Page 18 of The Surviving Sky
Or perhaps, he considered, the plants were reacting to Ahilya’s desire.
As the expedition’s leader, she strode ahead of him, her posture mutinous, head held high, a path opening in front of her a few steps at a time. They walked in a single file, Iravan stumbling half a step behind her, Oam bringing up the rear. Iravan ducked as a misshapen rosewood shot out a branch. The plants were attacking him.Ahilyawas attacking him. When he dared to glance behind, Oam seemed to have no trouble at all. The boy grinned at him maliciously, a smile with all teeth.
Iravan tightened his jaw. He didn’t say anything, and he didn’t traject to take control. The plants couldn’t truly hurt him; the rudra tree was embedded with permissions toprotectarchitects. Here, though, farther away from the tree, these near misses were to be expected. He even deserved it; he had behaved like a brute. Iravan slackened his headlamp, slid a finger under the wrist compass, and continued the march.
When the branches stopped startling him, it took him a moment to understand why. Ahilya had come to a standstill. Iravan drew up to her, but she paid him no mind. Instead, she stared at the dense snakeroot bush blocking their path. Her hands curled into tight fists. Her eyes narrowed. The snakeroot bush ran shoulder-height, its branches knotted together, unbreachable. A small gap in the brambles opened. One thin branch trembled, unfurled, then collapsed.
“Do you want me to take over?” Iravan asked quietly.
“You’re accompanying us for a reason, aren’t you?” she snapped. She moved aside and crossed her arms over her chest, without looking at him.
Iravan reached into the Moment.
He dove toward a golden star where the snakeroot lay curled tightly. Binding several constellation lines to it, he streaked past its other possibilities to the star where the bush had begun to decay. His dust mote tied the two stars together in a layered knot. The constellation lines shimmered and snapped together in a miniature maze.
The snakeroot bush uncurled. Clusters of tiny white flowers grew and fell at Ahilya’s feet, straying all along the path that opened into the darkness.
All of it had taken Iravan less than a second, but it was a fraction too long. He could feel the difficulty of trajection that he had tried to explain to Bharavi. The exhaustion rippled in him, deep within his bones, past the floating sensation of the universe. Refusing to show his unease, Iravan extended a gallant hand into the widening pathway.
Ahilya looked at him, her eyes glittering. She made a brisk motion with her head, and Oam brushed past, his shoulder knocking into Iravan.
Iravan kept his gaze on his wife. He knew she could see it, what the tension between them was doing to her youthful protégé. The way she clenched and unclenched herfists—shewanted to punish Iravan but knew this was not the time. She wanted to go into the jungle but didn’t want to need him. She was clearly hiding something, butwhat? It couldn’t be Oam’s infatuation. Iravan had seen at a glance she was using the boy. Besides, disloyalty wasn’t her failing. Obstinacy was.
Iravan sighed. She would never make the first move.
When Ahilya stepped behind Oam, he widened the path so they could walk side by side.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I shouldn’t havebeen—”
“Cruel? Selfish? An utter bastard?”
“So dramatic,” he said, giving her a wan smile. “I shouldn’t have been so dramatic.”
Quiet though their voices were, they echoed within the bush’s corridor. Oam could hear them, but there was nothing to be done about it. Besides, the young man had already heard the two of them fight; it couldn’t be any worse to see them try and make peace.
Ahilya must have been thinking along the same lines. Iravan knew his wife too well to assume she had forgiven him so quickly, but despite the effort he knew it took her, she forced herself to speak now that they had begun.
“Why didn’t the bush respond to me? We’re still in the city, aren’t we?”
“It’s a matter of efficiency and priority. The closer we get to the briar wall at the boundary, the less flexibility Maze Architects inject into the plants of the outer maze.”
“It’s never been a problem before. All the previous times, the outer maze still obeyed me.”
“It’s been a bad earthrage, Ahilya. The architects need this lull more than you can imagine.”
Ahilya’s brow furrowed further. Oam turned with an uncertain look. The crunch of their footsteps echoed within the thick brush walls.
“You said this before,” Ahilya said, still frowning. “What did you mean?”
Iravan pursed his lips. How to explain matters that he didn’t understand himself, and which the council would not want him to air in front of citizens like Oam? Ahilya was hiswife—shewas anexception—butif ordinary citizens heard a Senior Architect mention that trajection was getting harder, the rumors and panic it could spread within Nakshar would be disastrous.
He would never have unlocked this channel of conversation had he thought for a moment of where it could lead. Bharavi had been right. Hewastired. Overworked from all the months of the last earthrage.
“Nothing, really,” he said, keeping his voice casual. “The previous lull only lasted fourteen days before we had to fly again. Lulls are becoming shorter and earthrages longer. It’s easier to traject during lulls, but we just don’t have as much of a break as we’d like between flights. It’s why I didn’t visit. I stayed on duty longer than I should have.”
Ahilya’s expression changed, from indignance into confusion. Iravan looked away to the unrolling path.
Strictly speaking, his statement was not entirely true. Trajectionhadbecomeharder—heknew that, no matter what Bharavisaid—buthe’d been angry with Ahilya, too angry. He had chosen to live within the temple, ostensibly to assist the Disc Architects, when in fact the thought of going to his wife after the way they had left things had been too much.
