Star-Touched Stories

by Roshani Chokshi

  “I can and I will,” replied a haughty voice. “If you can’t find your way to the food, you don’t deserve to eat.”

  “But you are to be mentoring me,” protested Aasha. “Surely this cannot be your version of such a responsibility.”

  “It’s my version of ridding my home of unwanted guests.”

  “I am not a guest,” said Aasha. Her hair was beginning to free itself from the stays. She brushed it back furiously. “I am supposed to work alongside you as the next Spy Mistress…”

  “You’ll be the next casualty if you spend your time screeching instead of searching,” said the Spy Mistress.

  Aasha huffed in frustration. She searched every corner and scanned every wall, but still she was no closer to finding the food. Aasha forced herself to collect her thoughts. She sat in the middle of the stone tower and looked around her.

  The stones set in the floor and the wall made no difference whatsoever.

  Now the sun had completely sunk out of view. Slow moonlight pushed through the window, and beyond Aasha could see a silver crescent perched along a tree. Hunger was unfastening her thoughts. She sat there, letting her eyes slowly unfocus when she saw it …

  A web.

  It was dancing just out of sight, dangling and unspooling from the ceiling. Aasha tilted her head back. It hadn’t occurred to her to look up. After all, how would a ceiling possibly be the entrance to the kitchens? Then again, in the Otherworld such things had been possible. A headache fuzzed at the edge of her thoughts. In Bharata, her Otherworld instincts kept her from being accepted. Here, her acquired human instincts kept her from being fed. She could not decide which was the worst evil.

  What had the Spy Mistress said? She racked her brains. Think of it like a secret you’re supposed to sniff out. A human might have thought that meant to follow a trail on the floor. But what if she did not think like a human at all, but instead, like … like herself? Sniff. What a strange word. It meant to smell something out, but what if that was not what the Spy Mistress had meant? The word itself played on one sense, but perhaps she intended another. That, at least, is how things would have been done in the Otherworld.

  There was no scent to follow here. But there was a window. There was something she might see rather than sniff. Aasha walked to the window. She positioned herself with her back to the light, and watched how it flowed out before her, snagging on the ends of a couple of threads. In the moonlight, they were as insubstantial as spider silk. An idea came to her. She stepped forward, piling her belongings on top of each other until she had formed a sort of ladder. Then she wrapped her hand around the silk, and pulled.

  The threads may have looked like silk, but they were strong as rope. They didn’t snap off in her palm the way she expected. In fact, she had to drag herself down using most of her body weigh just to move the threads.

  Not far from where she stood, the stone tiles shifted. A sound like the gnashing of a monster’s teeth rang in her ears. Within moments, a small hole in the floor had opened up. Kitchen smells spilled into the air. Aasha clambered down from her stacked possessions, approaching the opened floor delicately. Staircases wound down to the bottom.

  Aasha gathered her things and took the first step.

  * * *

  To break food with another was no small act. In Bharata, even sitting down for tea with a stranger was considered the first step to thawing unfavorable relations. With some courtiers, it was considered a strange act of intimacy. This was something Aasha had not realized until she had sat down for tea with a woman and immediately heaped spoonfuls of sugar into her cup without tea, which—she blushed to remember—indicated interest in a scenario that had startled her.

  With tea and eating, parts of oneself were exposed. Not just their teeth or tongue or the slow-flutter of eyelids when something particularly tasty demanded the denial of one facet of the senses. It was the method. Whether they stirred sugar into their drinks or balanced a sweet cube between their top and bottom teeth, sipping like a sieve. These things meant something.

  Aasha used to love tea. She loved the lemongrass scents and the sharp spicy note of ginger. But after she had choked during a formal tea with Gauri and an ambassador from the mountain country of Patnagar—and very nearly started a war all because she had served the tea for herself instead of letting the ambassador’s companion pour as dictated by Patnagar custom—she had stopped. She hadn’t thought she’d done anything wrong. She had even read the ambassador’s desire and it was clear that he desired for all of them to drink. But desires are served without instruction. Nuance was a thing taught by constant engagement, something that Aasha had never had the chance of doing until she came to Bharata.

