A Crown of Wishes

by Roshani Chokshi

  17

  COLD HONEY, CAUGHT MAGIC

  VIKRAM

  In Ujijain, the council had been quick to teach him who he was. At first, they had showered him with little slights, so small that when he was younger, he hadn’t even recognized them. But enough tiny sharp jabs can cut as deeply as any knife. When he was twelve years old, the council brought him into an amber room on the far side of the palace. The Emperor never visited this room, they told him.

  “Secrets are very powerful, young prince,” said one of the council members, a man with a curved nose and chipped emerald eyes. “They make you dance.”

  At the center of the room stood a dais for shadow puppets. This was his favorite part of every festival held on the grounds. He loved watching a story bloom to life with nothing more than bits of paper and sticks. A strong puppet wearing a crown danced onto the screen.

  “This is a prince,” said a council member.

  Vikram had clapped his hands, delighted. “Like me?”

  Silence.

  “No,” one said. “Not like you.”

  “When you do not have the right blood to rule, the burden becomes very heavy.…” said another council member.

  A shadow puppet limped onto the screen, something heavy bowing and breaking its back. Vikram had frowned. This was not the story they usually played.

  “You see, young prince, this is you should you take the burden of that crown. But we can help,” they said. “We can make it so that you’ll stand tall. Like the other puppet.”

  “But I … I am a real prince. Father says—”

  “Whatever your father may say, he knows the most important secret about you, little prince. He knows you are not his blood. We know the truth too. And do you know what happens when a secret like that is no longer a secret?”

  One of the council members grabbed his chin, jerking it toward the screen. The broken puppet crumpled.

  “So you see, little prince?” sneered the council member. “We have a secret. Do you want to stand tall—” The strong puppet popped onto the screen. “—or not?”

  Vikram had spent the rest of his life fighting that image. But the council had been right. Secrets did make people dance. And he had made it his calling to know every single secret there was about Ujijain, until he could hold them in his fist and force the people around him to dance. But it was never enough. His own secret mercilessly tugged his strings.

  The moment he spoke his secret truth before the gate, his heart sank. He had expected that Gauri would fix him with the stare he’d grown up with all his life. But she didn’t. Understanding filled her gaze, and the force of it knocked the wind out of his lungs. He hadn’t realized, until then, how much it mattered that she didn’t see him the way everyone else did. And when she parted with her own secret, he understood. Threads had strung them up and tugged on both of their limbs. All this time, they were both just trying to cut themselves free.

  The attendant led them down a path of marble and honeycomb chambers. At the end of the hall, a group of Alaka’s magical attendants gasped and whispered behind their hands.

  “—so pleased, so pleased!”

  “The Jewel of Bharata!” hissed one excitedly.

  “Oh,” huffed someone in disappointment. “I thought it was an actual jewel.”

  “And there’s the Fox Prince! They’re here!”

  Vikram bit back a groan. He was getting tired of that nickname.

  “This is the Small Council of Alaka,” said the attendant. “We will be watching and reporting back to Lord Kubera.”

  They made their greetings. Vikram caught none of their names.

  “Where are the other contestants?” he asked.

  “Everyone inside Alaka during the Tournament of Wishes is a contestant.”

  “Even you?”

  “Even me,” said the attendant. “But the rules are different for Otherworldly beings. Human players are the only ones who can win or lose. The only thing we lose is time and we have plenty of it.”

  “So how do you win?” asked Gauri.

  “No one really knows,” said the attendant, dropping her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “Even those who are judges don’t quite know what the Lord of Treasures looks for. He simply asks us things. Like what color a person favored. Whether they were smiling. What color the sky turned when they laughed.”

  “Sounds irrational,” said Gauri.

  The attendant’s face darkened. “Nothing he does is without reason even if we do not understand. But your tasks will be different,” said the attendant. “You are human, after all. And that is the nature of the game. The Lord of Treasures believes that the quest for power is a thing of loneliness. The game reflects that.”

