Poison's Kiss

by Breeana Shields

  One foot in front of the other. One step at a time until I’m finally back to Gali Street. The bookshop is stuffy with afternoon heat. Dust motes dance in the sunlight that streams through the windows. This is always a quiet time of day for business. Japa calls it the midday lull, when the sun renders the customers too drowsy for shopping. But it’s even more silent than usual, and it makes my arms break out in gooseflesh. And then I notice that the bells that are usually attached to the door are lying on the floor and I stop breathing.

  I race around the corner to the safe room and my blood runs cold. The bookcase is pulled away from the wall, splintered into chunks as if it’s been attacked with an axe. A sob tears from my throat as I see Japa lying facedown at the top of the stairs. His cheek rests in a crimson puddle and his head is split open. Dried blood is crusted in his silver hair. Scattered on the floor near his head are a handful of coins. They look Sundarian, with one major difference—three members of the Raksaka are missing. These coins feature only the Snake King.

  “Mani!” I scream. “Mani!”

  I scramble past Japa toward where I left Mani sleeping only a few hours ago, but I slip and slam my elbows into the floor. I try to claw my way to my feet, but the stairs are slick with fluid and I can’t get purchase. I half crawl, half stumble down to the safe room. Blood covers my hands and knees, and I’m terrified that it’s not just Japa’s blood.

  “Mani!” I shove boxes out of the way, sending them flying to the ground smeared with bloody stripes from my stained fingers. Maybe he’s hiding. Maybe he saw Gopal coming, got scared and hid somewhere in this room. Maybe there’s still a shred of hope. But no matter how many boxes fall to the ground, I can’t find him. I tear through the rest of the bookshop calling Mani’s name, but only sickening silence answers.

  I can’t stop staring at Japa. I don’t know how long I’ve been here, sitting on the floor of the bookshop with my knees pulled to my chest. It feels like hours, but I don’t know for sure because time seems twisted out of shape by the fear pulsing through me, by my worry for Mani.

  I long to squeeze my eyes shut, to block out the image of Japa’s prostrate body. Of his once-kind face now frozen in an expression of perpetual shock that makes him look like a stranger. But my eyes won’t obey me. They stay fixed on him, as if looking away will force me to acknowledge that it’s real—that Japa met the same fate as every other man who has gotten too close to me. That Mani is really gone.

  But the longer I sit here, the more my panic and grief fade away, and cold calm comes over me. Iyla was right; my love for Mani made it effortless to control me. I’ve been so desperate to protect him that I would do anything, be anything, to keep my brother safe. But by taking Mani, Gopal has twisted that love into something far more powerful.

  Now it will be the weapon I use to destroy him.

  I stand up and slide Japa’s eyes closed with my fingertips. It feels wrong to leave him here all alone, but I have no choice. I have to find out where the Naga took my brother. And to do that I have to find out what Deven did that made them want him dead.

  This time I don’t hesitate outside Deven’s flat. There’s something liberating about knowing he already hates me, about realizing I don’t need to measure my words. I climb his steps and pound on the door with the flat side of my fist.

  He doesn’t answer right away, and a shiver of fear snakes down my spine at the thought that the Naga might have gotten here first. I pound harder.

  “Deven?” I shout. “Open up.”

  The door opens just a crack. “Did you come to finish me off?”

  The question should enrage me, but I’m flooded with stupid relief at the sound of his voice. He’s alive. There’s still a chance of saving someone today.

  “If I wanted to kill you, you’d already be dead. I need information, but first we need to leave. I’ll ask you questions on the way.”

  He snorts. “Do you honestly think I’d go anywhere with you? Leave, Marinda. I can take care of myself.”

  “Japa is dead.”

  The door swings wide and the horror on Deven’s face sends a fresh wave of pain through me. “What?” He takes in my tearstained face, and his gaze drifts down the length of my body, lingers on my hands. Suddenly I realize I’m still covered in Japa’s blood. It’s smeared across my sari, caked under my fingernails.