  “Even I didn’t know about that rule,” Gauri had confided.

  But strain showed at the edges of her eyes. From then on, Aasha had started to take meals alone and in her room if she was not to eat with Gauri or Vikram.

  And so it was with great humility and wariness that Aasha entered the dining area of the Spy Mistress. There was a great table, carved of onyx, and beset with ethereal decorations. An enchanted swan of smoke and glass swam from the front to the back end of the table. A chandelier of black roses bloomed from the ceiling. Each center emitted a shower of sparks that disappeared the second they drifted toward the onyx table.

  And yet, for all that beauty …

  There was no food.

  She glanced behind the dining table to where the Spy Mistress was mixing a number of concoctions in a vial. It was a rough kitchen. Of sorts. Pots and cups. Measuring accoutrements, and a built-in well that Aasha imagined brought water into the subterranean space.

  A door led out from the dining room, but Aasha could feel the presence of magic. As if this place might hide multiple doors that would lead to parts unknown.

  All she could see of the Spy Mistress was her sharp profile. Her nose was slightly bent. She wore a small diamond in one nostril. Her hair was swept back in a knot, most unusual for a woman holding one of the government’s most distinguished positions. Even more unusual was her dress, which was not a salwar kameez or a formal sari, but a brushed black silk tunic over cotton jodhpurs. Her only concession to the fashions of the harem women was a low-slung belt resting over one of her hips. Except where so many of the women Aasha had seen had used the belt as a kind of decoration, the Spy Mistress had sprays of glowing herbs, tools with sharp edges, something with an end like polished glass, and a pouch fat with coins.

  “Tempted by the smells?” asked the Spy Mistress without turning.

  “I—” Aasha stopped, gathering her wits.

  This was not how she was supposed to act when she met an official from Bharata. There was supposed to be a careful dance of manners and gilded words. Maybe the woman was testing her?

  “Forgive me, but—”

  “You might as well get out,” said the Spy Mistress, bored.

  For the first time, she turned to face Aasha. Aasha bit back the urge to gasp. While the skin on half of the Spy Mistress’s face was smooth, unlined and brown as a ripened nut, the skin on the other side of her face looked puckered. Pearly scars netted their way across her nose, tugging one side of her mouth into a sneer. One eye pinned Aasha beneath its gaze. So black it looked nearly garnet. The other eye was sea-blue pale, its pupil tapered like a snake. It did not look at Aasha. It seemed to look beyond her. And whatever it saw made her snake pupil dilate.

  “Spy Mistress,” started Aasha, trying to borrow the right order of words from Vikram. “I believe we might have misunderstood one another from the beginning.”

  “I understand that you’re someone who simpered cleverly enough to get a government position. You understand that I’m not remotely interested in training you,” said the Spy Mistress, spinning around. “How’s that for misunderstanding?”

  “I’m sorry, but—”

  “Don’t be sorry. Just don’t be here. This is no place for apologies. Or sniveling.”

  “I—”


  “You don’t belong here.”

  It was said without heat. Without malice. Like so many other pronouncements about Aasha. It was spoken like a fact, which made the aim of the Spy Mistress’s words all the more cutting for their clarity.

  Aasha felt as if someone had taken a flame to her patience.

  “That’s…” she struggled.

  She gathered her thoughts. Her self. Gauri had handled those who challenged her rule with calmness. Politeness. Vikram handled his dissenters with humor. Disbelief. But Aasha … Aasha had never wielded calm nor charm. Until Bharata, she simply confronted. She simply asked. She was just so … simple. The poisonous sneer of an adviser snuck into her thoughts: “The Lady Aasha? A disgrace. At best, she’s nothing more than a common wildflower among roses. Why the queen keeps company with her will not reflect well upon Bharata.”

  Everyone had seen how well she did not fit except Gauri and Vikram.

  The Spy Mistress was just like all those courtiers.