  “Loneliness?” repeated Gauri. “I thought we were fighting together.”

  “Of course,” said the attendant. “The Lord of Treasures would never separate lovers. He is too devoted to his wife, the Lady of Prosperity and Wealth, the Kauveri River.”

  “Lovers?” said Gauri.

  Vikram elbowed her. Several of the council members’ expressions slid into suspicion.

  “Are you not?” she asked, her voice sharpening. “That would change your ability to play as partners.”

  “Of course we are,” said Vikram drily. “Do we not look wildly in love?”

  “Not particularly.”

  “What’s her favorite color?” asked a council member.

  “The color of my eyes,” said Vikram quickly.

  “Yes,” said Gauri woodenly. “They are so very … brown.”

  “And her favorite food?”

  Vikram slipped his arm around Gauri’s waist. She stiffened. “Council, is true love really so severe that you can measure it in questions about someone’s preferences? Our love is the kind that can’t be quantified.”

  A couple of people sighed. But the attendant’s suspicion sharpened. She frowned, glancing at a piece of parchment. That did not bode well. He caught Gauri’s eye, one eyebrow half raised. What he saw in her face stopped him. She looked furious. But not with him. With what she was about to do. He didn’t have time to think. She only turned her head to his, but he felt the movement pinch the world. The people at the edge of the room disappeared. She leaned forward, pulled him to her roughly and kissed him.…

  The rational part of him knew this was a display for the attendant. But every other part of him couldn’t care less. He threaded his fingers through her hair, pulling her closer. Her kiss burned in his bones. And maybe it was the magic of Alaka or maybe his mind was splintering from everything they’d gone through, but he would have sworn she tasted like cold honey and caught magic.

  He drew back. Her eyes fluttered open. She looked shocked. This close, her eyes were black and endless. In that stolen moment, a strange thought drifted to him. When he lived in the ashram, reading poetry aloud was a common pastime. He had spent hours listening to how the pull of certain people would supposedly make the world stop. Now he knew it was wrong. The world hadn’t stopped. The world had just started to churn and breathe and live.

  Gauri cleared her throat and stepped out of his embrace. A mask of calm slid onto her face. She turned to the attendant and said:

  “We prefer not to have an audience.”

  The attendant looked away, her whorled yakshini ears tipped in pink.

  “This way to your rooms, please.”

  Songbirds filled their room. The walls rustled, a living thing thick with iridescent plumes. The softest musical notes bloomed in the air. Not made sounds from crafted instruments, but elusive harmonies—growling thunder and silver rain, bird chatter and tree sway.

  “In these rooms, none will be enter but you. You need not worry about theft,” she said. “The Lord of Treasures looks forward to welcoming you and relaying the rules of the Tournament this evening during the Opening Ceremony.”

  “When should we arrive?” asked Gauri.

  “The floor will turn to fire, my lady. That will be your signal to le
ave the room and join him.”

  “And the Tournament? When does that start?”

  The yakshini smiled slightly. “By now, you are seasoned players.”

  She left with a curt bow. The moment they were alone, Vikram felt as if the room was expanding to fit all that was left unsaid—the truths they had given to the Gate of Tongues, the kiss that he still tasted on his lips. He felt Gauri’s gaze like a threshold opening up inside him. Once it was crossed, they could never go back to what they had once been.

  “You blame yourself,” she said softly.

  A statement. Not a question.

  “I used to,” he said.

  He had been seven years old. He hadn’t even gone far enough to see that he had placed his shoe two steps away from a ravine. That “what if” would never cease to haunt him. But he knew that if he let it eat him from the inside out, he would be nothing but hollows and shadows. His mother wouldn’t have wanted that for him.

  “I understand,” she said, slumping against the wall.

  There was more she wanted to say. He could feel the words scrabbling at the clasps of her thoughts, eager to be known. Freed. But she stood there, stony-faced and impassive. And he remembered the girl he had glimpsed from the Grotto—the one who let her shoulders drop when no one looked, the one who fought every day when no one noticed. The one who had once hoped that the Night Bazaar traded on dreams. She deserved more than loneliness.

