Page 3 of The Surviving Sky
Naila shook her head in furious protest. “No, no, not like that. It’s a matter of safety. No one should be out here.”
Ahilya remained rooted. The dome above was a mere handbreadth away now. Sharp-pointed leaves reached so low, they tickled her ears, but the instant they made contact with her skin, the pinpoints shed themselves. Instead, the stem budded softer leaves. Ahilya smelt the warm, sticky sap of regeneration.
If she didn’t move soon, she’d be entombed in a layer of foliage. Nakshar’s living architecture would sheathe her in her own personal wooden armor. That had been Ahilya’s plan, for her and her expeditionary team.RageIravan and his raging interference.
“I’m staying here,” she said, voice cool. “You can tell Iravan-vethat.”
Naila extended a robe-covered arm upward toward their cocoon. Her skin, like Ahilya’s and most natives of Nakshar, was terra-cotta brown. Naila’s veins, however, began to glow an iridescent green as she influenced the vegetation around them. A thousand tattooed vines and creepers grew on her arms underneath the translucent sleeves of her uniform’s robe. Some of the leaves touching Ahilya retracted.
“Please, that is really not wise.” The condescension had left Naila. “I know this design. It’s ellipsoidal, like a sunflower seed. We’re in the outermost shell. This is where the greatest impact will be. That’s why everyone was asked—requested—to the temple, to Nakshar’s core. You received the instruction through your citizen ring too, didn’t you? I know you did.”
Ahilya rubbed a thumb over her single rudra bead. “It flashed and rang a few hours ago. But I know the city will provide an alternative.”
“At great cost. The architects in the temple will have to divert unnecessary trajection to keep you safe here. You’re risking the reliability of the entire construction. Nakshar could crash into the jungle instead of landing safely.” Naila jingled the rudra beads on her wrists as though to emphasize the burden of her responsibility.
Her words and actions were typical architect manipulation, but Ahilya had spent more than a decade married to a Senior Architect. “Is that really true, Naila?” she asked quietly. “Because I asked the temple about this. I was told I could wait here.”
“That was before Iravan-ve altered the landing design. Your old permissions don’t apply anymore.”
Ahilya clutched her satchel. Of course. She should have guessed Iravan had been behind the design’s change. Still, she could not help the abrupt anger and shock throbbing under her skin.
Iravan knew why it was important she leave right away. Without the data from the expedition, Ahilya could forget about being nominated to the council. But, of course, he had never fully thought her capable of being a councilor. Was that why he had done this? Because of the vacant council seat? Iravan wasonthe council but he had his own plan for the vacancy. One that involved Naila.
She studied the Junior Architect, the suddenly nervous gestures, the newly feigned concern, the barely veiled contempt. Naila had sounded logical with her warnings about safety, but there was more there, an undercurrent of unbending dogma lacing her words. Architects were so used to the world submitting to them, they could never see how terrible it was that civilization was designed to be architect-dependent in the first place.
Ahilya wouldn’t have begrudged it so much right at this very instant if it weren’t for everything else with Iravan. The beginnings of a headache formed behind her eyes, at the thought of giving in now, acquiescing to his silent call for obedience. His attempt at maneuvering her was so feeble, it was almost insulting. She felt suddenly tired, outrageously defeated.
“You should go,” she said. “Go be safe.”
“I can’t abandon a citizen to potential danger,” Naila said, her voice incensed. “If I leave you, it’ll go on my record as endangering Nakshar. I’m aJuniorArchitect. I can’t afford transgressions.”
“Nice try,” Ahilya shot back. “I know you’re well on your way to becoming a Senior Architect one day. Wasn’t that the real reason Iravan gave you a key to accompany my expedition? To add the jungle to your field of experiences so he cannominateyou to the council? I hardly think he’ll hold you accountable for my stubbornness.”
True to her profession, Naila switched tactics at once. “Well, then, consider. I can’t disobey a Senior Architect. If you don’t come with me, Iravan-ve will question me. Perhaps even forbid me from accompanying the expedition altogether. And then where will you be? No architect, no expedition, remember?”
Ahilya stared at her. “They teach you how to influence people as an architect, too?”
Naila smiled, a tightness to her mouth. “No, we gather that on our own. Can’t maneuver anything beyond a plant, but I suppose the principles of trajection remain the same.”
Against her will, Ahilya felt a strange morbid amusement. It was almost impressive, how skilled Naila was. None of the other Junior Architects the council had provided to her for previous expeditions had displayed such an effective change of strategy so quickly. No wonder Iravan had picked her to be his protégée. In Naila’s quick-thinking and casual arrogance, Ahilya detected glimmers of Iravan’s own personality. She sighed and clutched her satchel close to her. Her nod was curt.
“Hold on,” Naila murmured. She closed her eyes and opened her palms in front of her. Her veins flared again, the iridescence making Ahilya’s eyes water. A dozen dizzying patterns of vines formed and died on the architect’s skin.
For a long moment, they remained motionless.
“Well?” Ahilya said. “Are we going?”
“Wearegoing,” Naila said, cracking open an eye. “We’re descending. Can’t you tell?”
Ahilya blinked.
Their little nest looked no different. The canopy was still touching their heads, thorns on all sides, no wind of passage. Were they falling downward toward the city’s core? Or was Naila changing the plants around them, outside of their nest? Perhaps the nest wasn’t passing through a tunnel; it was destroying and reconstructing itself, using the plants of the city to undulate them through the architecture.
Ahilya’s head spun. Contrary to what she had said to the Junior Architect, shedidknow some things about trajection. The power was inborn; it could not be learned. Even though under ordinary circumstances, Ahilya could ask the city’s plants to react to her desires, that was a charity provided by the architects who allowed their energy to flow through the foliage for the citizens to use. Ahilya had notruecontrol. Only architects could directly influence a plant’s consciousness, forcing it to change form.
Yet for Naila to do it this way, in such an invisiblemanner…
Either the Junior Architect was more skilled than Ahilya had credited her with, or the architects had learned new tricks in the time since Ahilya and Iravan had held a proper conversation.