  But unlike those courtiers, the Spy Mistress seemed to be angry that she was just like them … and yet she wasn’t. The Spy Mistress did not know that. She did not know Aasha. The Spy Mistress did not know that cowering came as easily as breathing to Aasha these days. She did not know that her innocence of etiquette had received a brutal training.

  She did not know her.

  She expected nothing.

  And so she could be anyone. She could even be … herself.

  “That’s … entirely wrong,” said Aasha.

  The Spy Mistress froze. “What did you say?”

  “You’re wrong,” said Aasha. “Wrong, wrong, wrong.”

  She sang. She grinned. This was her former self—maybe her only self—breaking free.

  The Spy Mistress just stared. And with every second that stretched without comment, Aasha felt as if she’d shaken off a heavy weight.

  “Gauri and Vikram sent me here because they know I’m the best equipped for the job,” said Aasha. “I want to learn. And you will train me, Spy Mistress.”

  The Spy Mistress raised her eyebrow for one fleeting second, before facing the assortment of vials in front of her. She seemed to have reached a conclusion.

  “Spy Mistress?” she scoffed. “What a hideous title. It’s not as though I leap from the rooftops of Bharata like a masked vigilante. I am Zahril.”

  Aasha bit back a laugh. Zahril? A name that meant poison. How strange.

  “As for your tenacity,” she said, nearly spitting the word. “Don’t think you’re particularly special just for being as persistent as a roach. Simply because that little show of ‘feistiness’ charmed their majesties does not mean that you’re now my star pupil.”

  “But I am your pupil?” ventured Aasha.

  Zahril snorted.

  Aasha took this to be a yes.

  “Everything in this place is more precious than your life. I can’t have you fainting. You might fall on something precious. Eat.”

  Aasha hadn’t noticed the measly plate of food sitting at the end of the dining table. One would think that a place as secretly sumptuous as Zahril’s home meant that the food must be equal in glory.

  One would be wrong.

  There was one shallow bowl full of wilted, unseasoned vegetables, a stack of thin paratha—without ghee, Aasha noticed with a pang—and a jug of water.

  Those sumptuous food smells had been nothing more than perfume wafting from the vials that Zahril kept measuring and consulting.

  As she ate, Aasha watched the Spy Mistress.

  The desires of others came so easily to her that she never thought to seek them out. But with Zahril, Aasha found herself wondering. What did one eye see that the other did not? What made her stand so straight and pull her face into lines of fury? What made her … her?

  But she didn’t dare to read Zahril. Not when she stood so close.

  “Stop staring,” said Zahril.

  The word sorry fluttered in her throat. She had said it so often of late that she reached for it more than any other word. When she wasn’t talking to Gauri or Vikram, sorry preceded every complaint or question or suggestion. Sorry, but I hoped that … Sorry, but I think you … Sorry, but this was supposed to be …

  Emboldened, Aasha spoke.

  “How long have you been the Spy Mistress?”

  “Long enough for the respect I earned to ripen into fear.”

  “How long was your training?”

  “Nigh on a century.”

  It was strange how Aasha felt at once surprised and not surprised at all. Despite the centuries she had been alive, Aasha passed for a young woman in the human realm, though she was hardly more than a colt when it came to her experiences. Zahril was like her. Perhaps even older. It was not unheard of for proximity to the Otherworld to extend the life of a human.

  Something in Zahril’s gaze turned daring. She lifted one eyebrow. Aasha looked down at her miserable food. She did not like the Spy Mistress’s glare.

  “Why do you go through the trouble of creating the scent of beautiful food when you will not eat it?”

  Zahril’s hand twitched.

  “Because it is beautiful,” she said. “Beautiful things spark all manner of problems. Twisted things often carry the guise of something beautiful, and people let them into their hearts. They smile at the knife aimed at their throat. More fool them, but it is useful in espionage.”

  Aasha didn’t know how to respond, but it didn’t matter. Zahril exhaled sharply.

  “Have you ever seen a vishakanya?”

