“We’re sorry,” said Aru.
“It is too late for an apology,” said Aleesa. She had not released her hold on Aiden. Aru felt a sharp jolt of panic as she watched his kicking slow and weaken.
“We need the Sun Jewel,” said Aru. “There’s a war coming, like the great one from before—”
“A war?” whispered the vishakanyas closest to Aru.
The black cloud of poison drew back, allowing Aru to suck in some clean air. Aleesa growled, dropping Aiden. He fell to the ground, choking.
“And what do wars matter to us?” asked Aleesa. “We were made to be weapons! A weapon does not care whose hand holds it! A weapon merely seeks to aim true! We do not care about the battles of mortals and gods.”
The cloud of poison rose up once more. Aru felt her thoughts flicker dimly at the back of her skull, and yet one word stuck out in the painful haze: Care.
“But you do care,” said Aru. “You care about those jewels….You treat them like they’re your kids.”
Aleesa cocked her head.
“You care about them because…because you listen to them, and they…they help you remember what everyone else forgot,” said Aru. “This war isn’t about gods and humans.”
“Then what is it about?” asked another vishakanya.
Aru swallowed hard. “It’s about immortality….”
But as she said the words, she realized the answer was more nuanced than that. The Sleeper wanted to rewrite his fate, to escape “the tyranny of destiny.” The people he had lured to his side wanted the same thing, like Lady M, who’d wanted her true story to be told, and Takshaka, who’d sought revenge for the senseless murder of his family at the hands of the original Pandavas.
“It’s about being able to live the life you choose…and who gets to be remembered, and how,” continued Aru. She coughed and inhaled with a gasp. “If we can’t reunite the pieces of the Sun Jewel, the Sleeper will destroy this world and everything in it will be lost. Forever.”
This seemed to have an effect on Aleesa. She stilled, giving a last burst of hope to Aru.
“You guard them, you…you listen to them,” Aru said, gesturing to all the precious gems. “But what about you?”
“What do you mean, thief?” asked Aleesa.
“What about your story?” asked Aru. “If you…If you let us go—if you let us borrow the Sun Jewel—then we’ll…we’ll be like your guardians. Just like what you do for the jewels. And if we win the battle, I’ll…I’ll make sure everyone listens.”
The cloud of poison drew back, and Aru drew in a huge gulp of air. Above her, the top of the cave rippled. The six other vishakanya women stumbled backward, whispering among themselves.
“Impossible!”
“Do we trust them?”
“Never spoken—”
“Silence!” said Aleesa, holding up her hand. “What a clever proposal, thief. And yet what you do not realize is that it is impossible for you to trick us. Our poisons always draw out the truth.”
“It is the truth,” said Rudy.
He was bobbing slowly, the long coil of his tail carefully propping up an unconscious Mini. Not ten feet away, Aiden was bound by ropes of enchanted smoke, his backpack clutched in his arms. He caught Aru’s eye and mouthed, You got this, Shah.
Aru felt a small burst of warmth in her bones. She turned to face the poison maidens. “I’m not lying. I’ll hear your story. Honest.”
“Ask what you wish, then,” said Aleesa with a casual flick of her wrist. “You cannot hide what you truly think of us, thief. We shall know by the end if you intend to keep your promise.”
Aru wasn’t sure where to start. “I need to take notes or—”
“I’ve got it,” said Rudy, swinging around his backpack. “Special recording quartz coming right up.”
A moment later, he set the chunk of rock on the ground before them. The vishakanyas faced Rudy, Aru, and Mini, forming a V-like shape to keep them in one place. Aru could feel the intensity of their stares like a sunburn.
“So…uh, how did you get into the business of…being poisonous?” tried Aru.
“You assume we had a choice,” said one of the maidens with a sharp laugh.
“You didn’t?” asked Aru, frowning.
“Many of us were simply poor and sold by our own families for food,” said the third poison maiden. “Or we were destined to become young, childless widows, and no one believed our families would want to keep us, so they gave us to the harems.”
“We were fed delicacies laced with poison,” said another. “We were taught to sing and dance, to converse like the best courtesans. We were made beautiful.”
The poison maidens stamped their feet against the cave floor, and Aru saw images flicker across the rock as if it were a screen. In one flashback, young girls wept in dark chambers. In another, a girl whose skin was tinged green reached eagerly to play with a kitten that had wandered into the courtyard. One moment the kitten purred and rubbed against the girl’s wrist. The next moment, the kitten stopped moving.
The images vanished.
“We were made to be weapons,” said Aleesa softly. “We were made to be loathed, not loved. We were made to carry out murder, not carry any children.”
Aru thought back to how the poison maidens had tended to the jewels, how they had touched them with a motherly gentleness. They were, Aru realized, the only things the poison maidens could touch without killing.
“When the wars ended, we were nothing more than deadly entertainment, like cobras released from a basket,” said another maiden. “There are those who can live that kind of life, but we could no longer bear it. Lord Vasuki gave us sanctuary in his treasury halls.” She gestured to the cave. “He gave us something to love and to tend. A place where we would never have to do harm again.”
Aru looked around the cavern, which held jewels but nothing else. “What about, um, food?”
“We eat nothing,” said Aleesa. “Our captors fed us a poison that gave us long life but not immortality. Without constant feeding, it leaves our systems little by little.” She bowed her head. “One day we will know the death we inflicted on others. Some deaths we regretted. Others…we relished.”
The poison maidens didn’t need to cast more images on the floor for Aru to picture what they had done. She could imagine how enemy kings and princes might have seen one of them as merely another beautiful girl. Perhaps some of their victims had tried to court them, writing poems or singing songs.
Perhaps some had tried to take what they wanted.
That thought turned Aru’s stomach even more than the poisonous fumes hanging in the air.
“So, thief, do you intend to remember our tale, as you promised?” demanded Aleesa, her chin at a defiant angle. “We know you think of us as monsters now.”
Aru did not hesitate. “I don’t think you’re monsters.”
Aleesa’s eyes widened. “What?”
Aru thought of all the individuals she had met over the last few years. Her father, who had wanted to be her dad and ended up her nemesis. Lady M and her lost beauty, the identical wives of the sun god, and even the Palace of Illusions, living in a place between life and death. All of them would have been called monstrous at one point or another.