“What do you think you’re doing?” snapped Zahril.
Aasha froze. “Sor—” she started before shaking herself.
“I’m making tea,” she said. “I made some for you too.”
A chair leg scraped. Followed by some reluctant shuffling.
“I didn’t realize they sent me a kitchen maid,” needled the Spy Mistress.
Aasha just shrugged. She’d been hassled before by others. If they chose to displace their fury and frustrations on her, she had about four hundred years of practice.
“I’m not, however I enjoy preparing food,” said Aasha, throwing grated ginger into the spiced milk.
“How quaint.”
“It’s not the worst habit,” said Aasha. “I could enjoy rolling in manure, for instance. And that would make me far less enjoyable company.”
She’d borrowed that line from Vikram. She muttered a thanks to him in her head.
Aasha strained the tea into the two mugs, and set one down before Zahril.
She looked at it for a long time, her features still entirely obscured.
“What’s this?”
“It’s called tea. From common knowledge, I’ve gathered that one sips it when it’s cooled down a little. Sometimes you can dunk a biscuit into it, if that suits you.”
If Vikram were here, he would have grinned widely. Over the past year, he’d gone out of his way to cure what he called her wide-eyed-cat approach to life. The first time Aasha had made a rather vulgar joke, Vikram had been so proud, he let her choose all the palace desserts for a straight week.
“Don’t be condescending to me,” snapped Zahril.
Aasha’s bravado withered and snapped. A braver person might have retorted: don’t drink it. But she did not feel very brave anymore. She felt as if she had been stripped of her skin and with no armor, every word and insult bruised her heart. Every word had to be placed into the context … human or Otherworld? Every reaction required a well to draw from, and hers had gone dry.
Aasha turned around, giving a show of privacy. Faintly, she heard a dainty sip. And then a splutter.
Zahril choked. “How much ginger did you butcher for this?”
Aasha glanced at the cutting board. She knew ginger made food spicy. But she liked spicy things. She liked when her nose burned and her throat felt as though it had caught fire. It seemed that she was quite alone in this.
“A little bit?” she ventured.
Zahril glared. She waved her hand. Out of nowhere, a hand made of smoke appeared. It plucked the steaming tea from off the table, then tipped it. Aasha imagined that it would spill on the ground, but instead it disappeared in some enchanted, concealed pocket of air. At another wave from Zahril, the enchanted smoke hand collapsed into a spiral of tea steam. Aasha stared at the space in the air where the hand had disappeared. Zahril could do magic.
“How did you…? What—”
“I traveled extensively and made friends. Those friends gave me gifts and taught me many things,” said Zahril. “As one does.”
Friends?
With that?
Aasha found that hard to believe.
She’d no sooner be friends with Zahril than she would cuddle a basket of razors. When she glanced at Zahril, she saw the near-creature blankness of her sea-glass eye. Her black eye was just as cruel. Little more than chips of obsidian. Aasha was sitting across from her, her elbows perched on the polished wood. Without realizing it—or even thinking it—she had leaned forward, the better to peer closer at that one black eye … and maybe it was the way the chandelier light rippled across her face or the remnants of steam left over from the discarded tea cup, but Aasha thought she caught a certain glint there. A sheen not quite rubbed away, no matter how much the person wished to conceal it.
“What. Are. You. Doing,” hissed Zahril.
Aasha was hardly a foot away from her face, risen up on her elbows, leaning awkwardly across the table.
“Oh! I—”
Zahril shoved herself back from the table.
“Come with me,” said Zahril flatly. “In three months’ time, I will decide whether or not you’re worthy of the position. And so far your only talent has been to show me how poorly you make tea. No doubt that will be useful should you choose to kill someone during lunch, but that’s not enough for this duty.”