  Deven presses the back of his hand to his mouth. “Did you…”

  I don’t wait for him to finish the question—that he would even need to ask if I hurt Japa stings like a slap. “They took Mani,” I tell him, and my chest aches at the thought of my tiny brother suffering at Gopal’s hands. “They’ll be coming for you next. We need to leave now.”

  He doesn’t say anything, and for a moment I worry that he’ll refuse to come with me. But then he gives a resigned sigh. “Come in while I get a bag ready.” I follow him into the house and he reaches around me to push the door closed. My nose is filled with the scent of him—wood carvings and cinnamon and indifference. It’s hard to breathe. Without my permission, my fingers reach to stroke the cricket in my pocket.

  The inside of Deven’s house looks completely different than I pictured it. While Iyla’s living space was filled with oversized chairs, glossy dark wood and sumptuous fabrics, Deven’s is barely furnished at all. Directly to my left is a threadbare sofa, and on the far side of the room sits a rickety table flanked by two chairs. Other than that, the room is empty. It scarcely looks lived in. I stand awkwardly in front of the door while Deven pulls a bag from a shelf in the closet and starts filling it with supplies.

  “Where are we going?” he asks.

  “I don’t know yet,” I say. “We just need to get as far away as possible.”

  He sighs and slings the bag over his shoulder. “I know a place,” he says. “Let’s go.”

  He doesn’t wait for me before jogging down the steps and taking a sharp left. I scramble to follow, but when I catch up to him, breathless, he doesn’t acknowledge me. We weave through back alleys and side streets without speaking. I glance over my shoulder every so often to make sure we’re not being followed. Kadru’s warning that the Naga will never let me go thrums at the back of my mind, and a shiver goes through me as I think about being hunted like an animal.

  “Are you cold?” Deven asks, and before I can stop myself, I give a bitter laugh. He looks hurt. “What’s funny?”

  “Just that you can’t help but be a gentleman even when you think I’ve been trying to kill you.”

  He scowls at me. “I only asked a question. I didn’t say I was going to do anything about it.”

  “Fair enough.”

  “I don’t even have a wrap to offer you,” he says impatiently. “So obviously I wasn’t being a gentleman.” He shoves his hands into his pockets.

  “It doesn’t matter,” I say. “I’m not cold.”

  “Good.”

  We walk in silence for several minutes and then Deven says, “What do you mean I think you’ve been trying to kill me?”

  I sigh. “Like I said before, if I wanted to kill you, you’d already be dead.”

  “So you were poisoning me for fun?” His sarcastic tone crawls under my skin, and I stop walking After a moment, he spins to face me.

  “I wasn’t poisoning you!” I shout. “I was trying to make you immune.”

  Several people stop to stare and I feel my cheeks flame. I put my head down and hurry forward, pushing past strangers, desperate to put distance between me and…and I don’t know what. Because it’s impossible to run from your own mistakes. Deven catches up and falls in step with me but doesn’t speak. Which is a good thing, because I’m fuming. I know that I have no right to anger. I realize that Deven is the wronged party, not me. But my mind can’t convince the rest of my body. My stomach is boiling with rage; my heart is on fire with it.

  It takes twenty minutes of silence for me to calm down. Deven doesn’t speak the entire time, and whether he is giving me space to be angry, or whether he is angry
himself, I can’t tell. But either way I can’t afford to let my pride jeopardize Mani’s safety. I need information from Deven, and so I will let him say whatever he needs to say, no matter how the words slice through me.

  Once my heartbeat steadies, I clear my throat. “I wasn’t the one making Mani sick,” I say. I don’t know why this feels like the most urgent thing to explain. Maybe because of all the things he believes about me, this one cuts the deepest. That I would hurt Mani. “I never even considered Mani might have vish bimari until yesterday when you said…” I shift uncomfortably as I remember the look on his face when he said what I had done was disgusting. “When you said what you said. I would never poison Mani, and I thought that I must be making him sick just by being near him, but then—”

  “Wait,” Deven says. “Just by being near him? How is that even possible?”

