The Surviving Sky, page 37
“I’ll give this information to you if you promise to go after Iravan,” Ahilya said.
Silence greeted her words. Dhruv shifted next to her. Airav’s lips lifted in a humorless smile; he alone of the councilors had perhaps guessed at her intention.
“That’s impossible,” Laksiya said flatly. “We don’t have the energy.”
“You’ll make the energy,” Ahilya said, but she didn’t look at the sungineer. She took in Airav and Chaiyya, the two Senior Architects, with her gaze. “Iravan is out there somewhere. We have a location on him. He can’t be far, not if we can track him. This is his design, isn’t it? The way the ashram is right now? His landing architecture that you’re relying on?”
“It’s not that easy—” Kiana began.
“We don’t have the resources,” Chaiyya said. “Ahilya, I’m sorry—I really am—but the ashram is our priority—”
“He’s one of you. He’s alive. You’re content to just abandon him?”
“It’s not so clear-cut. As councilors, we have to think of the greater good—”
“Then think of the greater good,” Ahilya implored, leaning forward. “Think of what you will lose if I don’t give you my information. Find a way to bring him back or we have nothing more to discuss.” She stood up. Her head spun; she hadn’t eaten in so very long.
“You would hold the entire ashram hostage?” Airav asked softly, speaking finally. “Your sister? Your nephews? All these lives? Our ashrams and the others?”
“Your oldest tradition is an architect’s need for material bonds,” Ahilya replied coolly. “Perhaps that thinking is finally reaping its true fruits.”
The Senior Architect didn’t blink. Ahilya turned and climbed over the bench and walked away. She heard Dhruv mutter something to the councilors, then he joined her and they both sat down cross-legged on the floor of the courtyard, their eyes on the ring of the councilors.
Ahilya started to shake. She clutched her belly with her free arm and leaned forward, heaving, trying to catch a breath. What had she done? Had she truly given such an ultimatum? What if they didn’t agree? Could she hold herself to her words? And what about the child that was growing in her? To make such a decision and put herself in danger now…
Out of the corner of her eye she saw Dhruv’s boots nudge the grass. He was furious, she knew. He’s a charmer, Ahilya. He’s a charmer. All their agreements and deals and experiments seemed so laughable now. Their ambitions to the council, their attempts to change the world—Hysteria built in Ahilya’s mind. Her cast itched. You would hold the entire ashram hostage?
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, trying to cut out the noise in her head.
Dhruv didn’t reply. She was almost grateful for his silence. Nothing he could say would change what she’d done. Nothing could justify the choice that she’d made.
“You’ve lost your mind,” Dhruv muttered at last. “There’s safety here for you and your child. They’d make you a councilor just for the information you give them. Rages, if we survive this, then with Iravan, Bharavi, and Manav gone, they could make both of us councilors. The mandatory five-year timeline for the council seat would no longer apply, not when the total councilors number only four. We could have everything we ever wanted. You could have everything you wanted.”
“Not everything.”
“Not Iravan, you mean?”
She made no reply to that. “Will they do it?” she asked instead. “Find a way?”
Dhruv removed his glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose with two fingers. “There is a way. They need to test the prototype battery that Kiana and I have built. They’ve been vacillating because of its potential dangers, but you’ve just forced them to take that step.”
Ahilya watched the councilors in the distance, their hunched postures, their whispered arguments. Several times, one or the other leaned over to look at her, then returned to their whispering. Potential dangers, Dhruv had said; but the greatest danger of a battery was its potential to enslave architects. Was that what the council was discussing now? What survival and civilization would look like if they took that step? She looked away, her stomach roiling. She could not believe this was the choice she had made; a part of her wished to get up and take back her ultimatum, now before it was too late; before she led them down a path that would only mean their eventual destruction. But Ahilya sat unmoving on the grass, Iravan’s voice in her head, saying, Don’t leave me.