Zahril walked toward one corner of the kitchen. While her back was still turned, Aasha drained her tea. The spice felt like a living beam of light twisting down her veins. Gauri said that anything was better with tea. Even battle. Aasha had not understood at first. It was not as though someone could pause warfare for a steaming cup of liquid. But now Aasha realized that Gauri had not been referring to the tea. Not really, at least. She had been referring to the beauty of ritual. The way routines lay tracts in the soul that when they were performed felt like a gentle propping up of a weary spirit.
In the kitchen corner, Zahril reached for a hanging rope of garlic in the corner of the kitchen and pulled. A little ways from where Aasha stood, three of the stone tiles shimmied out of the floor. In the gaping darkness, Aasha heard the clip-clip unfurling of wood slatting against wood as the shadows birthed a set of stairs.
Part of Aasha crumpled. More darkness? Did this person never bother with the sun anymore?
Zahril took the steps briskly, and Aasha followed.
At the bottom of the spiral staircase, she felt something in the air, a slight hook and tug beneath her navel as if the last step she’d touched wasn’t a step at all but a threshold elsewhere. She thought there would be another hall at the bottom, but instead the room peeled back into something blinding.
Soft dirt pressed back against the soles of Aasha’s feet. The milky-sweet scent of leaves crushed underfoot and wet animal pelts stung her nose. A bolt of blue-silk sky arced overhead, and sunlight spilled from the tops of trees, dripping down between the leaves and leaving pools of gold. They were standing in a forest clearing. For a moment, Aasha was so shocked and then blissfully delighted by being outside that she did not realize where she stood. But when she noticed Zahril out of the corner of her eye keeping to the edges, she had the prickling sense that she was missing something. Aasha glanced at her feet. She was standing in a circle outlined by small, glowing stones. Near her stood a large pile of stones nearly double her height.
“There are five senses to conquer. Sight. Smell. Sound. Taste. And touch,” said Zahril. “Your duties will require a little of all of them simultaneously. I don’t suppose you have any military training?”
Aasha shook her head.
“Typical,” said Zahril. “This is what happens when bureaucracy rules the day. What can you do, Aasha?”
It was the first time that Zahril had ever spoken her name.
“I can sing. Dance. Make tea. Albeit poorly. I can … read,” she said softly.
But she did not specify what, exactly, she could read.
“And I’m told I can fell a man with a touch,” she added.
She summoned her best smile from her courtesan training, and when she spoke the words, she remembered how Vikram had taught her how to tell a truth so wryly that its meaning stayed hidden.
“Flirtation only gets you so far in life,” said Zahril. “Here’s your first lesson then, Aasha. If you see it, you can stop it.”
Aasha frowned. “What does that mean?”
“You’ll see.”
The pile of rocks began to shift. They cobbled together, forming a living spire that grew and grew. The rock giant swiveled its faces, stretching one arm up. It sailed through the tree, knocking a handful of sleeping parrots from the branches. They squawked, took one look at the thing, and flew off in a different direction. Before, Aasha had been standing in a puddle of sunlight. Now this thing had choked off the light and she was plunged into shadows armed with nothing. Not a branch or a rock. Not as though that would have helped her.
“You’ve got everything you need,” said Zahril.
The rock giant advanced.
Aasha took a step back. The thorny bark of a tree dug into her back.
“You’re just going to let it kill me?” she asked.
“The selection process is rather brutal, I’ll admit.”
As the giant marched forward, Aasha no longer wondered what had happened to the other contestants for the role. The rock thing roared. No true sound or yell echoed from its stone throat, but the effect was like the noisy cascade of rocks. It swung its fist up. Then down. Aasha tried to run, but the moment her feet touched the rim of the circle she was thrown backward.
She glanced up sharply.
Trapped in the circle.
That murderous Zahril had trapped her here. She glanced at her.
Zahril waved her fingers.
Aasha skirted around the edges. She didn’t have training in this at all. She’d never run an obstacle course, let alone run, unless it was to the kitchens for desserts. As the rock giant swung another punch, Aasha cursed. How many times had Gauri tried to drag her to the training grounds and teach her how to use a sword? The idea sounded nice, but waking up at the crack of dawn to Gauri grinning broadly was terrifying enough.