  My mouth goes dry. “I’m a visha kanya,” I say, and the disbelief on his face morphs into shock. He opens his mouth, but I keep talking before he has the chance to say something hurtful again. “Japa said people think they are only legends, but here I am. The people I work for—used to work for—made me this way as a baby. When I kiss people”—I can’t look at him anymore, so I shift my gaze to the floor—“they die. So if I’d wanted to kill you, I wouldn’t have needed to poison your drink.”

  He doesn’t say anything for a moment. “As a baby?” he says finally. It’s the last question I expect. I nod and he holds my gaze for a moment. There’s something in his expression that I can’t read, and I’m not sure if he believes me or not. I decide to keep talking. “Gopal—my handler—he’s been poisoning Mani. I thought the breathing treatments were to help his lungs, but I should have known better. Japa said there might be an antidote, and so this morning I went to the person who made me a visha kanya, but she couldn’t help. And when I came back, Mani was gone and Japa was…” I swallow the words as an image of Japa’s body assaults me.

  “I know how to get the antidote,” Deven says softly.

  My head snaps up. “You do?”

  He gives me a long look before he answers. “It’s the maraka fruit.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense,” I say. “How can a fruit be an antidote?”

  “My father grows them in his orchard,” Deven says. “They took years to perfect, but they work.”

  Mani did feel better every time he ate them. I think of all the grapes and pears I’ve forced on him over the past week, assuming that it was more fruit in general that he needed instead of realizing that what Deven had offered was special. The irony slams into me—finding a cure when it’s too late, when I’ve already lost Mani.

  “You’ve been trying to help him all along,” I say. A wave of affection washes over me. Deven still cares about Mani, even though he despises me. I’ve been wrong about so many things that it feels good to be right about this one.

  “What kind of a person would I be if I didn’t?”

  There’s so much I want to say to him—about how he is exactly as good as I suspected and about how I’m not quite as bad as he thinks—but I can’t find the words for any of it. And right now it doesn’t matter. The most important thing is finding Mani.

  “Now it’s time for you to start talking,” I say. “Why would your father need to spend years perfecting an antidote to snake venom?”

  Instead of answering, Deven steers us into a tiny passageway between two buildings, and at first I think he’s stopping to give us some privacy so that he can answer my question. But then he pulls a key from his pocket. “We’re here.”

  I’m not sure where here is, since we’re surrounded by walls on three sides.

  Deven rests one hand against the side of the building as he slides the key into a small opening, and I watch wide-eyed as a door-shaped portion of the wall swings inward. I throw him a questioning look, but he just puts a hand on the small of my back and pushes me forward. I step into a small flat not that different from the one I shared with Mani. Three freshly made beds are pressed against one wall, and a table is wedged into a corner. Several chairs are scattered throughout the room. It looks more lived in than Deven’s house, but not by much.

  “Where are we?” I ask.

  Deven sits heavily on the side of one of the beds. “It’s a safe house,” he tells me.

  “I can’t stay here,” I tell him. “You have to tell me what you know and then I have to find Mani.” I move toward the door, but Deven catches my hand.

  “We’ll talk,” he says. “And we’ll find him. But why don’t you go clean up first?”

  I look down at the front of my sari, soaked with Japa’s blood. It’s all over my hands, arms and elbows—red streaks, little pieces of Japa. Now that some time has passed, the sight of it makes me want to gag, but there’s nothing in my stomach. I can’t remember the last time I ate anything. I can’t imagine ever wanting to eat again. Deven stands up and rests a hand on my shoulder.

  “There’s a shower in the back,” he says. “And we keep extra clothes here. I’ll find something in your size.”

  I look at him blankly. I have so many questions, but a shower isn’t such a bad idea. I numbly follow Deven to the washroom and accept the towel he gives me. “I’ll be right out here,” he says. I nod and close the door. I turn the shower all the way to hot and climb in still fully dressed. The scalding water flows over me, sending rivulets of red swirling around my ankles. Blood is caked under my fingernails, and my hair is stiff with it. When the water finally runs clear, I turn down the heat and strip off my wet clothes. Then I stand under the water and scrub my skin until it’s raw.

