We Shall Be Monsters, page 14
“Are you tired after all that running?” She certainly was. She moved her fingers to his neck, the carotid jumping at her touch. “Thirsty? Hungry?”
Tavinder grabbed her wrist. “Who are you?”
Now it was his thumb pressed to her speeding pulse. She swallowed and avoided his gaze. “I told you—my name is Kajal. That’s all you need to know.”
“I don’t think it is.” His grip tightened. “You brought me back to life. No one knows how to do that, not even the yaksha deities or Lord Dukha.”
“And you’ve asked them yourself, have you?” She huffed at his impatient frown. “I experimented. I tested until I got the result I wanted. That’s it.”
She would not bare her throat, nor would she try to make him bare his. She only wanted him to perceive her as a nonthreat. To get past his defenses enough that he would go along with the plan forming in her mind.
The rebels likely didn’t know Advaith had a twin brother. If Kajal revealed the truth, they would no doubt turn over all of Dharati looking for the real crown prince.
Which would mean an even longer delay in getting Lasya’s body. Lasya’s punishment the night before had nearly killed her. Kajal wasn’t sure how much time was left before everything that had made up her sister was gone and only a murderous wraith remained. How much time she herself had left.
“You were right,” Kajal said, making her body and her voice smaller. “The interested party is a group of rebels who want your brother on the throne. I was in a difficult situation, and they got me out on the condition that I would bring Advaith back to them. If I didn’t, then I’d be turned over to the Vadhia as a witch. Bakshi’s personal army,” she clarified at the confused tic of his eyebrow. “But you’re not Advaith. Which means…”
She made sure her voice broke and widened her eyes in dawning fear, putting seventeen years’ worth of lying to good use. “If they know I messed up, they’ll expose me. I’ll be killed.”
Alarm replaced Tavinder’s confusion. “What? But this isn’t your fault. You didn’t know I existed.”
“That won’t matter to them! I know too much, and—” She nearly let the fact of the bhuta slip, a true shiver going down her spine as the scratches on her neck burned. “You want to find Advaith. Believe me, I get it. In addition to getting me out of an ordeal, the rebels also promised to bring my sister to me, who’s stuck in the east. Once they bring her here, we can find Advaith together. Then you and the Insurrectionists can carry out your plans, and I won’t be fodder for the Vadhia.”
He released her wrist. “You’ll help me find my brother?”
“That’s what I said. I didn’t mess up your hearing, did I?” She leaned forward as if to check his ears, but he shooed her away. “You just have to do me a small, tiny favor until then. Which, honestly, isn’t asking much considering I gave you the gift of a second life.”
His expression hardened. “What favor?”
“Pretend to be Advaith.”
Tavinder emitted a choked sound.
“Only until I get my sister back!” she said quickly. “Besides, you already come with the perfect excuse: You have holes in your memory. Anything they ask that you don’t know the answer to, you can use that as an explanation. Then we’ll get the real Advaith, and everyone will be reunited, and it’ll be all sunshine and rainbows.”
His face could have doubled as a storm cloud. She got a sudden premonition of unease.
“A lot of your plans rely on my cooperation,” he said evenly.
Kajal was so used to people being at least a half step behind her that it threw her off to have someone match her stride for stride. The realization beat wings against her ribs, like she’d swallowed some of his butterflies.
Nonetheless, her cheek twitched in annoyance. “What do you want?”
“I want a day to explore the palace before you bring me to these rebels. If Advaith…If he really…” Tavinder swallowed. “I worry his disappearance might be tied to being the asura. I just need one day to try and figure out what happened.”
His demands could have been worse. And loath as Kajal was to delay any further, a single day was preferable to however many it would take if the rebels learned she’d raised the wrong prince.
“Fine,” she agreed. “As long as you make good on your end afterward.”
He leaned his forehead against his palm. “I hate this.”
