“We’ve already done sight, sound, and smell—”
“Taste,” said Zahril, tiredly. “There will be a glass tray in the kitchen. Bring it.”
Aasha nodded. As she took the stairs she called: “I’ll bring you tea too!”
Just as the door closed, Aasha heard a grumble of protest and faintly:
“Am I not in enough pain?”
***
Aasha piled a tray with cut persimmons, mugs of tea, and handfuls of mint leaves. She preferred mint in her tea. Zahril preferred mint as an extension of violence. When she wasn’t talking, she chewed down the stalks to a green pulp.
In the other pantry, Aasha found a second glass tray. It was heavy, weighed down by a number of unguents and bottles that had been welded to the metal. A few weeks ago, Aasha would have found it intolerably heavy. But her arms had grown stronger. They even looked different. There were callouses on the pads of her fingers from not noticing one of Zahril’s killing contraptions fast enough, and a couple of small welts on her wrists and palms from brushing against a hot pot from forgetting her cooking. A steady ache pulsed between her shoulder blades, along the curves of her waist and down her thighs. Soreness from muscles shedding their weakness.
Inside Zahril’s room, the lantern lights drifted across the ceiling. Zahril sat like an imperious queen, the pillows forming a mini-fortress. There was an armchair and a low table at her side where,Aasha realized,shewas expected to sit. The moment she set down the glass tray, Zahril held out her hand.
“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 saidpeople.
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 beengiven.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 somepeace within her. As Spy Mistress, Aasha would not have to be torn between human andvishakanyainstinct. 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,yakshasandyakshinisharvested 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.