If only she could touch the creature.
But it didn’t have any thoughts. It wasn’t a sentient thing that had desires twisting above its head. And even if it did, the last thing she wanted was to expose her true nature to Zahril.
She thought of Gauri and Vikram and a raw ache opened up in her chest. She missed them. She missed Bharata. She missed that sense of belonging.
Think think think.
The creature had gotten its hand stuck in the earth from slamming it so tightly. It even looked frustrated, she thought.
Off to the side, Zahril inspected her hands.
“Don’t bother with pleading either. I simply won’t hear it,” she called lazily.
The last thing she was going to do was ask for Zahril’s help, thought Aasha. Her hands clenched. The spice of the tea that had warmed her veins now twisted through it, sending sparks to the outmost of her limbs. Those teeth of ambition nipped at her once more. Aasha had never felt this in all her life. This burning desire to meet a goal imposed by another person. She wanted to reach it. Smash it. Throw its remains across the smug grin of the Spy Mistress.
Zahril had said that she had everything she needed to defeat the creature. Maybe she couldn’t fight like Gauri or outsmart her way like Vikram, but she did one thing better than them all … she could read. People. Expressions.
That was her whole training.
This time, when the rock giant raced toward her, she didn’t run. She stood her ground. The creature didn’t pause. This time, Aasha didn’t look beyond the circle, didn’t pay attention to the arching boughs that would give her no protection. She focused on the face, forgetting its terrifying limbs and quickening pace. She treated it as she would any visitor to the Night Bazaar. What did they want? What did their faces say that their bodies didn’t?
Aasha searched its gaze. She had thought that it would be nothing more than crude, rudimentary features, a product of the rough-hewn magic. But there were subtleties too. The granite mouth sloped in a grimace. The brow, a jutting shelf of diorite, had been cleaved like a frown.
The rock giant roared.
She held her ground.
Secrets hid in gazes. She’d seen it so often in the Night Bazaar—a hungry gaze skimming over her skin even when the mouth was twisted in disgust, grief like a lightless aura around the pupil, pain tugging down eyelids into a heavy-lidded gaze of indifference. A gaze was like a prayer murmured under the breath, something swift and sacred and secret.
The rock creature had great hollows for eyes. But they were softened. And in the crease near its inner corner, Aasha caught a glimmer like a teardrop. It was hardly a foot away from her. Its trembling footprints gusted dirt into her eyes. Still, she didn’t take her gaze away from the creature’s face. She waited until it had leaned forward, jaws flung open and then she moved …
She’d never had the best reflexes. Even when she was learning how to dance, she sometimes lumbered after the rhythm instead of embodying it. But this was more like a punch that just had to glance off the object. Not connect.
One jump into the air. Her feet lifted. Wind fluttered against her jodhpurs. Her hand stretched out, reaching for the rocky ledge of the creature’s eyes. Her fingers brushed against that teary glimmer.
It stopped. Aasha was left dangling, her fingers turning white from the tight grip.
Finally, she dropped to her feet.
Adrenaline jolted through her and Aasha felt a burst of awareness. She felt and saw and heard everything in that second. Bird wings knifing into the sky. Stones settling in the creature’s joints as it turned still. Even the shadows creeping over the trees. It felt … divine. For a split second she wondered whether this was what Gauri felt when she whirled through battlefields and led military drills. Maybe she should start getting up at the crack of dawn with her …
“Well, that was entertaining,” said Zahril.
Aasha grimaced. What was the point of imagining training with Gauri if she couldn’t even guarantee that she’d be let back into Bharata after this?
Zahril stood unmoving, arms crossed. The indifference sobered that surge of power.
“Entertaining?” she repeated.
“It’s always entertaining to watch sheer panic collide with danger. It forces the body into survival mode, producing feats that are otherwise unexpected.”
It took a moment for Aasha to unpack everything she was saying.
“You think it was a onetime incident,” she said flatly.