She patted his knee. “It won’t be for long.” Then, to really drive it home: “The world has been out of balance. With the asura and deva’s return, you can save a lot of people.”
His eyes searched hers. But she didn’t need to fake her disquiet, her need for these obstacles—Bakshi, the blight—to be dealt with by someone else, allowing her to focus on Lasya. Allowing them to return to a simple life together.
“How is the world out of balance?” he asked.
“I’ll tell you on the way back.”
He stood, disturbing the butterflies above his head. He held a hand out to her, which she ignored.
“He was supposed to be here,” Tavinder said as she brushed dirt from her trousers. “Advaith. He was meant to stay in the royal quarters while I fought. We were going to meet on this hill when it was safe.”
“Maybe he was taken somewhere else?”
“The guards were under orders not to move him.” He turned to the university, walking ahead on long legs. “I need to check his room.”
They walked in silence until his stomach let out a loud gurgle.
“Aha!” she cried. “You are hungry!”
His shoulders hunched. “Shut up.”
“No, no, this is good! I’ll need to run a couple of tests, but—I think I really did it. I pulled off a full resurrection.” She laughed giddily, hands clasped together. “I should monitor what happens after you eat, and if you can defecate.”
He sputtered. “Absolutely not!”
She barely held back her cackle. “Sorry, sorry. You’ll have to forgive this humble servant her excitement, Your Highness.”
He sighed, as if vying for patience. “Don’t call me that.”
“Most Esteemed and Holy Deva?”
“No.”
“Then what do I call you? When we’re not with the rebels, I mean.”
“Tav is fine,” he grumbled, walking faster.
* * *
She informed him of recent events while they walked, from Bakshi’s rise to power to the spreading blight and retreating yakshas. His face was grim—well, grimmer—when she mentioned the Vadhia causing chaos in the countryside.
“Even if there are dakinis living in rural villages, they’d have nothing to do with the imbalance,” he argued, reaching up to grasp his pendant. “Either Bakshi is a fool or he’s leaning into superstitious fear to fuel his agenda.”
“Why not both?” Kajal said.
Kutaa wagged his tail once Kajal and Tav had scrambled over the wall into the overgrown gardens. Kajal rubbed Kutaa’s face until his fur fluffed out into a mane.
“Was this undead dog of yours one of your experiments?” Tav asked.
“He was my first success, although I botched a couple things.”
“What happened to the cadavers before him?”
Remembering the chickens, she shuddered. “You don’t want to know.”
They made their way into the twisting corridors of the royal suites. Though she longed to drag Tav to Vivaan and Sezal right then and there, she needed Tav to cooperate, which meant a day of babysitting. But it wasn’t too bad; she could at least observe him and refine any problems before resurrecting Lasya.
They entered a gallery with a convex ceiling covered in hundreds of tiny mirrors. Kajal blinked, and dozens of her blinked back. “I can’t believe people used to live here. That you used to live here.” A single gem from this place could pay for a whole village to be fed for a month.
Tav walked to the nearest wall and put his hand against a thin crack.
“It’s our second home. Was.” His fingertips paled as they pressed harder against the wall. “The state it’s in…I’ve been dead for a long time, haven’t I?”
His voice was hushed, wavering at the edges. Kajal wasn’t sure what to say or if she should answer at all. He stood with his back to her, and her gaze traced the outline of his shoulder blades against his stained uniform.
Eventually, she said, “Nearly twenty years.”
It came as a blow. The breath punched out of him, and he fisted his hand. After a long, silent moment, he turned to the corridor.
“This way,” he said hollowly.
Kajal had never had a home. At least not one she could remember. She didn’t know what it felt like to traipse down hallways she owned, or to enter rooms no one else was allowed to set foot in. She didn’t understand what homecoming meant, the sensation of returning to a haven, her own private refuge. Nor did she understand what it would be like to see that home destroyed, neglected, empty of what had made it a haven in the first place.