  “You can’t blame yourself,” he said quietly. “I saw what he did.” Her eyes narrowed, searching his face. “I saw it right before we ran through the Grotto of the Undead.…”

  She looked away from him.

  “Even if I had two lifetimes on the throne, it wouldn’t be enough to make amends for the things I allowed to happen.”

  Vikram tightened his lips. He couldn’t say that she had no choice, because she did. But they were impossible choices, death flanking either side. They were cruel and horrifying. That didn’t mean they were damning.

  “A queen with a conscience will always have a far more enduring legacy. Besides, anyone would have done the same. You knew that fighting him openly was an even greater risk, and so you tried to protect your people. There’s no shame—”

  “I don’t want your pity,” she bit out.

  “Why not?” he asked. “Don’t I have your pity? What’s more pitiful than an orphan with delusions of a grand destiny?”

  It felt freeing to say the words. And the truth was that he was not afraid of being seen for what he was. He was afraid of being seen as someone who could never be more.

  “I wanted to change things,” she said.

  “Me too,” said Vikram. “But I can’t change Ujijain with an illusion of a title. And if that’s all that’s left for me, then I won’t go back.”

  Her gaze widened. “Is it because of…” She trailed off, and Vikram knew that she had glimpsed his mother in his memories.

  “Her name was Keertana,” he said quietly. It had been years since he had spoken her name aloud. “She was a singer in the court. Ujijain forced her to leave when she got pregnant. We were going to try and return to the palace and beg for her position back in court when she slipped on the mountainside. She needed protection and had none. Land and title aren’t the only things that make a person worthy. Ujijain has forgotten that. To the realm, its own people are little more than ways for others to become wealthy. I would do things differently.”

  This time when he looked at her, she flashed him the smallest of smiles. Vikram felt that he was treading strange new territory. Gauri was at once everything and nothing he expected.

  “Is this camaraderie going to be a regular ordeal for us?” she joked. But he heard a yearning that echoed his own. Somehow as they’d stumbled together from one near-death incident to the next, he had found a connection. And he wasn’t ready to let it go.

  “Why not? We’re friends of a kind, aren’t we?”

  “I suppose so.”

  A grin lifted his lips.

  “So,” Vikram continued, “I have your pity. And you have mine. Let’s call it even. Friends?”

  “Friends,” she said uncertainly. “Does this mean you’re going to stop irritating me on purpose?”

  “Absolutely not,” he said.

  As he walked toward the baths, he heard Gauri call out:

  “Just so you know, that kiss meant nothing.”

  He laughed. “You’re acting as though you’re my first kiss.”

  He neglected to tell her that his first kiss was—technically—to the guard who had passionately spun him around after mistaking him for a courtesan when he was fifteen and trying to sneak into the harem.

  Like most first kisses, it left him with the sour taste of regret.

  “You’re not, Gauri,” he said, grinning. “But you were certainly memorable.”

  18

  THREE IS A VERY NICE NUMBER

  GAURI

  When Vikram left for the baths, I threw myself onto the bed. My muscles ached. I stared up at the ceiling, blinking once … twice … before sleep claimed me. I woke to Vikram inspecting himself in the mirror. His hair was still damp from the baths and slightly curled around his ears. He tugged on the sleeves of a dark blue jacket embroidered with delicate silver feathers. The cut on his jaw had left a pale scar, but it only drew attention to the lips that I had thoroughly kissed not too long ago. He glanced at me, his eyes glinting a little too knowingly. I was painfully aware of how disheveled I looked.

  “I was thinking about what you said earlier,” said Vikram. “What was it that you told the yakshini attendant? We prefer not to have an audience?”

  He turned slowly around the room, as if marveling at its emptiness.

  “I can’t remember,” I said, standing.

  That was a lie. Of course I remembered. The memory pounced on me the moment I fell asleep. Fire painted my bones when I kissed him. In the back of my head, I’d felt the kind of drowsy hunger that lit up my thoughts when I first ate demon fruit. For more and less. For something impossible.

