Page 99 of The Surviving Sky
Ahilya frowned. “She’s a Maze Architect, isn’t she? She was pregnant a few years before, but herhusband—heleft her.” She looked up. “I remember you telling me about it. It caused the council a lot of trouble.”
Iravan nodded. “Knowing there was a chance that she might be in danger of Ecstasy, and might have to be excised, her husband chose never to have the child at all. The council tried to talk him out of it, but in the end, he chose to end their marriage. And Reetha was transferred.”
Horrified, Ahilya wrapped her arms around her belly. “You never told me that.”
“It was not my secret to tell,” Iravan said. “But this is the question that architects and their spouses struggle with, Ahilya. If you knew there was a possibility that your partner could be destroyed one day in a horrible manner, that they would become so different that they’d not be the same person at all, would you still choose to be with them? Would you start a family and spend your life with them? That entire process can be testing for the marriage. One that Reetha and her husband did not pass. And we didn’t either.”
“So, Reetha can never have a child?” Ahilya asked. “The ashram lost an architect forever?”
Iravan shook his head. “There are alternatives. Reetha did have another child. The healers assisted her and she was watched carefully for how attached she was to the baby. She is a Maze Architect in Kinshar now but on probation.”
Ahilya glanced at him, the angles of his face, his unseeing eyes. “If we’d become pregnant,” she said, “you could tell me this, and I would still have retained my choice to have the child after?”
Iravan smiled another twisted smile. “I suppose we don’t have to make that decision anymore. But an architect’s health is only as good as their family life, and the council keeps a close watch on their marriage. The only reason you and I weren’t examined as closely was because I’m a Senior Architect and, well, Bharavi and I made concessions for each other we shouldn’t have. But,” he added, shrugging, “perhaps those in my position should be examined closer.”
For a moment, Ahilya wondered what those concessions were, why if the stakes had been so high, the two Senior Architects had allowed each other to compromise. Then she glanced at him, this man who valued his freedom above all else, imagining how it must have felt to report tosomeone—evenBharavi—allthose times he had spent with his family. How this condition of keeping to material bonds had destroyed their marriage, destroyedhim. He had chafed against it; of course he had. Ahilya blinked, wondering how she would have reacted if their positions were reversed.
“We have no child,” she said. “Yet you’re telling me this now.”
“I am.”
Why?she thought. She was drowning again, caught in the cave-in under the Academy. He reminded her of how they had been when they’d begun courting, how every moment with him had muddled her in some way. She glanced at him, this man she had been married to for so long, this man she still loved so desperately, who wasreally—intheend—justa stranger.
“Naila will report me,” Iravan went on. “That’s why I sent her to Airav.”
“And you’re not afraid of what the council will do?”
He fiddled with his healbranch bracelet, where the thorns had retracted. The bracelet snapped clear into two, the shards dropping into his palm. His wrist stillbled—andAhilya knew the poison had already entered his veins; it would slowly infect him, making him ill until he wastedaway—butIravan wiped the blood away with the cuff of his sleeve carelessly and shrugged. “Whatcanthey do?”
“They could demote you,” she said. “Dismiss you.”
“That happened the moment you signed the divorce papers. I was already toeing the line without children, and I’m not fooling Airav about Bharavi. But our divorce and showing you the sanctum rightnow—theycannot overlook all these offenses. They have likely passed the vote of no confidence against me already.”
“And you don’t care?”
“Isn’t that awful?” Iravan said, smiling his cold smile again. “I don’t think I do.”
Beyond anything else she’d seen or heard today, the indifference of his voice scared Ahilya. When she spoke, it was more to provoke him into emotion than to hear his response.
“You’re not afraid I’ll broadcast this to the rest of the ashram?” she blurted.
Iravan glanced at her. “Will you? I don’t expect you to keep mysecrets—notanymore. I’ve never been able to control you, anyway.
“But you should know: this knowledge of excision is an architect’s greatest shame. No one is more the owner of that shame than a Senior Architect, one who carries out excision. We deal with consciousness in the Moment; we understand its gravity. Yet we do something so heinous to one of our own? If this secret were revealed, we’d lose all credibility. We’d be hunted down for our crimeor—ifwe werelucky—beidolized for our sacrifice. Either would ruin material bonds and drive architects to Ecstasy. Either would be terrible for survival.”
His tone sent a chill down her spine. Ahilya was suddenly reminded of her fear with the spiralweed, of technology that could enslave architects.
Iravan gestured at the terrace with a hand. “Nakshar needs Maze Architects, now more than ever before. This knowledge could ruin our culture, erode all the trust architects have.”
“So, instead,” Ahilya said, her lips trembling, “you tell everyone that excision is dismissal from the temple. You let people think Ecstatics can one day go back to their families?”
Far from provoking him into a reaction, her words merely made Iravan shrug again.
“Theoretically, you can. Chaiyya’s entire study is to do exactly that. She has helped rehabilitate several people, and Manav can now speak again when once he couldn’t form words after his excision. But it never truly works like you expect it to. That’s why Bharavi and I made a pact. If ever one of us was in danger of being excised, the other would do them the mercy and execute them. Ecstatics fight for theirlives—that’sin their nature, and we knew asking that of each other meant we may have to fight one another. If the murder became public knowledge, we’d be exiled to a different ashram, demoted, imprisoned forever, or perhaps executed ourselves. But,” he said, looking at her, “we didn’t want our families to ever see us like Maiya. Better to die and be reborn than to live like this.”
Ahilya stared at him. “That,” she said quietly, “is alarmingly arrogant thinking.”
One of Iravan’s eyebrows lifted. “As you have told me, Ahilya, I am an arrogant man.”
