Page 120 of The Surviving Sky
“We’re listening,” he said carefully.
Ahilya studied them, their sober faces full of nervousness and anticipation. She wouldn’t feel her pregnancy yet, but her stomach spasmed as though in warning.Don’t leave me, Iravan said, and she knew the smart thing, the safe thing, thelogicalthing, would be to help the ashram now in its time of need. Dhruv still stared at his hands. He had known what she was going to do, of course. It was why he had been reluctant to tell her anything.
“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?Hislanding architecture that you’re relying on?”
“It’s not thateasy—”Kiana began.
“We don’t have the resources,” Chaiyya said. “Ahilya, I’msorry—Ireallyam—butthe ashram is ourpriority—”
“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 greatergood—”
“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 dangernow…
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 theworld—Hysteriabuilt 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 makebothof 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.Youcould 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. “Thereisa 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 wereseven—there was no way you could have donethat—butthey 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. “Foryou. You protected me because I wasyoursto 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.”
