Star-Touched Stories

by Roshani Chokshi

  “Tea?” asked Aasha.

  Zahril just pushed out her hand a fraction farther.

  “Don’t look so pleased with yourself,” said Zahril once she had wrapped her hand around the mug. “I know people who chew the bitterest roots and eat the strangest things simply because they’ve grown accustomed to the taste.”

  Aasha just shrugged. It was a thank you, and she knew it. What did strike her as strange was how Zahril said people.

  There must have been a time when she hadn’t shut herself in this tower. Just looking around at the room, Aasha saw that half of the things here must not have been picked up at random … they must have been given. As gifts. There were glass dolls, and dresses sewn from the colors of a sunset. Jewelry that shimmered, the gemstones and setting changing by the minute. Once, Zahril must have had friends. Even Gauri, as far as Aasha knew, had never repaid Zahril’s services with anything more than land, title, and a fair chunk from the coffers. In the past twenty years, no sovereign of Bharata had died at the hands of espionage and even when the kingdom had been plunged into wars, their intelligence had never failed. Surely that deserved a gift. As Spy Mistress, Zahril could only be around people in secret or in highly controlled situations. She was as shut off from the world as Aasha was.

  “Open the glass tray,” said Zahril.

  Aasha did so.

  “There are many ways to poison a sovereign,” said Zahril. “Most often in their food or drink. Everything that the king or queen tastes, you must taste.”

  Aasha frowned. “But I’ve never seen you in Bharata. How are you able to taste their food? And what about when—”

  “You think Bharata is without its magic? What about the plate of food that is always offered to God first and then carted off?”

  Aasha had not considered this. But in Bharata there was always one plate of food presented before the deity. She had never asked herself what happened after that.

  Now she knew.

  “But the deadliest thing to a queen or king is not poison, but the truth,” said Zahril. “A truth serum could make them reveal the truth about a child’s parentage or a war strategy or even the reasons why they might be entertaining a particular diplomat. I’ve seen the truth crumble kingdoms. A monarch bears a heavy burden, and nothing is more precious than the secrets they keep.”

  “How do they even get them?” asked Aasha.

  Truths were an easy currency, but difficult to harvest. A shopkeeper in the Night Bazaar would have to collect five hundred truths for a single drop. It was far easier to trade truths between merchants. Only the Night Bazaar would have sold anything like that. And it was already impossible to imagine one human wandering through its strange split sky, let alone several high-ranking officials. Zahril must have read her mind because her smile was slow and grim.

  “The Otherworld knows who will keep its secrets.”

  She sighed. “There is only one way to do this. It is something I learned from the one who came before me, and it is something you must do for the one who will come after you.”

  Aasha held her breath at these words. Zahril had not been as serious about the Spy Mistress position when she had first asked, but now it sounded like an inevitability. The words freed up some peace within her. As Spy Mistress, Aasha would not have to be torn between human and vishakanya instinct. She could only act as herself.

  “The people who will report to you, the agendas and scheduling, that’s something even a baboon could learn. But this is the difference between espionage that anticipates and espionage that defends. We have survived this long on anticipating. On knowing and feeling as intimately as if we were every victim,” said Zahril. Her eyes flicked up to Aasha’s. “Secrets are leverage. They are full of invisible sinew and height. Never underestimate the space they take up in a room.”

  Zahril opened up the cabinet at her side, taking out a small glass box that held one bright cherry. Aasha recognized the fruit from Kubera’s Grove of Plenty. The orchard had every fruit tree of the nine worlds. And yet for all those trees, they only bore one fruit each. One cherry that looked lustrous as wet rubies. One plum that looked scooped from the lining of nighttime. One apple that looked rolled through the sunrise, gathering blush and pink and even speckles of white. Once a year, yakshas and yakshinis harvested the fruits and carted them off to the Night Bazaar. There, they sold for as much as eighteen years of one’s life and even the love you had for another person. But the benefit was just as outlandish:

  The fruit never faded.

