“Where is the real ruby?”
He shrugged. “Must have dropped it.”
“It must be on your person. Give it.”
“Go ahead and search every inch of my body,” he said, winking. “In fact, keep me alive for that.”
I pressed the blade harder and a thin line of blood seeped from the metal. The Prince winced and then smiled.
“Try,” he said.
I was done with this. I pressed the blade harder and felt a slight give in the hilt. Like a sigh. One half-push later and the blade snapped off, falling into the grass. The Prince snatched the blade, rolled away from me and shook the dirt from his hair.
“Clever, isn’t it?” he said, tossing it behind him. “My own design. Took me about a year to perfect the mechanics. Any killing pressure breaks the blade.”
I stared at the useless hilt in my hand. “You gave me a fake blade?”
“And showed you a fake ruby,” he added. His eyes met mine and he grinned. “What were you going to do, Princess, kill me and sell the ruby? Raise an army on your own?”
My mouth fell open.
“Trust me, I have no desire to work with you, but the ruby led me to you and you fit the description. Think of what we could do together,” he said. “We could use magic. But you’d rather close your eyes to all that in exchange for a couple of mercenaries?”
I growled, stalking toward him. “A blade would have been a more merciful death for you.”
Hesitancy flashed in his eyes. He took one step backward into the Chakara Forest. I followed, ignoring how magic soaked the air, reaching for me, whispering yes, yes, yes.
Vikram held up his hands. “Consider the possibilities—”
A flash of gold glinted in the trees. Air rushed past me. Vikram paused. I snapped my head in the direction of whatever sailed toward us. I squinted. A ball? A rock? I ducked out of the way just in time to catch the thing in my palm.
A golden apple sat in my hand. Its rind was as burnished as a miniature sun. Not just golden.
It was pure gold.
Vikram stared. “Is that—”
The branches overhead snapped. Sharp monkey laughter split the air, cawing and cackling. A hundred apricots, cherries and split guavas rained from the sky. Through the veil of fruit, I caught the shape of three creatures. I scanned the trees. Nothing else joined them. I thought monkeys traveled in huge packs, but these three were acting as a hunting group. Or a band of soldiers.
I tried dropping the golden apple and reaching for a stick on the ground to scare them off, but it clung to my palm as if it had grown tiny burs. Honey seeped from the rind.
The fruit stopped falling. Vikram moved to my side just as the three monkeys approached us. Dread gripped my heart in a fist of cold. Magic clung to the air, pushing the air out of my chest. When I blinked, something shimmered behind the trees. A ghostly outline of cities. Nocturnal eyes blinking open. The Otherworld felt like a body in the dark, a presence hiding its true face.
I didn’t need a ruby to tell me that these creatures were connected to the Otherworld. They walked like men, wore gold jodhpurs and one even had a helmet. The tallest—black-furred with a silver scar down his forehead—eyed us, a bright sword gleaming in his hands. I tensed. I knew I couldn’t fight with one hand, but I wasn’t entirely useless. Magical or not, everything bled.
A pile of dirt and fruit peels caught my eye. I kicked it hard, aiming straight at the monkey’s eyes.
“Run!” I shouted at Vikram.
My aim was true. The monkey screamed, dropping the sword. Just as I reached for the blade, something sharp grazed my throat. Knives floated in the air. Poised to kill. One of the monkeys had forced Vikram to his knees. Three enchanted knives formed a collar at his throat.
“Get these things away from us, monkey—”
“Not monkeys,” hissed Vikram. “Vanaras.”
Vanaras. Real vanaras. I ran through what I knew about them from Maya’s stories. Cunning. Ruled over by the legendary Queen Tara in the cold kingdom of Kishkinda. I couldn’t use any of that information, though. Maya’s stories had failed to mention that they weren’t short, talking monkeys but tall beings that looked as strong as Bharata’s best soldiers. Worse, they knew magic. And they showed no hesitation in wielding it to kill.
“You!” screeched a vanara, jerking his head at Vikram. “We came for you! A thief always returns to the spot of plunder.”
Vikram’s eyes widened. Sweat gleamed on his brow.
Is this what you wanted out of magic?
“I didn’t steal anything.”
“You can’t fool us,” said a vanara with a yellow ruff of fur. He took out a knife and cut a slash in the air.
A thin ray of light stretched where the air had been cut, widening into an image of a man running through an orchard of bone trees. He reached into the bark, pulling out a golden apple. There was no mistaking the man: It was Vikram. In the image, he ran away with the apple before hurling it through the branches.
Then the image disappeared.
“See?” said the vanara. “We’ve waited for you for a hundred years.”
“I’ve always hoped to age with grace, but a hundred years? That’s impossible. Look at me. That can’t be me,” protested Vikram. “I’ve never seen an orchard like that.”
But the vanaras paid him no attention. The yellow vanara smiled slowly. “I know what thievsies and beasties gets.”
“A trial!” shouted another.
“But the Queen is not here,” said the gray one. “She left us. More than a thousand moons have since guarded the sky and not one has seen her.”
“What the Queen does not sees, the Queen does not scolds.”
“Then why not just behead them and be done with it?” said the yellow one. “I like their horses.”
I couldn’t fight like this, so I reached for a second tactic: bargaining.
“If you want the fruit, then just take it back!” I shouted, holding out my hand where the fruit refused to budge. “You can take it and keep him. I don’t care.”
“The fruit has claimed you, girl,” said the gray vanara. “It is useless to us now. But if you wish to see even the hope of a new day, I would not eat it.”
New tactic: lie.
“If you behead me, you’ll have to answer to the army of Bharata,” I said, trying to hold my head high. “And they won’t hesitate to slaughter beasts. I—”
The vanaras stilled. “What did you call us?”
The largest one stepped forward. “You would reduce our proud and ancient race to beasts?”
Cold twisted my heart. The knives dug into my throat, on the threshold of blood and flesh. This was it. I wanted nothing to do with magic and now it was going to kill me—
“What if we’re spies?” called Vikram.
The knives faltered.
“Spies?” repeated the vanaras.
“Yes. Spies. If you behead us first, you’ll never know what kind of intelligence we may have. Why, if it was so easy for me to steal this … apple … what if it becomes easier for other people to steal it too? We could tell you where your guarding went wrong and teach you how to prevent it from happening again.”