“Do you remember when we were children?” Dhruv said, still massaging his forehead. “That one time when Nakshar was landing and everyone was told to return to their homes to be safe? You were seven, and I was ten, and you wanted to go to the temple to your parents. Tariya and I were babysitting you, but you were such a brat that Tariya finally left to her friends’ home just to get away. But I, fool boy that I was, indulged your tantrum.”
Dhruv had led her by the hand, his other fist clutched around an old-fashioned sungineering lamp as they roamed the darkness, searching the ashram’s architecture for the temple. When Nakshar had landed, the two had been caught in the foliage, cocooned in rock and bark. A search party of Maze Architects had finally found them.
“I think about that so often,” Dhruv went on, his voice muffled as he continued to press his forehead. “I got into so much trouble, and your Maze Architect parents threatened to exile my whole family because of the danger I put you in. They would have done it too, but you told them if I disappeared, you would run away to the jungle. You were seven—there was no way you could have done that—but they must have known you’d do something rash. You protected me despite the trouble you got into yourself.”
“I’d still do anything for you,” Ahilya murmured.
“Not for me,” Dhruv said. “For you. You protected me because I was yours to protect, everything else be damned. You really would let the world plummet to protect those who are yours. That used to be me when we were children. And Tariya and the boys have always had that consideration. But Iravan supersedes us all now.”
“He’s my husband.”
The sungineer shook his head. “It’s why you became an archeologist. You could have been a sungineer or a mathematician or anything else. But you needed something that was yours—wholly, fully, truly yours. Something that couldn’t be touched by anything or anyone else. And so, you found the deadest field in the world.”
Ahilya watched the councilors. Kiana and Laksiya were silent, but Chaiyya was shaking her head, pressing Airav’s arm, evidently begging him to reconsider.
“I never did like him, you know?” Dhruv went on, and Ahilya knew he was talking about Iravan. “Even when you first started courting him. He was arrogant and high-handed and so damned aware of his own charm that he used it ruthlessly like a weapon. But he did one thing with you that no one has. He didn’t enable your selfishness.”
Ahilya’s eyes met Dhruv’s. She couldn’t think of a single thing to say.
“Do you think,” Dhruv asked softly, “he’d want you to do what you’re doing right now?”
They stared at each other. She knew he was right—about Iravan, about her. A chill went through Ahilya. Iravan against the world. That’s what her choices had come down to. That, in the end, was the price of survival. Don’t leave me, he had said, but he would have asked her to stay had he known this. He would have stayed to protect Nakshar, given the same choices; done what was right, overcome the pull of his bonds to her for his bonds to the ashram, no matter how much it hurt.
But she couldn’t. She couldn’t.
Dhruv patted her hand with his. “You two deserve each other.”
His words were like a slap on her face. Ahilya grew cold. She rose to her feet mechanically as Airav waved at them. Dhruv joined her, and they approached the bench and sat down again, neither of them speaking.
“We’ll do it,” Airav said without preamble. “Do you want us to make a healbranch promise?”
“No,” Ahilya whispered. “I trust you.”
“Then tell us your information. And if it’s sound, we’ll find a way to take you to Iravan.”
Ahilya didn’t dare glance at Dhruv. Guilt weighed her down, shaking her resolve. Quietly, her voice dull, she told them everything she and her husband had worked out right before the attack, about the yakshas being sentient beings, about their habitat in the jungle, about the real reason behind the earthrages. They listened, spellbound, as she told them how she and Iravan had connected the missing pieces within the architects’ records, how they had decoded the historical fear of the jungle, how they’d thought proof lay in the evolution of spiralweed. When Ahilya reached the part about yakshas trajecting, Chaiyya let out a startled exclamation.
“It makes sense,” the Senior Architect breathed, her hand around her pregnant belly. “The suddenness of the attack, and why the third quadrant was destroyed. This was why none of our battle trajection worked against the creature.”
“How is this possible?” Kiana asked. “Yakshas have never attacked humans before. What could prompt this, even if we are to believe they can traject?”