  Even eaten, all that was needed was that the seed was set aside. In the blink of an eye, it would plump once more. Ready to be devoured.

  Zahril dipped the cherry into the truth potion. The potion was translucent, and dripped off the cherry like a thick stream of water.

  “One question,” she said. “And one only. It is the kind of taste that has no flavor, but rather carves a place of knowing inside you. It is the reason why monarchs never suspect it because they can’t know it until it has happened.”

  “How often are they slipped this?”

  Zahril’s face darkened. “Often enough.”

  Aasha had a memory of days when Zahril bolted the door behind her. Music blasting through the walls. She had thought that it was her just being prickly. Now she saw it for what it might have been: protection. What would have happened if Aasha had asked a question about Gauri? Zahril would have had no choice but to respond. The moment she did she would have placed the empire at great risk …

  No wonder she hid in a tower. Away from where people might take advantage of all the ways she laid herself open out of duty to her country.

  “The truth is a poison,” said Zahril.

  Then she slipped the cherry between her lips, and ate.

  One question.

  Aasha had a thousand burning ones. She ran through them as she went through the ritual, dipping the cherry in the serum and raising it to her lips. But there was one difference.

  She had already tasted this.

  She knew the flavor … it had been one of the first things she had eaten. The vishakanya harem had given it to her, snapping off a diamond-bright icicle that had dangled from one of their fountains. She had drizzled the icicle with the poison and rolled it in sugar, giving it to Aasha like a present. We must make sure that our blood knows every poison. You are lucky to eat this so young, when your thoughts are not so dangerous and your truths are not so cutting, little one. Aasha had still been embarrassed by the serum. Especially when one of her sisters asked if she looked pretty in blue, and Aasha—who had no choice but to tell the truth for a whole week as she consumed the poison—had told her: “The sky would be so offended to see how you wear its skin that it would plunge us into night forever.” Her sister had not been pleased.

  But knowing the poison also meant that it could no longer affect Aasha. She let the familiar taste settle on her tongue. The truth tasted different to everyone. For Aasha, who had never had much reason to lie, truth tasted light and sparkling. It tasted like fresh snow licked off a pane of sugar.

  Zahril, on the other hand, made a face.

  Aasha grimaced, wondering how the truth would change for her when she became the Spy Mistress.

  “Now that you know the taste you will never forget it,” said Zahril, dragging her uninjured arm across her mouth. She pulled a shawl tighter around her, as if she could protect her heart better that way. “You may ask me a question.”

  Aasha hesitated. This truth was supposed to be a moment freely exchanged. Zahril was letting down her guard … letting her in. Aasha couldn’t give her the same. The serum simply didn’t work on her.

  She wondered whether she should tell her the truth, but how would she explain it without giving away what she was?

  Zahril raised an eyebrow. “This wears off, you know.”

  “How long does it take?”

  “For this, an hour. But that is because it is half a drop diluted in water. It is an example. If enough was slipped int
o food, it could force a monarch to speak in nothing but truths for an entire year.”

  Aasha glanced at the tattered scrap of silk on Zahril’s bedside.

  Zahril caught her eye, her mouth tightening to a thin line.

  “I have nothing to hide.”

  Aasha swallowed. I do.

  Questions were tricky things. Aasha had grown up amidst the riddles of the Night Bazaar. A question must be as precise as if it had been turned upon a lathe.

  Something about that silk held her fascination. Looking at it was like not recognizing one’s own reflection in a pool of rippling water. She couldn’t quite place it, and yet she knew she should. She thought of how Zahril had clutched at her mug of tea. How her hands were fine-boned and delicate, made more unsettling against the razor-cruelty of her tongue or the cold leanings of her mind. She thought of how Zahril cradled that silk. Kept it beside her. It was not a talisman, kept for protection. It was a penance. Aasha was not one of those Otherworld beings who could suss out pain. But this was obvious.

  “Ask and be done with it, Aasha,” said Zahril.

  One chance to know.