  Aasha stilled. Yes, in fact, I am one was not the right thing to say. She had heard the name vishakanya uttered and draped in longing. She’d heard it hissed in shadows and chasing an averted gaze.

  She had never heard it spoken as if it had broken someone.

  “I know of them,” said Aasha finally.

  “Think of those wretched creatures then when you consider the poisons. Think of how they might be beautiful and treacherous. Think of how all their kind is nothing more than a pretty vase full of venom.”

  Zahril’s words clung to her skin. Hate was nothing new to Aasha. She’d heard the fury before, but she had never heard something so … personal. It was a hate that had not sprung up single-minded and empty, but was faceted like a cold, hard jewel. And when Aasha looked into Zahril’s hate, all she was herself was reflected back a thousand times. Aasha stood a little straighter. What did it matter to her that Zahril despised her and all her kind? She was only here to learn. Not to make friends.

  Still, her hate made her curious. What had happened to the Spy Mistress?

  “Perhaps not everything is quite as it seems or looks,” tried Aasha.

  Zahril sneered.

  “Leave me. Your room is the first door on the left down that,” said Zahril pointedly.

  A door shivered to life on the wall. Whoever had made this home had constructed illusions in the Night Bazaar, Aasha was sure of it. She made her way across the dining room and kitchen. Zahril said nothing, but her back was turned and so, Aasha let her curiosity take hold. She touched her throat. The raised edges of the blue star puckered against her fingertips. She waited. Something felt off.

  Zahril’s desires should have plumed like smoke.

  Aasha should have been able to pluck them from the air.

  But she couldn’t because the unexpected happened—

  Of all the people in the world, Aasha couldn’t read Zahril.

  5

  Aasha woke up in the darkness. She shook her head, and immediately turned toward the wall. There were no windows here. Though there were paintings full of startling lifelikeness. An image of Bharata, and a painting of a forest bright with fruit. They were even signed, although Aasha hadn’t noticed this until now, with a small symbol: a star balancing on the peak of a mountain.

  Aasha wondered whether Zahril had made them … but there was a softness here that seemed distinctly not like her.

  Perhaps they were drawn by the hand of another S
py Mistress. Someone who had lived long enough to make paintings and infuse them with love. Aasha placed her hand against the canvas, the glossy ridges where thick daubs of paint stuck out tickled her skin.

  What did you do to last so long? How can I do it too?

  But the painting yielded no answers.

  Aasha left the paintings behind, performed her ablutions, and then opened the door to the maze of hallways. Unlike yesterday, there were no food scents for her to follow through the sprawling labyrinth of Zahril’s tower. It was lovely, if sparse. And dark. The dark did not bother Aasha. There had been plenty of times in the vishakanya harem when they had not emerged from their den for nearly a month because it was not deemed safe to perform their arts. But this darkness was different. Not the kind of cozy shadows that spoke of something lived-in, but rather damp. Aasha’s skin felt tighter. She had only just gotten used to that sharp scent of green, growing things, and the rough texture of dirt beneath her fingers. She hadn’t traded a prison of silk for one of stone.

  “Hello?” she called, when she entered the kitchen.

  There was a basket of food on the dining table. She rummaged through it, finding a spiced potato paratha, a couple of oranges, and a milk pouch. Her throat felt scratchy. Wasn’t there any tea in this forsaken place?

  The food had to be delivered. By what means, Aasha wasn’t sure. There might have been a chute in this place that led straight to the neighboring village’s kitchen for all she knew.

  “I guess if it can’t even spare sunlight, there’s no chance of tea,” she lamented.

  There were several shelves lined with jars. Some held pieces of agate and polished moonstone, others held mustard seeds and candied fennel. At the way back, she finally found it: a tin of tea. The leaves looked brittle, but the aroma was still there: earthen and sweet.

  She took it out, and measured out the spices. Grated nutmeg, cinnamon sticks, cardamom pods, star anise, and cloves. In a small pan, she toasted them together, and then ground it with a mortar and pestle. The water, tea, and milk were bubbling when she felt a slice of cold in the air. It was the cold of parting space when another body has just entered.