“Tomorrow will put that theory to the test.”
“I did it on my own merits!” she said.
And that, Aasha realized, was true. She had been trained to do a great many things, but the things that she picked up, the things that spoke to her abilities, were unique. It made them all the more precious for they belonged neither to her acquired human instincts nor her natural vishakanya charm.
“Did you now?” asked Zahril. “On your own merits, you forced your perspective to search for a spot of calm? On your own merits, you stared down a thing that scared you? No. That was a construction imposed by myself. Your only merits were your reaction, and even that was a product of circumstance rather than any actual initiative on your part.”
Aasha deflated.
“But who cares?” repeated Zahril, twirling her fingers. “What do you want from me, Aasha? A pat on the back? A congratulatory embrace?”
Her cheeks flushed.
“No, I just wanted—”
“That’s the first mistake,” she snapped. “Don’t want anything. Do you understand? When you take on this role and you’ve saved a group of people with nothing more than a word, you don’t get to run out to them and tell them all about it and demand their adulation. It will never go to you. You may even be poisoned, spat upon, cursed from a distance. Pandering to anything or anyone other than yourself will earn you a swift death if you’re not careful.”
If she could, Aasha wished she could unzip the earth and throw herself into it. Was it so hard to say “good”? Maybe the other contenders for the role hadn’t been brutally squashed by a rock giant. Maybe their egos had just shattered and cut them all from the insides and they had no choice but to leave. If Zahril wouldn’t acknowledge what she’d done, then so be it.
She could do it herself.
“Aasha, you’re an upstanding individual. And also almost obscenely attractive,” she said out loud. She patted her head. “Your reward is a foot rub. That you will give. To yourself.”
And then she gave herself a round of applause.
Zahril stared.
Aasha was smiling so widely that she almost didn’t notice until it was too late. Beneath her, the ground turned black. A flower that she had plucked as a celebratory reward withered between her fingers. Without intending to at all, the vishakanya star had flared to life on her throat.
S
he tamped it down, willing it away and holding her breath until it disappeared.
When she looked up, Zahril was clomping out of a stairwell concealed in a mess of banyan tree leaves.
She hadn’t seen.
Aasha shuddered. She still remembered Zahril’s venomous words from yesterday when it came to vishakanyas. She didn’t want to imagine what would have happened if she had seen the blue star. Because it wasn’t the rock giant that she should be worried about when it came to her livelihood.
She was staring at the greatest threat to her life right now.
6
For three straight weeks, Aasha avoided death. She avoided death in the form of a colorless gas that she only noticed from catching sight of leaves faintly curling. She avoided death in the form of a shadow pool that lay beside the stretched-out darkness of a massive statue. And she avoided death from a wall of hands where every hand offered a poisonous beverage except one, and she was forced to take a sip of one glass. That had been the hardest. Not because she was worried about death in the form of a poisonous drink, but because if she took a poisonous one and didn’t die then Zahril would have surely noticed and probably killed her.
The way a Spy Mistress had to think appealed to Aasha. It was less about anticipating, and more about looking. During those weeks where she avoided death, not once did she reach for the mannerisms that she had learned in Bharata. And neither did she reach for her vishakanya abilities that she had learned in the harem. Instead, she reached for … herself. The space between her two lives where she existed in moments of stolen peace. A place of curiosity. Questioning. The kind of place where a horizon may not be a horizon at all, but a sword of light laid flat upon the land and glimpsed only if one tilted their head just so. Aasha felt as though she breathed easier here in a way that she never had in Bharata or the vishakanya harem. In both places, she was either too much or not enough. If her soul had been fluttering from the harem to Bharata, here it had fallen still. Not still, like death. But still, like sleep. Rest and repose to an era of restlessness.
It was the start of the fourth week. Aasha had just survived a grueling lesson of mismatched scents. Bananas that smelled like burnt rope. Bitter almonds on an apple rind. Musty sweets. Pine-sharp perfume on pistachios.
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