  Even as she uttered the question, she didn’t know why she cared. Why she even bothered to discover.

  “Why did the girl who gave you that silk die?”

  Years later, Aasha would remember this as the moment when she knew silence was not invisible. One could see it by looking at the shape it left behind, like an impression of shadows. She saw silence in the way the light pulled back from the space where she and Zahril sat, as if it were carving out a place of darkness.

  In Bharata, Aasha had seen a thousand expressions of surprise. Eyes widening, lips parting, brows lifting. She’d seen men and women grow pale or turn red, goose bumps erupting on their arms or nails turning white from digging into skin. But Zahril’s expression did not change. If anything, it had gone flat. Affectless. It chilled Aasha.

  “She died because she loved me, and I loved her,” said Zahril.

  Her gaze did not lift to Aasha’s. Aasha knew that there was no reason for her to continue, but Zahril shifted, uncomfortable. As if she couldn’t just let that truth exist without context.

  “This was early in the reign of the raja who united the cities that became Bharata. This was a time when the Otherworld had not yet closed its borders. The flow of goods and services between the two worlds was not a strange thing. The rival empress of Ujijain sent a vishakanya. They’re the worst kind of creatures. Human children snatched from their mother’s breast, thrown into a dingy harem where they are force-fed poison and brainwashed into becoming some of the deadliest assassins the worlds have ever seen.”

  Aasha forced herself to take even breaths. She could not afford any panic to reveal her true nature.

  “They can kill with a touch, you know. And it was during the…” Zahril steadied her voice. Her throat bobbed. “… the dance. A courtesan that we did not recognize came to the table. All she had to do was kiss Sazma, as one would kiss a sister. Joyously. I was not looking closely, too reliant on the protective amulets. Too dazed from a recent victory. I didn’t even see that cursed blue star on her throat until Sazma dropped to the ground.”

  Zahril closed and opened her hands, as if she were testing her strength. She started rubbing her palm violently.

  “But I got that thing,” she said fiercely. “I opened her throat right there on the banquet. Her blood splattered.”

  Aasha looked at her face. For the first time she saw that those scars were not ropy twists of skin. They were like lashes of rain against a window.

  Not rain, she thought. She corrected herself.

  Blood.

  “But it was not without its benefits,” said Zahril.

  Her voice was acidic. It could have melted glass. She raised her hand. There, on the outer curve of her palm, Aasha saw it:

  A blue star.

  “It wasn’t simply the touch of that monster’s blood, but the—” She cringed. “Taste.”

  Aasha took sips of air. She felt light-headed. But if she gulped down the air, Zahril would see. And notice. Worst of all, she might wonder. Wonder about the scarf Aasha wore around her throat despite the warm air. Wonder about the speed with which she completed any lesson that had to do with poison. Wonder what lay beneath that cloth.

  Because now she knew why every time she tried to read Zahril’s thoughts, she was met with a foggy wall.

  Zahril had not simply touched the venom of a vishakanya. If that were so, she would have died on the spot. Aasha knew of only two ways to remove a vishakanya’s poison from someone’s body. Either another vishakanya could sense the threads of poison and draw it out like a great net. Or the person touched must drink the blood of a vishakanya. Both earned immunity from poison. Like Gauri. But only one rendered someone wholly immune to a vishakanya’s abilities.

  “It has never happened,” her vishakanya sisters would croon. “No one has ever guessed our secret.”

  But they were wrong.

  It was clear that even Zahril didn’t understand how it had worked. If she did, maybe she would have hung the vishakanya like meat from a hook. Turned Aasha’s blood into a precious elixir, and sold it to every king and queen in danger of the poisonous courtesans.

  Aasha heard the words. Creature. Vile. Monster.

  They echoed inside her thoughts, sprouting thorns that were far more venomous than any poison in her veins. It was as final as death too. If Zahril knew what she was, she would have never let her into her palace. She would have never let her eyelids flutter shut when Aasha had placed that food upon her tongue last week. It was such a small thing … that flare of trust. And yet, nothing had ever been more precious to Aasha.