Then again, perhaps she did. Maybe homecoming was returning from a day of work to whatever little hovel she and Lasya had found, to her sister’s smile and the smell of something cooking. The emptiness of these rooms echoed the emptiness in her heart—her sister’s smile frozen, her spices stale and unused.
A frisson of cold swept through her. She stopped walking as a thin sound started in her right ear and traveled toward the left, a nasal, discordant humming. A handprint formed within the dust on the wall, and then another.
Kajal’s fingers turned numb, and the humming grew louder. She was used to desperation, so she let her thoughts turn unerringly toward it: thoughts of leaving Tav to handle the rebels himself while she grabbed what she needed from the laboratory, stole a horse, and rode east.
But she knew she’d be riding through a land of death traps. A land filled with not only disease and demons, but the Vadhia and the people they had convinced to turn on girls like her—girls who were angry, alone, and atypical.
“Are you all right?”
She jumped. Tav had walked ahead, but he’d stopped when he realized she wasn’t following.
Kajal glanced at the wall, but the handprints were gone, as was the humming.
She cleared her throat and joined him. “Fine.”
They were in one of the corridors lined with murals. The images spanning the walls on either side were similar in theme yet otherwise nothing alike. On the left was an aged painting of gilded doors thrown open amid a brilliant light, an indistinct human figure standing before them that cast a long shadow. In their hand they held a pole-like weapon that was topped with a disk of metal shaped like a sunburst. A sudarshana chakra.
On the right were doors of obsidian, revealing a billowing darkness and a figure before it about to be swallowed by silver-streaked clouds. They held a trishul, the trident’s three prongs wickedly sharp.
The asura and deva are the ambassadors of the rakshasas and yakshas, respectively, and our strongest links to Patala and Svarga, Professor Manraj had explained. Only they have the ability to maintain the gateways to these other planes. Together, they preserve the balance of the Brahimada.
A couple of butterflies fluttered from the ceiling to land on Tav’s shoulders, glowing wings beating slowly, like a resting heart.
“What is it like?” Kajal whispered. “Being the deva.”
Tav wrenched his gaze from the deva’s depiction, and she nearly bit her tongue. In the dim corridor, his eyes were even more uncanny, almost like Kutaa’s, as if he could perceive things beyond the mortal world. She was about to tell him to ignore the question, that it didn’t matter, but he spoke before she could.
“Strange,” he answered quietly. “Although utterly natural. Maybe because we started training when we were so young. The yakshas came to guide me to Svarga, and the rakshasas guided Advaith to Patala. We each met the yaksha deities and Lord Dukha to pay our respects.”
Kajal frowned. “Does that typically happen for the asura and deva?”
“I can’t speak for other generations, but yes, I think so. They needed to instruct us on our duties.”
A peculiar sort of envy bloomed through her. “And what were those duties? Anything like the stories?”
“Sometimes. Once, I was told to cleanse a lake that had been poisoned. Another time, there was a fight between the nagas and the garudas that Advaith and I broke up. Sometimes I led earth yakshas to farmsteads where the fields were failing, or healed villages infected with plague.”
She turned to the mural on the right, her gaze tracing the shape of the obsidian doors. “And the asura’s duties?”
He looked at her askance. “You can ask Advaith, once we’ve found him.” He pointed at the deva’s mural. “I tried to call for it, on the hill.”
She followed the line of his finger to the disk of the sudarshana chakra.
“I spoke the mantra to summon it, but it didn’t come,” he clarified. “No matter where it is, it’s supposed to materialize at my call.” Tav flexed his hand. “So why didn’t it?”
Kajal swallowed, tasting dust in the back of her throat. “First we locate your brother. Then your weapon.” But only when Lasya’s breathing again.
They silently moved down the corridors, having little in the way of light other than the butterflies that kept them company.
“What are they, anyway?” she asked.