“It’s not trajection,” Ahilya said wearily. Iravan had been silent only about one thing while navigating the conversation, but Ahilya had worked it out for herself. “It’s Energy X. It’s the same as Ecstatic trajection. Dhruv has already engineered something that uses Ecstasy. You want an alternate source of energy to replace trajection? Find a way to harness a yaksha. That’s why the elephant-yaksha’s tracker remained charged for the last five years. This is probably why Iravan’s tracker right now is working. The falcon-yaksha must be trajecting Ecstatically. For us to be able to pick up the signal—the falcon and Iravan, they must be close enough to reach.”
The others turned their gaze to Dhruv. He didn’t meet their eyes, but his shoulders trembled.
“The yakshas are neither predator nor prey,” Ahilya said. “At least, they haven’t been, before—even the histories agree to that. But something triggered the falcon-yaksha to attack. I don’t know what, but its eyes had a pattern I’ve only noticed once before on the elephant-yaksha during the last expedition. I can draw it for you, but I suspect that those patterns work the same as an architect’s tattoos. They only appear when the yaksha is trajecting. This is all I know—I swear it. And now it’s your turn to fulfill your end of the bargain.”
“We can never get close enough to a yaksha if this is true,” Laksiya said, turning to Chaiyya. “How does this help us?”
“It’s still information we can relay to the others,” Chaiyya replied. “Not everyone’s situation is as desperate as ours.”
“But the implications of this,” Gaurav said, leaning in. “If we’re not the only trajectors in the world… if our histories are so incomplete, what else is being kept from us?”
“I think you’re all forgetting the ethical implications,” Kiana said quietly. “Are we suggesting we want to drain a harmless creature and enslave it for our own existence?”
“It’s hardly harmless—”
“This is exactly why normal citizens don’t like us—”
Someone touched Ahilya’s shoulder. Airav had risen and approached her. He extended his hand, and she stood up and left the arguments of the council. Airav and Dhruv followed her. Ahilya still couldn’t meet Dhruv’s gaze, and Airav seemed lost in thought. The three walked silently until they reached the shrunken rudra tree.
Then the Senior Architect turned to her. “I can’t claim to understand your thinking. But you have helped, and I will honor our agreement.”
“You’ll take the ashram to Iravan, then?” Ahilya asked, hope rising in her chest.
“No. But I will send you to him.”
She frowned, glanced at Dhruv, then back again at the Senior Architect. “How?”
“You’ll see. But it behooves me to tell you this, Ahilya-ve,” the Senior Architect said. “This attempt is suicidal. You will most likely crash into the earthrage. We don’t know if our idea will work, or if the architecture will last long enough for you to track Iravan down. You don’t rightly even know where he is, and Dhruv has told me that Iravan’s tracker could die any moment. You’ll be flying out in the dark alone, and even if you find Iravan, how do you intend to rescue him if the falcon-yaksha can traject Ecstatically?”
Ahilya made no reply. Her arm beneath the cast twinged. Her stomach churned. She thought of the fetus forming in her body. It had no consciousness yet, a mere mass of cells. But Iravan was alive. He was alive.
“I see,” Airav said. “And therefore, I must ask you. Are you sure you want to attempt this? You have no obligation to anyone—not even to Iravan—to risk your life in such a manner. You are a citizen, Ahilya-ve, and you are to be protected, not imperiled, least of all in your condition. I must emphasize that there is very little chance of success.”
“As much a chance of success as you have with my information,” she said.
“I suppose so.” Airav turned to Dhruv, as though he had known already his words would have no effect. “If you wouldn’t mind, please get your battery ready. Ahilya-ve, I suggest you say your goodbyes. The elevator will take you to the temple’s terrace. I’ll see you there in half an hour.”
“You’re sending her now?” Dhruv asked, stunned.
“There’s no reason to wait,” Airav said. He started to walk away, back to the councilors, but Ahilya touched his arm and he looked up, surprised.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
Senior Architect Airav tilted his head, studying her from behind his glasses. A weak smile grew on his features. “You know, Ahilyave, I don’t think you are. But you seem to be doing what you think is right. And that’s all any of us can do.”
