The Surviving Sky, page 27
Her fingers touched her lips. She wavered as Iravan’s sobs echoed in her ears. He had looked so desperate, so alone, examining her face like it was a stranger’s. She knew what she had to do; she had made up her mind already.
Ahilya counted slowly to twenty. Then, glancing behind her, she waved the rudra bead bracelet Iravan had given her, and the bark slid open to reveal the staircase again. Silently, she climbed down, following the muffled voices of the councilors.
29
AHILYA
Their voices drifted up to Ahilya almost instantly.
“—given instructions,” Kiana said. “The lab is gathering reports from the rest of the ashram.”
“Thank rages you stopped her when you did, Iravan.” Chaiyya’s voice sounded heavy. “A few more minutes and the rudra tree would have split.”
There was a tense silence. Ahilya pressed herself back to the wall. She had climbed down to the last step. Carefully, she peered around the corner and saw four shadowy shapes, illuminated by sungineering glowglobes. The councilors stood in what looked like a curving corridor. As Ahilya watched, another shape joined them.
“She’s asleep,” Airav said, and he sounded exhausted. “But she will have to be excised tonight. She trajected through a deathchamber. I don’t know how well even the deathcage will hold her, despite the layered forcefields. I have at least a dozen architects maintaining those in a chamber below the garden. I dare not have them guarding her face-to-face lest she find a way to traject them. I’ve never seen so much power.”
“Her family,” Chaiyya said, clearing her throat. “We should send for them. Tariya and the boys—and Ahilya—”
“No.” Iravan’s voice was quiet. Hard.
“They’re Bharavi’s family,” Chaiyya protested, horrified. “They have a right to see her before her excision, to comfort her.”
“I am her family,” Iravan replied. “I will comfort her.”
There was another deep silence. Ahilya’s heart clawed up her throat. In her mind’s eye, she imagined Iravan staring at the others, silent and still, unwilling to move.
“The excision,” Chaiyya began. “Who will perform—”
“I will,” Iravan said.
“You don’t have the strength in the Moment,” Airav said. “Not after—”
“Don’t test me, Airav,” Iravan cut in softly. “Not tonight.”
The silence that greeted his words was tenser than any before. Ahilya shivered despite herself. Iravan’s voice had been calm. He’d said his words without anger or rancor, but there was a naked threat underlying his tone. The man who had wept at Ahilya’s shoulder only minutes before had disappeared.
One, two, three heartbeats passed.
Then Airav said, “Very well.”
A note of finality and regret steeped the Senior Architect’s voice. Sweat broke out over Ahilya. A bitter taste entered her mouth.
The shadows moved, coming back toward her. Panicked, she slipped out of the stairwell and ran on light feet in the opposite direction. The bark closed behind her, but she had no way of knowing: Were they going back into the temple proper? Would they come down the corridor? A few feet away, she pressed herself against the leafy wall. Tendrils reached over her slowly, then faster, responding to her petrified desire to hide. In seconds, Ahilya was covered in soft, thick leaves.
Two shapes came toward her, murmuring in low voices.
“—pact, maybe for the best,” Airav was saying. “We won’t know until later.”
“A pact is never for the best.” Chaiyya sounded troubled. “There are other ways, better ways. And for him to carry it out, the way he is? Laksiya is right—he’s still a danger—”
“We will just have to keep an eye—”
“But if it’s true? We’ve lost Bharavi already. We can’t lose him too, Airav. We just can’t.”
Then the two passed Ahilya, their footsteps fading, voices receding.
Ahilya broke through her leaf cover and jogged in the direction they had come from, toward Iravan. The two Senior Sungineers must have left for the main courtyard of the temple, for there was no sign of them. Keeping to the wall, Ahilya hurried forward. She glimpsed the white of Iravan’s kurta disappear into another stairwell, then bark closed behind him.
Once again, Ahilya began her count. She made it to five before impatience and nervousness got the better of her. Using the rudra bead bracelet, she opened the wall again.
