“I see,” said the Serpent King. His voice was silky menace. “You wish to ask my wife for the truth behind our story? Then do so. As you chose which story of me to believe, choose her. But choose wrong, and your lives are forfeit.”
I didn’t understand what he meant until he moved to one side of the room. He flicked his tail against the glass floor, shattering it. Mist rose from the spider-thin cracks, pushing apart the fissures to make way for the seven women who rose out of the water. They were almost identical, but their manner of dress and jewelries varied. The Kapila River looked much like her sister, Kauveri. But there was a softness to her jaw compared to Kauveri’s sharp edges. And where Kauveri’s eyes had changed between the icy quartz of a river at dawn to the brackish brown of a river at dusk, Kapila’s eyes remained a warm and constant blue.
“You have until the floor breaks,” said the Serpent King, smiling. “Oh, and I would move quickly. Because the water beneath is poisonous.”
I yanked Vikram away from a fissure that had begun to spider near his foot. Little cracks spread slowly from the holes in the floor where the seven women had sprung out of the water. I steadied my breath even as my palms began to sweat. Tread carefully. Choose carefully. That was all I could do.
“Did you believe him?” I asked under my breath.
“I don’t know what to believe,” said Vikram, scanning the line of seven women. “But if it was a chance to make sure that both of us would get out of here alive, I wasn’t going to waste it.”
The Serpent King watched us from his corner. The seven women stood in front of us, their faces nearly impassive. Vikram stepped carefully to the first of the seven women and I walked by his side.
“This one has longer hair?” he said.
“That doesn’t tell us if she’s his wife,” I said. To each woman, I leaned close to her and said, “I’m going to get the venom to Kauveri. Help me and I can help you escape him.”
But that changed nothing.
The first had a bright sparkling stone at the center of her forehead. The second wore a collar of scales. The third had a long emerald tail. The fourth wore a dress of silver river fish. The fifth crossed her arms. The sixth rested her hand on her hip. The seventh had fangs.
We walked down the line, each step damning us a little further. The mist had begun to thicken the air. The women stood utterly still, but followed us with their eyes.
Vikram tented his fingers. Sweat beaded on his forehead. “It’s all just a distraction.”
I raised an eyebrow. “What do you mean?”
“The clothes, arm positions, everything. It’s a trick. It doesn’t tell us anything about which one is his real wife.”
I pressed the heel of my hand against my eyes, as if that could somehow change the sight before me. I could almost imagine the Serpent King laughing in his corner.
“They won’t respond to anything I say. I thought his real wife would have a reaction to him.”
“You just gave me a brilliant idea,” he whispered. “Give me your knife.”
I raised my eyebrow. “If any of us is going to be using a knife, it should be me.”
“Your aim is a little too good,” he said. “Trust me.”
I handed over the knife. The mist was rising fast. The floor creaked and splintered beneath us. Water lapped up the edges of the fragile sheet of glass we stood on, and the poisonous fumes stung the back of my throat. Our weight was too concentrated. All it would take was one good stomp to break the floor.
“Spread your legs,” I shouted.
“Rather forward of you—”
“Distribute your weight or we’re going to die.”
He spread his legs, stabilizing the wobbling piece of the glass floor. Holding the knife in one hand, he leaned down to whisper: “Watch their faces. Whoever is his true wife will have a reaction.”
Vikram flung the dagger, aiming it at the space right above the Serpent King’s head. The moment he loosed it, the sixth woman in line let out a scream.
“Her!” I pointed.
A furious roar lit up the caverns, shaking the stalactites. Whether it was pain at being stabbed or frustration at being caught, I didn’t know. The mist was rising so fast that every surface turned slippery. Poison began to smoke and fume at the edges of my sandals, blackening them. My lungs burned and I choked back a cough.
“Run!” I shouted.
I leapt onto a slippery sheet of glass, barely keeping my balance as it careened violently to one side. I flung myself onto a new sheet, my body slamming into a piece that only just barely fit my frame. It spidered beneath me, threatening to crack. But I was quicker. I leapt from sheet to sheet, and was nearly at solid ground when I heard a shout behind me. I turned to see Vikram not far from me, his arms pinwheeling, feet shaky. He was going to fall. I didn’t think twice about saving him. I reached out to grab him, using all my weight to push him to the shore. He tumbled, hitting the wall. I jumped to join him, but the unraveling threads of my salwar kameez snagged on a jagged edge of glass, yanking my body sideways. I slipped. Vikram reached just in time to pull me onto the floor, but not before a wave of water sloshed up my leg. I screamed. Spots of pain lit up behind my eyes. Poison sank its teeth past the silk of my pants, painting excruciating tendrils of fire across my calf and ankle.
I slumped against Vikram. He wrapped his arm around my waist, hauling me toward the staircase. I blinked. Fighting to stand. To push myself up and forward, but I couldn’t. The Serpent King’s tail lashed out, but he did not block our path. The woman who was his true wife had appeared at his side, her face buried in his chest. I looked into her face, fighting down the tremors skittering up and down my body. Vikram propped me into a stand. He was murmuring something, but I couldn’t hear him. I only saw the Kapila River’s face: shuttered and heartbroken as she sobbed in the arms of the Serpent King.
“What have you done?” she wept, staring at us. “Why couldn’t you just believe us?”
We said nothing. What could we say? Vikram grimaced, turning from her. He half dragged, half carried me up the stairs. Pain seared my thoughts, but even through that haze I saw Kapila’s tear-streaked face and watched the Serpent King brush away strands of her hair.
They loved each other.
The sickly pangs of victory shot through me. Or maybe it was the poison working through my leg. I couldn’t feel it anymore. We had won this. We had an exit. And if freedom came with the price of guilt, maybe I was already so glutted on the emotion that the taste wouldn’t register. I blinked, and Kapila’s anguish burned in my vision.
I was wrong.
Guilt accretes. It builds and builds, whittling stairways and spires in the heart until a person can carry a city of hopelessness inside them. My guilt was building a universe.
Vikram was whispering. But his voice was coming from a thousand directions. When I stumbled, he picked me up. I didn’t stop him.
At the top of the stairs, the Serpent King held out a blue vial.