Poison's Cage

by Breeana Shields

  I resist the urge to leap across the bed and wrap a hand around her throat. Did he punish me? Was making me kill an innocent man punishment? My very existence is a death sentence.

  “No,” I tell her. “But he doesn’t trust me.”

  Gita pats my knee. “He will,” she says. “In time he will.”

  She smooths the hair away from my face. “Are you hungry?” she asks. “Do you want me to bring you something to eat?” An image of Mani tied up on the altar in the Snake Temple rises in my mind. Gita has no right to act like she cares about me. No right to touch me.

  I put a hand over my mouth and pretend to stifle a yawn to keep myself from screaming.

  “I’m tired,” I tell her finally. “I think I just want to be left alone to rest.”

  “Of course, rajakumari,” she says. “Of course.”

  Gita leaves and I pull the covers over my head, bury my face in my pillow and, for the first time since I got here, let myself cry.

  The next few days pass with no sign of Balavan, Iyla or even Gita. Amoli brings me meals in my room—thick curries and tender loaves of flatbread.

  And when I complain that I can’t stand the sight of the same four walls for another second, she walks arm in arm with me around the palace. We stroll past a cluster of Naga members, who fall silent at our approach, nodding to Amoli and regarding me with a mixture of curiosity and suspicion. I surreptitiously study their faces—two men I’ve seen before and a woman I haven’t—and add them to the growing tally in my head. So far I’ve counted at least sixty-five members of the Naga.

  “What’s through there?” I ask as we pass a corridor that Amoli has never turned down. It’s one of the missing pieces of the mental map of the palace that I’ve been trying to construct.

  She hesitates a moment before answering, as if weighing whether to tell me the truth. “The hatchery,” she says finally.

  “Can I see it?”

  In truth, there’s almost nothing that I’d rather do less. But I need as much information as possible to pass along to the Raja’s men.

  Amoli shrugs. “I don’t see why not.”

  She leads me into a room lined with dirt-filled wooden boxes. Thousands of pale snake eggs lie half-buried in dark soil.

  “Where are their mothers?” I ask. I was expecting to see full-grown snakes coiled atop the eggs, keeping them warm, protecting them.

  Amoli laughs. “Snakes aren’t like chickens,” she says. “Snakes abandon their young.”

  “Oh,” I say, a pang of sympathy tugging at my heart for the orphaned babies. Until I remember what is inside all those eggs—and then my stomach turns over. “Why are there so many?”

  “The Nagaraja needs more than just human followers,” Amoli says.

  I think of Kadru and all her snakes, and my throat starts to close. “Can we go now?” I ask. “I think I’ve seen enough.”

  Amoli returns every day to keep me company. She’s willing to walk through the corridors with me, but she never leaves me to wander the palace alone.

  So it’s a relief when Balavan finally summons me to his rooms for a meeting. I’m almost grateful to see his obsidian eyes and his dazzling smile. But seeing Iyla stretched across his sofa like a lazy cat is a swift kick to the gut. I force my mind to become a blank page, tell myself that I am an empty shell. That I care about no one. That Iyla’s lack of loyalty means nothing to me.

  But my heart knows I’m lying. It flings itself against the bars of my rib cage, as if staging an escape.

  “We have a new target for you,” Balavan says. We. As if he and Iyla are a team.

  Suddenly the full weight of my choices crashes into me and snatches the breath from my lungs. I’ve never felt as alone as I do in this moment.

  An empty shell. A servant of the Nagaraja. Nothing. No one. My stomach clenches. No. A tool. A weapon.

  “Finally,” I say lightly. “I’d begun to think you didn’t need me anymore.”

  Iyla’s gaze finds mine and something passes between us. Maybe she understood that I was talking to her even though I was looking at Balavan. But then her expression goes slack and she looks away. Maybe I was only seeing what I wanted to see.

  “We will always need you, rajakumari,” Balavan says. “As long as you’re loyal, that is.”

  I ignore the warning and sink into one of the chairs. “Who is the target?”

  “Iyla will introduce you,” he says.

