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.”
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.