It was a good point, but I felt like someone had to state the obvious: “What if we get stuck in there forever?”

“Let’s not,” Ashwini said brightly, and trotted off without further ado.

I looked at Lej. He looked (well, glared) at me. Then he sighed and jerked his chin in the direction Ashwini had gone, as if to say, Go on, then.

Reminding myself of the fact that just moments ago I had been determined to be brave, I tried (and failed) to ignore the vision my brain had conjured of my forlorn, dusty skeleton lying in the middle of the labyrinth I had created. Squaring my shoulders, I left the shelter of the banyan tree.

Ashwini and Lej knew how to get around the city without being seen, even in full daylight, so I followed them silently. The city was eerily quiet. I had made it that way, but I hadn’t been prepared for how it would feel to experience it. Dust lay across cobblestones that hadn’t been trod on in days, overgrown plants crept up the sides of walls, and other than a few people with carts and goods, there was almost no one out in the open. In spite of the sun’s heat, I shivered.

We kept to the edges of the streets and ducked under balconies and canopies every time a shadow swooped overhead. When we got to the wide main street that led directly up to the palace, there was no convenient cover, so our hiding places became more and more ridiculous: within an abandoned overturned car of the broken clockwork train, under the belly of a marble statue of an elephant, inside a bewildered farmer’s cart (which was full of onions), and, worst of all, behind the cobwebby leaves of an enormous, poisonous vine.

But we made it to Mysore Palace without being gobbled up by a hungry Asura or poisoned by a vine the size of Jack’s beanstalk, so at least there was that.

“Oh,” I said softly, forgetting all about the onions and cobwebs.

In spite of the unkempt grounds, the rusty gates, and the neglect, the palace was breathtaking.

The gates of Mysore Palace stood open, creaky and rusty from disuse, and the grounds that bordered the palace were sad and overgrown. Mulberry bushes, ashoka trees, and pepper vines lined a terra-cotta brick driveway that had once been used by chariots. Thorns and burrs prickled my pajamas as we stepped between the open gates and trod carefully up the path. Ashwini kept one eye on the sky, where the monstrous shadows of demons circled high above, but I couldn’t take my eyes off the palace.

It towered above us, in shades of red, cream, gold, and honey. Ahead of us was a row of tall columns and enormous arches, beckoning us into the porch and deeper into the labyrinth of the palace, and above the arches were a number of red domes. And in the middle, rising up out of the heart of the palace, was the biggest domed tower, trimmed in gold, at the very top of which was the gandaberunda.