  This time I can’t keep the surprise from showing on my face. “But what about tradecraft?” Gopal never allowed me and Iyla to be seen together in front of a potential target.

  “Let me worry about tradecraft,” Balavan says. “You worry about following orders.”

  So Iyla is to be my warden.

  I can’t stop staring at my hand—at the way the age spot has vanished, at the way my skin seems just a little smoother than it did before. Balavan didn’t give back everything Kadru took from me—only five years. A down payment, he called it. A good-faith deposit for services yet to be rendered. Still, I have 10 percent more of my life than I had when I got here, and my skin looks like it did months ago, before the tiny signs of age started showing up all over my body—a single silver hair, an age spot, a knee that perpetually aches. Maybe now I can fall asleep at night without worrying I won’t wake up again.

  Marinda and I are due to leave the palace this morning at dawn. I arrive outside her bedroom just as the sun creeps over the horizon and tiles the corridor in pale pink light. Her door swings open before I have a chance to knock, and she doesn’t meet my gaze as she closes it softly behind her. She’s dressed in a simple navy-blue sari and wears a gold-and-blue scarf in her hair.

  We leave the palace in silence. The only sounds are our footsteps echoing across the polished ebony floors and Marinda’s too-steady breathing, as if she’s schooled her lungs into calm submission. She walks stiffly beside me.

  A blanket of early-morning mist hovers over the canopy of trees, so that we can’t see more than a few feet in front of us. We hike down the path, past the guards, who only nod as we go by them. Once we’re far enough from the Naga palace that we can’t be overheard, Marinda clears her throat. “What are you doing here, Iyla?”

  I shrug. “Where else would I be?”

  She spins to face me. Finally I see pain in her expression, and it’s not nearly as satisfying as I hoped it would be. “In the Widows’ Village,” she says, her eyes wild. “Where you were safe.”

  “You can’t be serious. You thought I would be safe after you came back here? You don’t think the Naga would wonder where I went?”

  “Who cares if they wonder, as long as they don’t know?”

  I groan. “We were living on borrowed time, Marinda. The Widows’ Village wasn’t nearly secure enough—eventually the Naga would have found us. Our only hope was to have the protection of the throne, but that was a privilege you only bothered to secure for Mani when you decided on this little adventure. You left me for dead.”

  Slow horror creeps over her face. “Is that what you think?” she asks. “That I don’t care what happens to you?”

  I curl my fingers into my palms and dig crescent-shaped marks into the tender skin there. “What other reason could you have for not making sure that the Raja kept me safe too?”

  Her voice is soft. “I thought you wanted to be done with all this,” she says. “I wanted you to be happy.”

  I turn and start walking again. I don’t tell her that it was Deven who sent me here, that when he found out I was planning to leave Sundari, he begged me to make sure Marinda was safe first. “The Naga won’t trust her after what she did,” he told me. “But they don’t know that you’ve been with her all this time. They’ll trust you.”

  I didn’t tell him that he shouldn’t trust me. That no one should.

  “What did he give you?” Marinda asks, falling in step beside me. A bright green bird trills above us, and a breeze shivers through the trees. At first I think she means Deven, so I d
on’t say anything. But then she sighs. “Balavan must have some reason to trust you. I’m not stupid, Iyla.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” I tell her. “No one owns me.” But a trickle of unease touches the back of my mind. Because now I’m craving life. Longing for it.

  Marinda’s gaze flicks to me and she frowns, but she doesn’t press me for more information. She’s quiet for a moment before she says, “Where are we going?”

  “Ultimately? To interrogate a man named Pranesh who Balavan suspects has ties to the Pakshi.” Those who worship the great bird Garuda want nothing more than to see the Naga destroyed. Balavan wants the members of the Pakshi identified and eliminated.

  “Ultimately?” Marinda repeats. “Are we going somewhere else first?”

  “Yes,” I tell her. “We’re going to see Deven.”

  The spasm of joy that crosses her expression is a splinter in my heart. “Wait,” she says. “Really?”

  I nod. “Really.”

