“I didn’t know,” he said, his gaze intense and unwavering. “If I had any idea that only one of us would be able to return, I would never have kept that from you.”
“I believe you,” I said. “But we have a month, Vikram. We can search for a way out even as we try to win. You heard Kubera. He likes to break his own rules.”
A smile flickered on his face as he let go of my hand.
“I think you’re right.”
“May I have that in writing?”
“I’ll write whatever you want if we win and get out of here.”
“Fair.”
The sounds of the Opening Ceremony called to us from beyond the hall.
“The first half of the key to immortality,” I said, sighing. “How much of that is just a riddle, or a symbol of one thing standing in for another?”
“Magic likes to be philosophical,” said Vikram.
“Magic should consider being less pretentious.”
“Hiding in plain sight beneath all the things we want and all the things that eat away at us,” he repeated.
“Yes, I know. And desire is a poisonous thing. I’ve heard that—”
We both stopped talking. We had heard that before. Hadn’t the vanaras said something similar when they captured us and took us to their kingdom? And hadn’t those exact same words been written on the invitation?
“It was a hint this whole time,” breathed Vikram.
“And if it’s hidden in plain sight, we already know where to start looking.”
By now, the steady stream of contestants had emptied into the courtyards of Alaka for the Opening Ceremony. My hands prickled in anticipation. When Ujijain had kept me as a prisoner, I had stopped fighting, and my body ached for it. War was savage, but it was the savagery that coaxed my blood to the surface. It wasn’t just the physical movements. It was that feeling of infinity. Only my bones pinned me in place. Everything else was a blur of light and life and hope. This was a fight. I would fight to win and fight to return. And that hope, to have something to fight for once more, grew wings inside me.
There was no guarantee that the first half of the key would be somewhere in the revels of the Opening Ceremony. With an entire month for the trials and sacrifice—the idea of a sacrifice made me shudder every time I thought of it—we might just be whittling away our time until the final days. Kubera wasn’t an opponent, but he wasn’t an ally either. He held the game in his hands. His excitement seared my memory. He wanted to play.
And so did I.
The music of the Opening Ceremony trembled through the ground. The same courtyard that we had walked through to get to the palace of Alaka seemed to have expanded and changed in a matter of hours. Three large feast tables stood to our right. Down the center path, a mass of silk erupted before our eyes—moon-pale wings shivered into existence, a slender neck arced into the night. Before us unfurled a tent in the shape of an enchanted swan, large as a small town, and pale as frost save for the blue star nestled at its breast. To our left, a large banyan tree cast its gnarled branches over the beings swaying and dancing beneath its limbs. Lights as delicate as spun sugar drifted through the lattice of the tree’s fingers. Alaka’s beauty felt unsettlingly precise, as if it had torn out one of my childhood daydreams and slipped it on like a mask. I didn’t trust it. Even the air smelled shrewd. I caught a whiff of a blanket I’d kept since infancy and tensed. This magic was a dangerous seduction of comfort. We walked through the crowds swarming the courtyards—tall and short, slim and stout, fair and hideous. Some had wings; others glided above the ground, surveying the world.
“Plain sight,” I said. “There’s nothing plain about it.”
We started with circling the feast tables, searching for any clues that might leap out at us. A vial of poisons? A cachet of rubies? Kubera’s instructions were more or less useless. And on top of that, I had to keep my eyes and ears open for information about other exits from Alaka.
At the end of the first table hung a small sign that read: “A Feast of Transformation—if you take from us, you must trade your hurt.” The table had nothing edible. There were glass amphorae of dried wings, a finger bone, a braided circlet of hair and a straw doll.
Floating orbs of ice hovered over the second table. A lace of piled snow rolled off the edges. Its sign—a pane of ice—read: “A Feast of Cold—if you take from us, you must trade your warmth.”
Silk-pressed singing birds hopped across the third table. Songs fell from their beaks. Its sign read: “A Feast of Song—if you take from us, you must trade your thoughts.”
“There’s nothing here,” I said. I grabbed Vikram’s arm before he could get too distracted by the shiny bottles and headed down to Alaka’s gardens.
Beneath the banyan tree, a disjointed and listless dance had begun. Forest beings with bright green leaves for hair and vines twisting about their wrists leapt and swayed. I was watching them closely, wondering if I would recognize anything from Kubera’s task, when a whispered hush broke over the crowd.
“They’re back,” whispered one of the Otherworldly beings beside us.
“Who? Oh!” returned its friend. “I hadn’t realized they’d even won at the last Tournament.”
I turned to see who they were talking about and found three young women moving solemnly beneath the banyan tree. A ragged blue ribbon hung around each of their necks. They walked strangely, as if their limbs bore the memory of movement but not the instinct. I glanced at the ground and bit back a shudder. No shadow moved over the ground.
“If the Nameless are here, then the Serpent King must be here too.”
The other being laughed. “I can’t imagine the Lady Kauveri liking that at all.”
“If it wasn’t the last Tournament, he would never have been allowed.”
The Nameless drifted away from us, disappearing straight into the banyan tree. I watched the empty spot where they had stood and turned the new names over in my head. Who was the Serpent King?
Vikram touched my arm, shaking his head. Nothing here. The only thing left to explore was the giant tent. A line had already formed, sprawling out across the grounds and even winding its way between pools.
Voices flew at us from every direction.
“The Lord of Treasures has hired them!”
“But the line is already—”
“—surely one of them will be available.”
“—the tent, over there.”
A slow wind stirred the swan tent, and smoke poured out from the top. The crowd cheered. Tendrils of smoke shot into the air, taking the shape of a winged beast and a glittering serpent, a tree strung with lights and even a flickering crown. At the end, the smoke gathered into the hazy silhouette of a woman. The shape folded into a star and the color deepened from gray to blue. A blue star. Just like the one that was on the throat of every vishakanya.
Vikram grabbed my hand, his eyes shining in excitement. “That’s it. The first half of the key has to be inside the poisonous courtesans’ tent. It’s the only thing that would make sense. The vanaras said the same in the Night Bazaar. Remember?”