This time, the staircase led upward, curving over and over. Ahilya could hear Iravan’s tread above her. As quietly as she could, she followed, keeping to the wall. Her husband was alone, but all her instinct told her to be silent. There had been something in his voice—in his face—And his words… Why send Ahilya to Tariya but refuse Tariya from comforting Bharavi before she was stripped away from her trajection? Why send Ahilya at all, when it should have been one of the councilors to break the news of Bharavi’s Ecstasy to her family? No, that had been a distraction. A way to get rid of Ahilya, no questions asked.
The staircase opened up to the night air.
Ahilya stepped onto a terrace. She was above the temple, she realized. A million stars shone down to give her light. Nakshar had finally flown through the cloud cover, for there was no sign of the storm from earlier.
The terrace was like a secret garden. Rosebushes and topiary writhed and curled, attempting to return after the damage to what must have been their archival design. Ahilya picked her way through the foliage, past nooks and alcoves. She let the fragrant breeze wash over her. The budding garden was so beautiful, the night so peaceful, that for a moment, she forgot why she was here.
She came to a stop down a winding path. About fifty feet away from her, a clearing interrupted the garden. No foliage grew there. Instead, the clearing was pure white stone. A golden dome shimmered above the stone, reaching so high, it seemed like its own building. Ahilya crept closer, moving at an angle, keeping to the expanding bushes.
The golden shimmering came from nearly a dozen layers of deathchambers. Their lights crisscrossed in a complex labyrinth like a dense web. Within the web stood a stone platform about waist-high. Bharavi lay on it, looking diminutive. Her chest rose and fell in deep sleep. Her body glowed with the light of trajection, blue-green shapes twinkling through the translucent robe of her uniform.
And at the edge of the golden light, staring at Bharavi, stood Iravan.
Shadows fell over him, throwing the angles of his face into sharp relief. In the golden light, Ahilya saw his sleeves rolled back like they always were, except now his arms were bare, not a single rudra bead in sight. The absence of the black beads, despite the white of his Senior Architect’s uniform, made him look unexpectedly… sinister. Iravan fiddled with something in his hands, but except for that, his body was utterly still.
Ahilya did not know how long he stood there, unmoving, or how long she waited, watching him, but the stars grew deep in the sky and the temperature dropped, leaving her cold.
Then on the stone slab within the web of deathchambers, Bharavi stirred and stretched.
It was as though that was the sign Iravan had been waiting for.
He pocketed whatever had been in his hands and walked into the golden light, through one forcefield into another. Ahilya drew in as close as she could, still hugging the foliage. Bharavi sat up on her stone slab, her radiance astonishing, watching Iravan as he approached. Only one forcefield separated them, but Iravan didn’t make to enter it. Instead, he extended a fist to knock and Ahilya realized the last layer was no ordinary forcefield of a deathchamber, but a layer made of glass. He could not get through it. She was looking at a giant deathbox. Deathcage, Airav had called it.
Iravan nodded to himself. A stone bench waited just outside the glass, evidently for visitors. He sat down on it, his elbows on his knees, his fingers interlocked. Ahilya saw Bharavi’s mouth move. Iravan studied her for a long, silent moment.
Then he said something in reply.
Unable to hear them, her stomach clenching in sudden fear, Ahilya watched from the silent shadows.
30
IRAVAN
Iravan,” Bharavi said in her clear, musical voice. “Are you here to release me?”
Yes, he thought, but he couldn’t form the word.
His heart grew cold. He watched her as though from a great distance. Irrelevant details came to him. The air smelled of honeyfruit. His hair was damp, grit settled in it. How long had it been since he’d eaten? In the sanctum earlier that morning, while ridding himself of his wheelchair. Had that only been this morning? It seemed so long ago.
“You’re still trajecting,” he said, at last.
Bharavi glanced down at her arms, where her tattoos moved in strange, unfamiliar shapes.