Ahilya’s hand fell away. She nodded, her throat thick again.
“Now, please,” Airav said, gesturing gently. “Do as I say. It’s time.”
39
AHILYA
Tariya didn’t try to stop her. She only said, her voice very quiet,
“You’re leaving me too.”
Ahilya’s tongue felt heavy. She swallowed, trying to dislodge the pain in her throat, trying to lessen the guilt in her stomach, but she could not lie to her sister, not now, not after everything that had happened. She was leaving; she was taking herself away from Tariya the way their parents had, the way Bharavi had been taken away. The despair grew in her sister’s big eyes, hidden behind a veil of indifference and anger. Tariya would not say any more, but she would spiral deeper into her sadness. Ahilya knew this, and the thought choked her now.
“I need to do this,” she whispered. “For Iravan. For myself. Please.”
Tariya said nothing. She simply turned away, her shoulders slumped, her body shuddering, and Ahilya recognized the weakness of her own words. Iravan was likely dead; she had told Tariya what had happened, how he had been snatched away, how low the chances were of finding him. Ahilya could almost hear her sister’s thought, the sick vindication. In the end, everyone had left Tariya, and Ahilya was now going to be one of them, however she justified it. Tariya would not believe anything else—and in this moment, Ahilya had no words to refute her.
She kissed a sleeping Arth and Kush, hugged an unmoving Tariya, then walked away from the infirmary floor before her nerve failed her. A satchel filled with some food and water, identical to the bag she took on her expedition, weighed her shoulders down.
Dhruv’s words consumed her mind. Was that what she forced people to do? Enable her own selfishness? Airav must have known she wouldn’t back down. The Senior Architect had barely argued; he had almost expected her to do what she had. Ahilya held her cast close, her throat burning with thick shame. The elevator ascended through the silent, dying ashram.
She stepped off at Nakshar’s only rooftop terrace. Wind buffeted her at once, blowing her hair back and chilling her to the bone. Small and circular, the terrace was shaped like a cave, open to the skies on a side but covered everywhere else with hard bark. Thick gray clouds slipped in through the skyward side and cut away. A fading sun glistened behind the mist. Vertigo gripped Ahilya. She swayed on her feet, terrified. For a long second, she was unable to move, her breath panicked. What was she doing? She wasn’t a hero. She was nobody. But then Dhruv waved her over from a corner, and it was too late to change her mind.
The sungineer was tinkering with the forcefield of a solid glass deathbox within which a tiny spiralweed leaf fluttered, green and bulbous. As she approached, Dhruv pointed to a pile of sungineering equipment without looking at her. “Got some things for you.”
Ahilya knelt and sifted through his equipment: a wrist-compass, two twines of rope, folding shovels, machetes, a telescope, a brand-new solarnote, and—she saw—the duplicate elephant-yaksha tracker in the form of a necklace. Her throat thickened with emotion. The tracker’s surface was like glass. It chimed softly, and a red dot blinked far into the dark east, away from the setting sun. Iravan.
“Thank you,” she whispered as she slipped the necklace around her neck and the equipment into her satchel.
The elevator bark she had come through split open and Airav emerged. He removed some of his rudra bead bracelets and necklaces as he approached her.
“I’m no architect,” she said as he made to hand the beads over.
“These contain emergency permissions,” Airav said. “To navigate your aircraft and to manipulate the plants inside. If everything works well with the battery, these ought to work concurrently with the craft, as though you were in a miniature Nakshar.”
Ahilya accepted the beads, but their weight was uncomfortable, like wearing someone else’s clothes. Not even Iravan’s beads had felt so heavy. She had once been envious of Naila; she had wanted beads like these as a councilor, but she didn’t deserve them. The weight in her stomach grew leaden. Silently, she tucked the jewelry under her kurta, where it was less conspicuous.