  She reaches for my hand and squeezes it. Her gratitude presses against my guilt and rubs it raw.

  I was eight the first time Gopal threatened to take Marinda from me.

  We were in a training session—he was teaching me how to lie without being discovered and how to spot a liar. “Tell me you love me,” he said, and I winced. There was no bigger lie. No greater challenge.

  “I don’t want to,” I told him.

  His face hardened. “I didn’t ask you if you wanted to. Tell me you love me.”

  I wrinkled my nose. “I love you,” I said.

  Gopal slammed his hand down on the table. “This is not a game, Iyla. The rajakumari’s life may depend on your ability to deceive anyone at any time. You are worthless if you can’t protect her.”

  It was an oft-repeated sentiment spoken from the time I was small enough to sit on Gopal’s knee. You are not as important as the rajakumari, little one. But your life will have purpose if it is dedicated to protecting hers.

  I folded my arms across my chest. “Marinda doesn’t think I’m worthless.”

  It was a deliberate provocation. Referring to Marinda by her name instead of her title. Suggesting that her opinion mattered more than Gopal’s, that her opinion was different from his. And worst of all, implying that there might be loyalty in our friendship that he hadn’t created. I hadn’t yet learned that with Gopal, power needed to be wielded subtly if it was to be wielded at all.

  “The rajakumari thinks what I tell her to think.” He spoke the words through a clenched jaw, as if he were hanging on to the side of a cliff by only his fingertips. And still I couldn’t resist stepping on his hands.

  “No,” I tell him. “She loves me and there’s nothing you can do about it.”

  Gopal grabbed my chin and pinched it between his thumb and forefinger. “I own Marinda’s affections,” he said. “And I can make her stop loving you anytime I choose.”

  I glared at him. “Prove it.”

  His fingers slipped from the cliff of self-control he’d been clutching. He reared back and slapped me across the face so hard that stars exploded in my vision. I sat on my hands to avoid pressing a palm to my cheek. Tears stung my eyes, but I blinked them away.

  His nostrils flared. His breath was shallow and sharply punctuated. Seeing him lose control made me feel power when I should have felt fear.

  “I love you,” I said. My voice was genuine. My smile crinkled the skin at the corners of my eyes. I couldn’t have appeared more sincere if he had given me a bouquet of flowers instead of a slap.

  His lip curled. “Yes,” he said. “That’s more like it.”

  Gopal’s efforts at taking Marinda from me weren’t successful right away. Though it wasn’t for lack of trying.

  One night at dinner he turned to Marinda and said, “Perhaps Iyla could give you some advice on how to care for your skin. She’s so much more naturally beautiful than you are.”

  Any other girl would have bristled at the comparison. It should have driven a wedge between us, but Gopal didn’t know Marinda like I did. Not yet.

  “It’s good that Iyla’s more beautiful, though, right? My looks don’t really matter for a quick kiss.” She swept her bread through the red sauce on her plate and popped it into her mouth without another word.

  Appealing to her vanity would never work. A few days later he tried the opposite approach. I had just left the room, but I lingered in the hallway, my back pressed against the wall to listen to their conversation.

  “Your work is more important than Iyla’s, rajakumari,” Gopal said. “You must remember to keep her in her place.”

  “But if not for Iyla, I wouldn’t have any work. Isn’t she the reason the Raja knows which men he should target? Because she collects the information?”

  Gopal sighed heavily. “Well, yes, but you must keep her at a distance. She’s not worthy of your time.”

  “We don’t violate tradecraft, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

  “You aren’t allowed to love her,” he said, and his voice had a desperate edge that made me smile to myself.

  “Oh,” Marinda said. “Okay.” Her voice was both compliant and dismissive. He’d given her an order that he had no way to enforce, and they both knew it.

  He spent the next two years trying to drive us apart. Comparing us, pitting us against one another, punishing one for the other’s disobedience. But at every insult or insinuation, Marinda would find my hand under the table and lace her fingers through mine. The message was clear. We were a matched pair, and whatever happened, we were in it together.