“I suppose you could call it that,” she said, shrugging.
“What would you call it?”
“I don’t have a name for it yet.”
“Ecstatic trajection? Supertrajection?”
Bharavi smiled at him across the glass. “If you like.”
“There’s nothing in there. What are you trajecting?”
She extended an elegant hand. “The jungle.”
Iravan drew in a sharp breath. “How’s that possible? You’re in the deathcage.”
“I’ll tell you if you let me out.”
“So, you’re trying to escape?” Iravan asked, watching her. “It’s not possible, Bha.”
“Are you sure, Iravan?” she asked lightly. “Certain you know everything about Ecstasy and about me?”
Iravan stared at her, and she smiled. For a brief second, he forgot the absurdity of the situation. It was like she was mentoring him again, and he was one step behind, trying to guess her mind.
“Why the jungle?” he asked.
“It’s where we belong. In the jungle. Not the ski—”
“We die in the jungle,” he said. “The earthrages kill us.”
Bharavi just laughed, the sound inordinately melodious.
Iravan closed his eyes in a long, slow blink, willing himself to breathe slowly. He looked back at her, and she watched him patiently, so like herself that his resolve almost cracked. Underneath his wavering indifference, the man who had wept next to Ahilya clawed at him, feeling the horror of this moment.
“This power,” he said, swallowing. “How long have you been an Ecstatic?”
Bharavi lifted her arms, her skin gleaming blue-green, the patterns growing so complex that he couldn’t keep track. “It has grown. I have been wrestling with it for months.”
Iravan closed his eyes in shame.
Months.
This was his fault, for not keeping to vigilance. He had thought Bharavi had been easy on him, but in fact he had been easy on her. Ahilya’s voice washed over on him. If only you’d been at the watchpost ; and Airav said, It’s time to act like a Senior Architect. Laksiya had thought he was too young, too reckless for the job, but he had not been too young. He had just not been good enough. Not smart enough.
Iravan opened his eyes to see Bharavi still studying him.
“You battled this power,” he said. “And you lost?”
“A poor choice of words, if you only knew what Ecstasy meant, but I gave into it truly when I landed the ashram less than two weeks ago.”
“When you landed—” Iravan’s interlocked hands clenched. “That was you. You were on watchpost duty before we landed. You called for the landing. Did you manipulate the magnaroot then somehow?”
“I didn’t realize that’s what I was doing. But the first few experiences are… mystifying. Surely you understand.”
“Did you manipulate it when Naila was in there, too?” Iravan asked relentlessly, knowing the answers now but foolishly seeking her denial as though that would help the situation. “Somehow, you stopped the magnaroot from becoming thorny. You trajected the rudra tree, didn’t you? Bypassed its impenetrable permissions and forced it to forget that an earthrage was happening at all?”
Bharavi leaned forward on her seat. “I’m sorry you had to carry that burden,” she said, and there was genuine regret in her voice. “I couldn’t be found out. Not until I could convince everyone this is how things should be, how architects should be—not until I had a case.”
“And voting to have me Examined would give you that time?”
She gazed at him, her face unreadable.
“I won’t deny I voted yes for your Examination. I called for it, you know—even though Chaiyya said you needed more rest. But I knew you’d pass, Iravan. If I’d waited—if the council had waited to test you—another day, another week, it would have been too late. You’d have failed. It would have been you in this deathcage. As it turns out, you have more time to remain undetected.”
Iravan’s throat tightened. In his heart, he knew she was telling the truth.
“I suppose it doesn’t matter now,” Bharavi continued. “One slip is all it takes. I was careless. You will be too.”
“All those things you said to me in the sanctum. You were talking about yourself.”
“I needed to know—if there was a way to control the power—”
“And is there?” Iravan asked, his eyes burning into hers. “Have you found control, then?”
“I’ve found,” Bharavi said softly, “acceptance.”