“Messengers. Scouts. The yaksha deities gave them to me to help with my missions. I can understand them, but I don’t think anyone else can. Advaith couldn’t.” One landed in his hair, and the hardness of his expression broke into something wistful and fond. “Some say they’re the souls of those who meditated until they reached enlightenment. That once they fulfilled their dharma, they wished to be reborn as guides to others.”
“I’ve heard that before,” she said. She’d also heard that butterflies were a symbol of growth and reincarnation. It was fitting, then, that Tav was something that had been reborn.
Eventually, Tav stopped before a set of large engraved doors. He reached out as if to open them, then stopped.
“The chambers my parents used,” he explained. His face crumpled with heavy emotion before he could leash it. “Sometimes Advaith or I would sleep here if we’d gotten into a fight.”
“The two of you shared a room?”
“When we were children. Not because there wasn’t space, but because we couldn’t sleep without the other.” He took a deep, steadying breath she could almost feel in her own lungs and moved down the hall. “We started using separate rooms at thirteen. They’re over here.”
He opened another set of double doors to reveal a wide bedroom beyond. It had no doubt been lavish once, the ceiling engraved and the walls’ base molding made of solid gold. The bed was a large four-poster with gauzy, bug-eaten curtains, but the fabrics were rich and brocaded, speaking of unimaginable wealth. A heavy layer of dust had settled over everything, and clouds of it billowed with each footfall. Kutaa sneezed with a shake of his head.
Kajal’s first instinct was to find a tool to chip away at the gilded wall panels. She only refrained from doing so because of Tav. That heavy, leaden realization had claimed him again, as if the cracks running through the old palace were mirrored in his chest.
“He’s really…” His voice was strangled. “He’s gone. They’re all gone.”
Kajal shifted awkwardly. She had no idea how to comfort a former prince who was coming to terms with his entire family being dead. Thankfully, Kutaa took the initiative and walked to Tav’s side, leaning against him.
Tav looked down, startled. His eyes were bright and red-rimmed—Tear ducts are working, Kajal noted eagerly—and the hand he settled on the dog’s head shook.
“This is Advaith’s room,” he said softly, as if not to disturb the stagnant, stale air. “After our mother passed away from fever, I’d sometimes come here when the night and my thoughts were too loud.”
Kajal thought of her and Lasya huddling against the cold. How Lasya would sometimes whisper what she could remember of their parents, nothing but vague, blurred images in Kajal’s mind.
“You said he was supposed to stay here while you fought,” she said.
“Yes. There were soldiers stationed here, and he had Ranbir with him.”
“Ranbir?”
“His personal guard. My father chose the most skilled warrior from his army. He even accompanied Advaith on some asura missions. But Advaith was worried about a human getting caught up in rakshasa affairs, so he granted him special protection. He imbued a gem with some of his power and fused it to Ranbir’s forehead.”
Kajal whistled. “I didn’t know something like that was possible.”
“Advaith was sometimes too innovative for his own good.” Tav headed for a large desk. With a sweep of his hand, butterflies scattered around the room. “Ranbir was devoted. He wouldn’t have let Advaith walk out of here. Something must have happened.”
Kajal made for the bed. Kutaa sat and watched as she lifted one tasseled pillow and then another, folded the sheets back, lifted the padded mattress.
“You could help, you know.” She pointed at the butterfly currently investigating under the bed. “They’re helping.”
Kutaa only sneezed in response.
Kajal and Tav took apart the room in silence. She found several books on poetry and statecraft on the shelves, as well as timeworn trinkets: a pile of rocks, a beaded bracelet, a wooden carving of a naga warrior. There was even a lock of dark hair in a small ruby-encrusted box, tied together with red string.
“Did he have a lover?” she asked, showing Tav the box.
“I don’t think so. None that he told me about, anyway.” He was in the process of organizing a pile of papers on the bed. “I found some correspondence between him and our father, as well as old drawings of his, but nothing that would indicate where he might have gone.”
