“Spoken like a true queen.”
“What? How so?”
“Only royalty is perpetually paranoid.”
“I’mprepared.Not paranoid.”
I knew from experience that paranoid was a moment’s difference from prepared. The former closed your eyes and the latter opened them. The problem was that sometimes the difference announced itself only in hindsight. I twisted the ends of mysalwar kameez,Nalini’s heartbroken face fracturing behind my eyes.
“As you wish.”
“Careful with that word,” I warned, before glancing outside. “There’s some time before we need to meet with Aasha.”
“Excellent. At least we have some free time—”
“No such thing as free time. We need to explore the palace grounds,” I said. “We don’t know what the next trial will be so we might as well be prepared with potential arenas—”
“I was talking about food!” cut in Vikram. “Don’t you want to eat?”
“We can eat as we explore.”
Vikram grumbled. After safeguarding the half-key, we left the chambers and headed downstairs. A sizable crowd milled around the main entrance. A pair of human twins walked past us, hand in hand. Mango pulp smeared their faces and Vikram stared after them enviously. In a mirror’s reflection, our faces stared back at us. Completely unaltered. Today, apparently, Lord Kubera had seen no reason for us to hide our true faces.
A long ivory table ran down the length of the hall. Plates of cut fruit, savoryuttapam,crispy potatosagoand crystal cups full of steaming masalachaicovered the entire table. Down the line, I saw the three women who went by the Nameless eyeing the foods. Only one of them carried a plate.
Vikram caught their eye, ignoring me when I shook my head. Aasha hadn’t said what the Lady Kauveri wanted with the Serpent King, but I remembered hearing the Serpent King’s name in connection with the Nameless. What did they want with him?
The Nameless walked to us, slow and sedate.
“Not hungry?” asked Vikram with his usual brightness.
“This is not for us,” said one. “We cannot eat this food anymore.”
“It is for her,” said the second. “Our sister.”
“Our missing limb,” said the third with a sad smile. “She loveduttapam.”
Vikram started to say something, but the Nameless walked off without another word. I laughed.
“If it lessens the sting of your rejection any less, I’m quite certain the demon on the other side of the room wanted to buy you for five goats. Shall I make introductions?”
“A sense of humor,” he said. “I couldn’t be more pleased with this transformation. Sometimes I think damp stones are more conversational than you.”
He smiled. A true smile. I knew his smirks. His half-grins. Even halfhearted and lopsided upturns of his mouth. This smile was different. It was soft and unguarded. And it softened me in return. I had put that smile on his face and I felt strangely territorial about it. I wanted to keep it.
We set off down one of the five main halls, food in hand. The main hall ended at a set of doors that opened into the courtyard where the Opening Ceremony festivities had taken place. The first three halls led to nothing except elaborate pools. Vikram swore that the statues had a tendency to jump from one place to the next, but that didn’t tell us anything. Down the fourth hall was a room marked with an engraved golden sign:
The glass garden
Curious, we stepped into the glass garden. The moment I pushed the door, familiarity rushed over me. The air felt balmy, spring sliding into the rainy season. It was my favorite time of the year in Bharata, where the clouds dragged rain-heavy bellies across the sky and the land swelled, as if making room for the torrential rains. Above us, stars pinned up the night, and thunderheads glided around the edges of the room before disappearing to dance in a different land’s midnight. But what was most miraculous was the garden itself. Every flower and shrub was carved of crystal. And yet itswayed.A living, breathing thing of glass and quartz, magic and memory. The garden seemed lifted from my memory of the old lawns in Bharata. Before he died, my father was known for his gardens. Out of spite, Skanda salted the land and built a fountain over the grounds after his death. But I never forgot them. Maya and I used to play there. Once, I even found a slipper that I thought belonged to anapsaradancer.
“I know this place,” I breathed.
“That’s—” Vikram started and then stopped. “I was going to sayimpossible,but I’m trying to retire that word from my vocabulary for the rest of our time in Alaka. How?”
“My father built a garden just like this.”
We walked through the garden and I reached out, letting my fingers graze crystal vines and quartz lilies. Every touch felt like a word of whispered encouragement.