  Before, the emotion she didn’t want to name had felt distant. Something beheld underwater. But she felt it now—the rush of it—just as the possibility of it ever coming true shattered in front of her.

  Want.

  She wanted Zahril. Wanted to trace her lips with her own, to listen to her grumble, to catch her fingers between hers.

  To thank her.

  All this time in Zahril’s company and not once had Aasha lost control. Before she had come to the Spy Mistress’s tower, she had been too torn between being either human or vishakanya. But now she saw that the key to controlling her abilities was simply to be herself. That the very act of freeing herself from trying to be anyone but herself had released the grip of her worst fears. Zahril was, in part, to thank. Now, if Zahril found out about her vishakanya heritage, she might take her life over her thanks.

  “I have told you the truth,” said Zahril. She placed the hand with the vishakanya star flat upon her leg. “Now it is my turn. What do you not want me to know about you?”

  It was a clever question.

  Then again, Zahril was no fool. Aasha felt a burst of relief that the poison did not work on her. Otherwise she would have found herself on the floor. Her throat cut.

  A truth that Zahril did not know about her …

  She did not want to lie even though she could. It would have felt jagged inside her, like a bone set poorly. So she spoke a truth. As bluntly as she would have done if they were just two girls that had met somewhere else … like a flower market beneath a tent where raindrops dangled like jewels. Or in the fierce glow of a festival’s fires, their foreheads slick from sweat, mouths sugary from sweets. Or in a world where they did not have to drag their past selves alongside them.

  “I want to kiss you.”

  8

  Aasha was not sure what she expected to happen.

  She watched her face, looking for some hint as to what she felt. A small quirk of her mouth would have been enough for Aasha. Even the flash of a frown would have at least thrown her out of the limbo of not knowing. But Zahril did nothing. Said nothing.

  Aasha almost wished she’d just laugh at her.

  Instead, the words had grown so heavy between them that Aasha half-wished she could pluck them out of the air and hide them out of si
ght.

  “It is fine to want things,” said Zahril finally. “It is far worse to need them. That is the risk of acting upon want.”

  Her tone was hesitant. Altogether wrong. Zahril never said anything hesitantly. Everything she did was injected with purpose. But that wasn’t what twisted inside Aasha. It was the softened feel of her words. Zahril was so embarrassed for Aasha that she was comforting her.

  And that was how the dismissal became a rejection so fierce that Aasha almost wanted the vishakanya star to flare onto her throat. At least then Zahril would throw her out of this place, and she’d never have to look upon her mismatched eyes or wide lips.

  But of course it didn’t.

  “I have done everything I can to teach you,” said Zahril. “The final examination will be tomorrow. Your appointment depends on your performance. After that, Bharata has requested our appearance at the final engagement ceremony of Queen Gauri and Emperor Vikramaditya. I will alert the village to prepare enough food that you don’t kill us with your cooking.”

  A feeble joke. Aasha just nodded. She knew she should have been glad.

  Zahril could have decided that she could no longer instruct her when those were her true feelings. Or she could have demanded more than one truth, and Aasha’s cover would have been blown. Zahril was not so embarrassed by her declaration that she would give her false hope though. And the fact that she was already planning on food from the village could only mean one thing:

  She believed Aasha would pass.

  Aasha, even, believed that she would pass.

  The only thing that had changed was that she wanted more than an appointment from Zahril. Zahril knew it. And as Aasha gathered the tray, mumbled her excuses, and left the room, all she could think of was whether that sliver of confidence was Zahril’s own offering. That this—her belief and her faith, and perhaps even a little of her trust—was all that she was willing to give.

  Aasha set down the tray. In the emptiness of the kitchen, she summoned her vishakanya star. A leaf had snapped off the tulsi plant that lived at the edge of the counter. Aasha swiped it off the marble, watching as the edges of the leaf blackened and smoldered.