  Deven has slipped a stack of clean clothes inside the door—a black linen tunic with matching black pants. Simple and comfortable. I towel off, dress quickly and wrap the towel around my dripping hair. I scoop up my wet sandals and return to the main room of the flat. Deven is sitting on the bed with his head in his hands. He looks up when he hears my footsteps and I’m startled to see that his eyes are red-rimmed and swollen. I’ve been so focused on myself, on Mani, that I didn’t think about how hard it would be for Deven to hear about Japa’s death—Deven knew him longer than I did, loved him more.

  “I’m so sorry,” I say.

  He just nods. I wish I could wrap my arms around him, to try to comfort him, but we both know that this is my fault. If I hadn’t left Mani behind…if I hadn’t gone to Japa in the first place. Every decision I make turns ugly. If Deven hated me before, I can’t imagine what he feels now. I sit on the bed farthest from Deven and tuck my legs underneath me.

  “I wish I didn’t have to ask,” I say. “But can you tell me more about why the Naga want to kill you? It might give me some idea why this mission is so important to them. Or where they would take Mani.”

  “Shouldn’t you know why they want me dead? You’re the one who works for them.”

  “They’ve never given me much detail. I only found out about the Naga this morning.”

  Deven slams his fist against his thigh. “Stop it, Marinda. I can’t help you if you keep lying to me.”

  “It’s the truth,” I shoot back. “Gopal—my handler—always told me I worked for the Raja.”

  He gives a humorless bark of laughter. “The Raja? You thought you were killing men for the Raja?”

  My cheeks grow hot. When I hear it said back to me, I can see how I must look either foolish or deceitful. I tug on the hem of my sleeve. “I know it sounds stupid. But it’s what I believed my whole life until today. If I’d had any idea I was serving the Nagaraja, I would never have…” But the lie dies on my lips. Because I would have done anything to save Mani.

  His eyes narrow and I can tell he’s deciding how much to trust me. I hold his gaze and hope it’s at least a little.

  “Look, I know you might not believe me. But do you care about Mani?”

  His expression softens a fraction. “Do you?” I press.

  “Of course I do,” he says.

  “Then help me find him.”

 
“That’s the problem,” Deven says. “I don’t know how to do that.” He sighs and pulls on the back of his neck. “I wish Iyla were here.” The statement makes me feel like I’ve been slapped.

  “Well, I’m sorry that your girlfriend can’t be here to spare you from dealing with me,” I shoot back. “But I’m all you’ve got.”

  He studies me with a furrowed brow. “Iyla’s not my girlfriend,” he says. “I wish she were here because she might know where the Naga would hide Mani.”

  “Now look who’s lying,” I say, and I can’t quite keep the bitterness out of my voice.

  He raises one eyebrow in the maddening way that he does. “You’re saying you know for a fact that I have a girlfriend that I’m not aware I have?”

  “I saw you kiss her,” I say.

  “When?”

  “About a week ago. You were standing outside her house and it looked like the two of you were saying goodbye.”

  Deven’s eyes narrow. “And where were you?”

  My cheeks heat. “Hiding behind a topiary elephant.”

  “Why?”

  “Don’t change the subject.”

  He sighs. “Iyla works with me,” he says. “I thought you would have figured that out by now.” I swallow hard. Is that the story she fed him? That she was helping him in some way?

  “No,” I say. “I’m sorry that she lied to you, but Iyla works with me.”

  He shakes his head and it makes my pulse spike with anger. He’s so sure he has all the answers.

  “Iyla grew up with me,” I say. “We’ve worked together since we were small. Are you suggesting that I’m so delusional I imagined it?”

  “Of course not.” He stands up and goes to the kitchen. I hop off the bed and follow him.

  “What, then?”

  Deven opens one of the cabinets, pulls out a glass and fills it with water. “Iyla decided to leave the Naga two years ago. She came to our group—”