Page 1 of The Surviving Sky
1
AHILYA
The bracken didn’t react to Ahilya as it should have. She tried again, drawing her desire for the leaves to part to a single point. “Open. I want to see.”
It wasunnatural—eeriealmost—howdefiant the plants were. It was as if her limbs refused to move despite the command of her mind.
She stood alone on a wide curving terrace of her airborne city, Nakshar. An hour earlier, a dozen citizens had flocked to the promenade, seeking a final look at the open skies before Nakshar landed in the jungle. Ahilya had yearned for solitude, unwilling to conduct her study in front of them, but now she gazed at the empty bark benches, the shady trees, the soft moss floor. Everything looked the same. Then why did the bracken wall behave so differently? It had been waist-high earlier, a mere parapet, but now it towered over her, growing rapidly. Tendrils curled into tight, thorny balls. Branches squeezed together, twisting in intricate lattices. The entire structure hardened as though to deny her. And none of it responded to her desire to see beyond the city.
Ahilya jogged alongside the wall until she found a small gap in the leafy growth. There, below thick clouds within a twilit sky, waited the earth’s surface. She unslung the satchel from her shoulder. Eyes on the gap, she rummaged until she found her telescope, then dropped the bag gently by her feet.
Ahilya pressed the telescope to her face so hard, it pinched her skin. The image focused just in time for her to see another dust explosion. Her breath quickened. There was a pattern to the dust, a shift she had theorized once. For the first time, she was viewing theepicenterof the fading storm. Her hands itched to take her tablet and stylus from the satchel to draw the patterns, but there was no time. The leaves on the city’s wall were morphing too fast, she’d just have to commit the explosion tomemory—
Dark green shuttered her vision. Ahilya lowered her telescope and peered through the foliage, but the wall was relentless again. “Come on,” she muttered. “What is wrong with you? Open up a little bit, at least.”
“Nakshar’s plants won’t respond to non-architects anymore,” an amused voice called out.
Ahilya spun around.
Naila stepped off an ascending wooden pedestal that had emerged from a hole in the floor. She was dressed in her architect’s uniform: an embroidered green kurta reaching her knees, flared over narrow, pleated trousers. Her long translucent robe wafted in the breeze. Thick black beads looped around Naila’s neck; morebeads—braceletsandrings—clinkedaround her wrists and fingers, held together by thin glassy optical fibers. The Junior Architect was perhaps twenty-five, nearly a decade younger than Ahilya, but the rudra beads indicated more responsibility for their flying city than Ahilya would ever be granted. All Ahilya owned was her obligatory citizen ring.
“Ordinary citizens no longer have any control over the architecture,” Naila repeated, striding forward.
Ahilya forced a smile. “Great, you’re here. I think I sawsomething—thisincredible pattern of dust that might reveal the source of the instability down there. Will you open the wall for me? I want to sketch it.”
“You want todraw…dust?”
“I want to draw dust duringlanding,” Ahilya corrected. “It’s the best way to understand earthrages.”
“Oh, I can explain those to you,” Naila said, flicking a lock of dark hair behind her. “They’re cataclysmicstorms—”
“Yes, thank you. I’m trying to understand why they happen at all.”
“Because of a disruption ofconsciousness—”
“No, I meant, why did earthrages begin in the firstplace—”
“They’ve been around as long as wehave—”
“Howdid—”
“Really, Ahilya,” the Junior Architect said, sniffing. “These questions have already been answered. And these dust patterns you want todraw—thearchitects have studied those for years.”
Ahilya turned back to the wall. She had asked the architects for their drawings, but they had summarily rejected her requests, citing their records asprivileged architect information, a slap on the face she had never received before. “Right. Fine. Thanks for that,” she said. “Could you open this, please? I might still be able to get a few rough sketches.”
“Ican’t—”
“Sure you can. You’re an architect, aren’t you? The plants literally shift at your behest.”
Naila gave her an unimpressed look. “That’s very reductive. How can you be married to aSeniorArchitect and not know the intricacies of trajection?”
“We try not to talk about it, lest we begin arguing about how we see the world,” Ahilya said. Her voice remained mild. The workings of plant manipulation had always been too esoteric for her, but the truth was that ever since her husband had been promoted to the council, the two had stopped talking about each other’s pursuits altogether. Her fingers scrabbled at the leaves. “Please. You don’t have to open itall—justenough for me to see.”
“I can’t,” Naila said, exasperated, as though dealing with a child. “Now that there’sfinallyanother lull in the earthrages, and now that we’refinallylanding, the temple architects have enforced higher limits on the architecture.That’swhy non-architects don’t have anycontrol—”
“Butyou’re—”
“Yes, I know, but I’m aJuniorArchitect. Anything that doesn’t align with the temple’s guidance is almost impossible to do, especially by me. And they’re closing the city. Look around you. I’d be trying to fly against a windstream.”
