Vikram grabbed my hand, his eyes shining in excitement. “That’s it. The first half of the key has to be inside the poisonous courtesans’ tent. It’s the only thing that would make sense. Thevanarassaid the same in the Night Bazaar. Remember?”
“Not really. If you recall, I was fighting the urge to eat you at the time.”
He grimaced. “Right. Well. It fits with what Kubera said anyway—all the things we want and all the things that eat away at us.At first I thought when he said ‘us’ that it included you and me. But avishakanyahas a different effect on Otherworldly beings. She shows them desires. Maybe that’s what he meant!”
Vikram was so excited he couldn’t decide between tenting his fingers together or making small shuffling movements between his feet.
“Could you not…” I started.
But he was already pulling me down the line and straight to the tent. Half of the people who had been waiting patiently in line turned and glared. At the entrance, shadow tigers prowled, snapping and growling. One of the beasts cut his eyes to us. It blinked, and then threw its head back.
“Are you so eager to end your life, dear mortals?”
This was an excellent start.
“No—” said Vikram.
“Then why do you seek entrance here?”
“Can we not go into—”
The tiger roared at us: “ONLYVISHAKANYASMAY ENTER WITHOUT THE LINE. AND ONLYYAKSHASANDYAKSHINISMAY STAND IN LINE. NO HUMANS.”
Air gusted from the creature’s mouth. The wind forced us backward and we retreated to the end of the line. Vikram paced furiously.
“How are we going to get inside when we’re clearly notvishakanyas?” he muttered, tugging at his hair. He stopped, his brow creasing in thought. “Or maybe we just have to look like them.”
I stopped pacing. “What?”
He glanced back toward the feast tables and started walking. I jogged to keep pace.
“I think I heard you say that we should look likevishakanyas.”
“You heard right. It’s not my first choice. I’d rather not dress like a courtesan again—”
“Wait.Again?”
His face colored.
“The Feast of Transformation may have something for us,” he mused.
“I’m still listening for the part where you explain why you dressed like a courtesan in the first place.”
Vikram braced his elbows over the Feast of Transformation, fingers hovering over the bottles. He held up a bottle containing a scrap of a woman’s sari and a pot of cosmetics.
“I hope this is more rewarding than last time,” he muttered.
The Feast of Transformation demanded a trade of hurt. The moment I grabbed a vial, I felt ghostly fingers carding through my memories, searching for a kernel of pain. It wasn’t hard to find. I felt a sharp tug behind my heart, the sound of a memory unclasping and rising to the surface of my thoughts. And then: Nothing. The memory faded. I looked down at my garb and found myself dressed in a rather revealing outfit studded with emeralds. A translucent veil draped down from my head. I looked unrecognizable in the mirror propped against the Feast of Transformation table. Thanks to glamour, my hair was now long and silver, my eyes were the color of quartz and I was taller and more willowy than I’d ever been without magic.
Beside me, I heard a sharp intake of breath. The magic of the Feast of Transformation had disguised Vikram as a short and shapely woman with a riot of copper hair. The only thing that looked the same was the sly smile he flashed when he inspected himself in the mirror.
“I look good,” he said, examining himself from multiple angles. He shifted from one foot to the next. “This is horrifically itchy. Why do women wear this miserable garment?”
“I don’t think that was our choice.”
“Oh.”
I laughed. “I can’t think of many men that would glamour themselves as a woman.”
