaced.
“Wouldn’t the stories say that the entrance to Alaka is surrounded by … by that?”
I was going to answer him, but the gate lurched to life. A hundred red tongues wagging. Instinctively, I shoved Vikram behind me and brought out the dagger.
“What are you going to do?” asked Vikram lazily, pushing past me. “Threaten to cut out their tongues?”
I glared. All at once, the wagging tongues fell still. The gate grumbled. Shuffled. A deep voice echoed from within:
“Stories are slices—”
“—dices—”
“—pretty slivers of—”
“—not so pretty things—”
“—clever prince and—”
“—fierce princess.”
Vikram stood up a little straighter. The tongues had begun to move once more. Speaking to us.
“Have you come to play the Lord of Treasures’ game? Do you wish—”
“—to win a wish? Then give us—”
“—the secret truth lodged in the crease of your first heartbreak—”
“—and we will let you pass.”
“What are you?” Vikram demanded.
Even though the gate was nothing but tongues, I thought I could feel the air tugging into a sly smile.
“We are the toll paid by those who came before and left Alaka—”
“—and those who came before and—”
“—didn’t.”
“You see, a truth parted with has its own way of becoming a tale. It is told so often that it stumbles in the telling, little bits flaking off, little bits sticking on, and then years accrete and they—”
“—tend to warp the truth, press it into something it was not at the beginning—”
“—not a lie, but a—”
“—tale. It’s easier to see the truth when you disguise it.”
Vikram cleared his throat. “I’ll go first.”
I prepared to leave. His secrets were his own business. But the gate huffed.
“You play together. You break—”
“—together. That is the rule.”
I shot Vikram a questioning glance, but he didn’t look at me. He seemed to be looking some distance ahead. He breathed deeply, tapping his fingers together.
“I am not the Emperor’s true son. If I take the throne, it will be in little more than name.”
“That—”
“—is only a part of the truth—”
“Tell us—”
“—what happened to her?”
Vikram’s face paled. “She died. From a rockslide. That’s where the Emperor found me.”
“That—”
“—is not all.”
Vikram’s jaw tightened. And then he said hoarsely, “She was looking for me over that rock edge. I left my sandal there to play a joke on her. I wanted to make her laugh.” He swallowed. “I was going to jump out from behind the trees and surprise her with the flowers. But the moment she stepped onto the rock, she fell.”
The gate stilled, as if letting that secret truth sit on its tongue like a candy.
I didn’t meet Vikram’s eyes, but I felt his burning gaze. My whole body felt numb. It wasn’t a skin-tight feel of disgust, but that plummeting humiliation. I knew what he felt. I knew that loss and guilt, that cold twist where a single moment might have made all the difference.
“Your turn—”
“—Princess.”
My throat felt dry.
“I tried to overthrow my brother. If I return, he will unleash a state of terror in Bharata and kill my best friend.”
I knew what the gate would say even before I heard the wet words on the tongues.
“That—”
“—is not all.”
The words pushed out of my throat, sharp and cutting. I remembered the girl’s sari in my brother’s room, the serving girl Skanda punished when I had the soldier whipped. All those times I had pushed Nalini and Arjun away before that failed rebellion. I was trying to keep them safe.
“I did my best to play my brother’s games,” I said, keeping my eyes fixed on the ground. “But the choices I made and the silences I kept were just as deadly.”
I looked up. What I saw in Vikram’s gaze rooted me to the spot: understanding. Those secrets had coaxed a shadowed part of us to step into the light. Understanding felt like a hand reached for and found in the dark. No one had ever looked at me that way because no one, until now, could.
“Now you have our secrets,” I said, turning from him quickly. “Let us through.”
“—we wish you—”
“—a tale—”
“—worth telling.”
“Not luck?” asked Vikram.
The gate heaved with wet laughter.
“—what good is—”
“—such a thing.”
The gate parted and we entered Alaka. Vikram cleared his throat and started pointing to the places and people. Some of the stories I remembered from Maya. Others I had no recollection of, and treated the tales as I would any gathered intelligence before a battlefield. It was all something to wield for later. But even as he spoke, I felt the weight of what we’d seen and said, that tendril of understanding that I didn’t know how to hold on to.