  It was only a matter of time before Gopal would realize that our shared suffering had forged a bond that he’d never be able to break, that Marinda would always love me more than she feared him. And then he’d never let us be together. When Marinda turned ten, I begged her to run away with me. She wasn’t hard to convince. For years we’d dreamed about escaping, whispered our plans in the middle of the night after I’d snuck into her room and climbed into her bed. We’d lie forehead to forehead, our warm breath mingling, and dream of a life far away from there.

  A few weeks later I knelt in the grass outside her bedroom window, my heart lodged in my throat. What if she didn’t come? What if Gopal caught us? Finally a creak, a bump, a sandaled foot dangling in the night. We were seconds from freedom. I reached out to steady her but froze when I heard her sharp intake of breath.

  “Are you going somewhere?” Gopal asked. His voice made my stomach plummet. Not because it was angry, but because it was careful. Controlled. Almost cheerful. It was the voice of someone who knew he’d already won.

  “Who is she?” Marinda’s voice was full of wonder, and I longed to stretch on my toes and see what Gopal was up to. See what had calmed his insecurities.

  Gopal laughed. “Not she, he. He is your brother, Marinda.”

  I inched toward the edge of the window and risked a glance inside. Gopal held an orange-swathed bundle. A baby. My hope sputtered out like a candle in a stiff breeze. If Gopal couldn’t turn Marinda against me, he would give her the kind of love that would eclipse anything she’d ever felt for me. A sibling born of blood instead of circumstance.

  Marinda pulled her leg back inside. The window slid closed. And she forgot I was ever there at all.

  I don’t realize how much I’ve missed the city until Iyla and I are swallowed up in the swiftly moving river of people—men pushing rumbling carts filled to the brim with coconuts, children playing stickball in the street, women carrying baskets of ripe fruit, their bangled bracelets ringing with every step. The cacophony of color and noise engulfs us in a sea of anonymity.

  I haven’t felt this secure in weeks.

  Deven is supposed to meet us at a safe house in the heart of Bala City, but we get there before he does. It’s not the same location where Deven took me after the Naga killed Japa and kidnapped Mani, but it’s close enough that my heart still clenches at the sight of the nondescript alley. Iyla digs a key from her bag and slides it in
to a small opening in the wall, and a door-shaped portion of the stone swings inward.

  The safe house is a small flat with two beds shoved against one wall and a small table wedged into the corner. Shelves stacked with nonperishable food—bundles of dried fruits and meats, canteens of water, baskets of nuts and seeds—line the walls. In the back are a small shower and a chest of drawers with changes of clothes in various sizes.

  Iyla kicks off her sandals, stretches out on one of the beds and closes her eyes. But I’m too excited to sleep. I search through the drawers for paper and write down all of the information I’ve memorized about the Naga so far—the location and layout of the palace, what I’ve been able to decipher about their hierarchal structure, a description of Balavan. Soon the table is covered with notes, maps, lists of names. But still the minutes tick by without any sign of Deven, and a knot forms in my stomach. If he doesn’t show up soon, we’ll have to hide the information at one of the dead drops and leave without seeing him.

  “Stop pacing,” Iyla says. “You’re giving me a headache.”

  “Maybe he’s not coming,” I say. “How much longer do we have?”

  “Relax.” She turns onto her side and tucks an arm beneath her head. “Balavan isn’t going to question your absence as long as I’m babysitting you.”

  I give her a halfhearted glare. I hope that she doesn’t take her duties as my warden too seriously, because I need to find a moment alone with Deven to tell him my concerns about her. I want to believe that she won’t betray me, that she’s only pretending to work for Balavan, but I can’t bring myself to fully trust her. Not yet.

  The minutes stretch into hours, and my nerves are pulled so taut I feel like I could snap at any moment.

  Finally we hear the sound of a key turning in the lock, and the door swings open. I’ve been seeing Deven in my dreams since I left him, so I thought I remembered the planes of his face, the shape of his eyes. But my imagination didn’t capture him perfectly. It’s as if his features have rearranged themselves in my absence—he looks at once familiar and foreign.