  “Do you kick?”

  I followed his gaze to the bed.

  “Oh yes,” I said. “And I sleep with silver talons attached to my heels.”

  “Sounds painful.”

  “I also bray like a donkey in my nightmares, drool oceans and have a tendency to sleep-punch.”

  “I sleep like the dead,” said Vikram, nonchalantly. “I won’t be bothered at all. Besides, I prefer sharing my bed with slightly feral women.”

  “I prefer not to share at all. The chaise is perfectly comfortable.”

  “Then you sleep there. I’ll take the bed. I wouldn’t want to offend your maidenly senses.”

  “We’ll discuss this later,” I said, sliding off the sheets. “I need to get ready.”

  In the bath chamber, stained-glass lanterns floated through the steam, while stone crocodiles opened their jaws and sprayed hot jets of water into the empty bath from the corners of the room. I sank into the sapphire pool. For a moment, I let myself watch the shards of light dance on the water’s surface. But, as always, I got out before I became overly comfortable. Too much beauty and luxury proved dangerous. Plenty of Bharata’s advisers had let lust for a rare bolt of silk or gem-encrusted necklace blind them to Skanda’s grabs for power or corruption. Alaka’s beauty had teeth. I wouldn’t let any part of it ensnare me.

  A few paces away from the baths stood an onyx wardrobe. I chose a dove gray salwar kameez with little diamonds sewn into the hems. Cosmetics lined a small vanity to the right of the wardrobe. I rolled the small vials between my palms, warming up the oils. After murmuring a quick prayer for my harem mothers, I donned my armor, lining my eyes with kohl until they were dark as death and patting crushed rose petals on my lips until they were scarlet as blood. In a separate dresser, I found a small cache of knives. I took two and strapped them to my thighs. Just in case.

  When I stepped outside, Vikram blinked a couple of times.

  “You are s
urprisingly lovely.”

  “You are unsurprisingly insulting.”

  He smiled. And just as he did, the floor burst into cold flames. I tensed, nearly leaping onto the nearest table. Vikram, however, watched the flames with interest.

  “Lord Kubera is ready for us,” he said.

  As we left the room, I bit down on my cheeks. I’d been so concentrated on getting to Alaka that I only now realized how little I knew of what to expect. In battle, strategy and body counts paved the way to victory. Magic turned the game inscrutable, so that you didn’t know if the darkness ahead of you belonged to the night sky or the lightless black at the bottom of a monster’s throat.

  Outside our room, the palace had changed. The hallway was thick with the press of bodies and musky perfume unraveling in the air. Small fiery insects appeared before us, beckoning for us to follow.

  “Are you our guides?” asked Vikram.

  The glowing insects bobbed like a nodding head.

  “Well, shine on, little stars.”

  The insects whirred, glowing a little brighter, like a blush. We walked after them and I dropped my voice to a whisper: “Are you trying to charm the insects?”

  “Spoken like a true princess,” he said, shaking his head. “Never paying attention to the little people.”

  “They’re insects.”

  “Magical insects.”

  Out of habit, I scanned the hall, looking for anything suspect. In front of us, a mirror caught the light. I expected to see our reflections. But I didn’t see myself. Or Vikram. I frowned. An unfamiliar being with horned wings and a gold mask frowned back.

  Oh Gods.

  The mirror had twisted our reflections. Vikram followed my gaze and laughed:

  “Clever,” he said.

  “Clever?”

  “I can admire the method and the result.”

  Vikram preened his new reflection. “How appropriate, they tinged yours red with blood.”

  “You should be saying how deceitful because now we can’t tell who might be an enemy.”

  “That’s the point though, isn’t it?” returned Vikram. “We’re all enemies in plain sight. Our enemies stare at us from the mirror. That was the announcement the attendant made in the beginning, remember? The quest for power and treasure is a solitary one. Who else is the true enemy in such a quest but ourselves?”