At the end of one path, a garden unfurled at our feet, studded with pillars of diamonds. Vikram pulled me back before my feet could touch the grass.
“Nandana,” breathed Vikram, bending to touch the grass. “This is part of the courts of the King of Heavens.”
All the Otherworlds are linked.
The gods were watching. He gestured for us to slip off our sandals as a sign of respect. Only after our feet were bare did we step into the grass. The land hummed.
One test passed.
In this labyrinth, the beautiful and savage walked with their faces tilted toward a sky where stars drifted in a black ocean. Wave upon wave of comets and clouds, eclipses and nebulae rolled above us.
“The audience chambers of the King of Heavens hosts all the stars,” said Vikram. “That must be where we are.”
Out of habit, I glanced above me, searching for Maya’s and my constellation. It wasn’t here. No matter where we are, we’ll always share the same sky. My throat tightened. Maya had lied. There were places where one sky ended and a universe unfolded. Places where I couldn’t follow her. What sky was my sister looking at?
The Nandana gardens flowed seamlessly into a hall of ice. Ghostly lotuses floated in the air. From their cut stems dripped a sweet and fragrant liquid that drew a small crowd. Yakshinis with glass wings or the jeweled tails of peacocks, took turns drinking the liquid and singing.
“This is their city,” said Vikram, pointing at the beautiful men and women.
I knew that much from Maya’s tales. Yakshas and yakshinis were the guardians of treasure hidden in streams, forests, seas and caves. Around us, music filled the hall of ice. The songs had no words but gusted images through my head—a lace of ice across a palm, winter blooming on a mountain, the pinched and sallow feel of a sky empty of rain.
“What else?” I muttered back. “Any weaknesses? Strategies in case we need to fight them?”
Vikram frowned. “The stories always said they don’t like reminders of the mortal realm.”
“How helpful,” I said, rolling my eyes.
I tried to move us quickly through the hall, but one of the women saw us. Or rather, saw Vikram. She smiled widely. One blink later, and three of them were standing before us.
“Would you drink with us, Prince?” asked one yakshini.
At her throat lay a crystal necklace where a miniature dawn and dusk warred for sovereignty. Across the silk of her sari, a thousand rose-gold mornings bloomed and retracted.
“Drink with us, sweet prince,” said another yakshini. She was feral and beautiful, as savage as a fire
raging through the woods. “And if you find the drink not to your liking, perhaps you will find the company sweeter.”
“Yes, do,” said a third. This one had blue skin, and ice trailed across her wrists. “You look so tired. So thirsty.”
The yakshinis laughed. My irritation slid to fury. Where Vikram was offered a nice, cooling drink and possibly more, I was standing here parched and forgotten. On top of that: I was starving, dressed in a men’s jacket so encrusted with dirt and I don’t know what else that it should be burned for the safety of the public, and I couldn’t say anything because they had more power in one eyelash than I had in my whole body. I was grimacing, looking down at the dirty sandals I carried, when an idea flashed in my head.
“Excuse me,” I said, stepping forward. “You must have noticed that we were both walking side by side through this garden.” Be polite, Gauri. “May I also have something to drink?”
The blue yakshini blinked and stared at me.
“I agree.” Vikram grinned. “Everything you offer me, you must offer to my companion too.”
“I don’t think I want everything they offer you.”
“One never knows until one tries.”
I threw the sandals on the ground. “Would this be a fair trade? Shoes for a drink?”
The yakshinis recoiled, disgust written across their features as they stepped away from the shoes and disappeared.
“Come on,” I said, grabbing the sandals. “Let’s seek our deaths in this Tournament.”
“Have I ever praised your eloquence?”
“No. But you have my leave to start at any time.”
We walked through a garden of ice where snow drifted slowly upward. A white tree pressed skeletal fingers against the sky. Around the edges of a winter pool, twelve men and twelve women with haggard faces and wasted limbs stroked their reflections.
A wall of gold roses parted at the end of the garden path. Standing at a podium, with her back to the entrance of an ornate palace, a tall, spindly yakshini eyed us. Gossamer wings slipped from her shoulder blades, fluttering in the windless air. Vikram placed the ruby before her and she smiled:
“The Lord of Alaka, Keeper of Treasures and King of Kings, sends his greetings and welcomes you to the Tournament of Wishes.”
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