When he continued to stare at her, she shrugged again, the gesture graceful.
“It’s not something to be controlled, Iravan. It’s something to be embraced. I see that now. You’ll see too.”
Iravan’s humorless laugh rang out, disturbing the quiet of the starlit sky.
“So, that’s it, then?” he asked, bitterly. “That’s my inevitable fate? After all this? After the Exam—after everything? Did it start the same way with you? Did you feel a Resonance too?”
Bharavi shook her head in amusement. “Resonance. Yes, that’s quaint.”
“What is it?”
“A sign of Ecstasy. But you accept that now, don’t you?” For a moment, her shoulders dropped in regret. “I tried to veer you away from it—send you back to Ahilya, when you told me about it after the landing. But you succumbed to it so easily. Do you know why?”
“Don’t—”
“Because in your heart you know how right Ecstasy is.”
“That’s not—”
“It’s too late for you now,” Bharavi said, leaning back. “You’ve associated with this Resonance too much. Your ascent is even faster than mine. What you did in the jungle, that was sign enough. And then the library—”
“That was you, then?” Iravan said. He’d worked it out in the last few hours, but hearing her confirm it made the weight in his heart heavier. “That other force that knocked me out?”
Bharavi nodded.
“You helped me,” he said, hearing the note of childish hope in his own voice.
“Helped you? I suppose I did, but it was accidental. I defeated an irritating obstruction.”
Spiralweed, he thought, feeling the deathbox still in his pocket. “How did you know of the attack in the library?”
Bharavi grinned at him. “I was… supertrajecting at the time.”
“That’s why the Maze Architects didn’t sense the spiralweed in the Moment. You were holding it back.”
“Yes.”
“You were protecting the ashram. You still care.”
She said nothing, but her indulgent smile spoke volumes. Believe whatever makes this easier for you.
Iravan’s mouth cracked into an identical twisted smile. “Still couldn’t defeat the weed, could you? Despite your supertrajection?”
“I’ll admit your help was welcome.”
Iravan snorted softly, and for a while they sat in silence, watching each other across the glass. She looked so at peace with herself that something within Iravan’s chest leapt in hot envy.
“What about Tariya and the boys?” he said, and at this, his voice choked, some of his restraint slipped.
Bharavi’s face grew sad, shadows drawing over it.
“I loved them, didn’t I?” she asked softly.
You still do, he thought in anguish, but he whispered, “Very much.”
She said nothing, but her mouth trembled. Unreasonably, this indication of grief and indecision escalated his anger. Iravan remembered Ahilya’s face as the bark closed in the temple. He had seen Tariya’s face in his wife’s; he had seen Kush and Arth.
“You said balance was possible,” he said harshly. “You said you could do it. Then do it.”
“It’s not that easy. Manav was right.”
“You won’t do it for your wife? For your children?”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I know you care for them.”
“They’re my family, too.”
“Yes, but balance… I’m not sure it’s desirable. I’m sorry, Iravan. You’re in for a rough time. You’ll try to fight it—I know you will. But sooner or later, you’ll give in. You’ll see there’s no fight at all. You are on your way and there’s no going back. And let’s face it—you and Ahilya—”
“You know nothing about me and Ahilya,” he snarled.
She just shook her head, reminding him of her old self, gentle and exasperated with him.
“We are nothing like you and Tariya,” he repeated. “I told you that when we landed.”
Bharavi shook her arms out and stood up, appearing tired of the conversation. Iravan sat on his bench, his chest heaving, trying to control his breathing. He watched her as she circled her glass cage, tapping at one narrow pane after another. Her skin grew brighter, the blue-green light beams ricocheting off the panes and the polished stone slab.
“The deathcage will hold,” he repeated warily. “You can’t traject your way out. You know that.”
“We shall see.”
“It has held Ecstatics before, Bha.”
“Not me. My powers are… untested. I don’t know the limits of Ecstasy yet. No one does.”
