Page 40 of The Surviving Sky
Dhruv sighed. He held out a clay cup of water to her lips. Ahilya choked, trying to drink. She hadn’t even brought back a body. Oam’s fathers had nothing to give back to Nakshar, nothing to put into the reclamation chamber, nothing that would take root and flower again as a symbolic continuation of Oam’s life. In the end, the two men had offered Oam’s clothes to the soil. His funeral had been brief and unceremonious. Ahilya hoped he’d be reborn in better circumstances.
She wiped her face with a sleeve. The grief settled in her mind, a constant companion, and she sank a little under its weight. It would be patient, she knew. It would strike when she wasn’t looking. Her sobs grew sparser, subsided into hiccups. A vast emptiness replaced them.
“Mymessages—Youdidn’treply—”Dhruv began after some time. “Have you been alone all this while?”
Ahilya shook her head. She’d seen those messages but there was nothing she could say. Tariya had come to her every day with Arth and Kush, refusing to leave until Ahilya had begged her. Had Bharavi told her what had happened in the temple? Of what Iravan had done? Ahilya hadn’t the energy to probe.
“Is this your alcove now?” Dhruv asked. “Where you work from?”
She nodded.
“It’s a good pick.” Dhruv reached out a hand. Responding to his desire, a window unfurled in the wall revealing a muddy field. “That’s where one of the playgrounds will appear. You can watch it grow. It’s from an archival plan, replicated from designs from years ago.”
Ahilya knew this. She had recognized this alcove the minute it had appeared. Once, she’d spent many hours in an identical alcove, sketching out her theories of the earthrage. How long ago was that? She had been a different person then; she had lived a different life.
Dhruv dropped his hand and the leaves grew back, closing the window. “It’s been chaos in the lab. All our systems are slow. We had to power the critical buildingsfirst—thesanctum and the Architects’ Academy and their homes. The architects are in a state. They lost a lot of vital plants that need to be grown from scratch. But we ought to begin powering citizen spaces soon.”
He drew his arm away and cleared his throat. Ahilya glanced at him warily, the grief in her mind spiking.
“I’m sorry,” he said awkwardly. “I hate to ask you, but I need to know. Did you lose my equipment in the jungle?”
Ahilya pressed the heels of her palms to her eyes. She had wasted precious seconds diving for her satchel. Oam had swung it around himself. He’d risked himself for her. Her chances at a councilorship were gone with the bag, but none of it mattered. She hadn’t been smart; she hadn’tthought. She didn’t say anything, but Dhruv understood.
“Oh, rages,” the sungineer swore, removing his spectacles and pinching the bridge of his nose.
Ahilya trembled, her shoulders drawing into herself. Sungineers weren’t allowed to invent on a whim. Sungineering materials were precious, and every invention had to serve the city. Dhruv had taken personal responsibility for the equipment he’d loaned her. One wrongexpedition—andthey had lost so much.
“What will happen?” she whispered.
“I don’t know,” he said, looking up from massaging his nose. “We need every bit of spare parts to return Nakshar to the status it was in before the accident. The Disc had to take off without preparations. A lot of our instruments were smashed. Kiana has asked for an inventory.”
“Maybe you can lie. Say that the equipment was crushed in the flight.”
Dhruv started to polish his spectacles. “Kiana knows I lent you those devices. I only got permission to make them because I said it’d help us perfect machines inNakshar—andto get that permission was hard enough. If I had the equipment to return now, she wouldn’t care. But to return nothing? She can’t let that go.”
“She would blameyoufor that loss in the jungle?”
“Not for that alone, no, not Kiana. But it is another event in a long line of what the rest of the council is, no doubt, considering my sungineering failures. Kiana might have no choice.”
“What will she do?”
Dhruv gave her a small smile. “If she needs to make a cut from thelab…I’ve just mademyself…notable.”
“I’m sorry,” Ahilya whispered.
“It’s not your fault. I suppose the deathbox, that’s gone too?”
Ahilya extended her hand to the wall on the right. It split open and a glass cube secreted out, pushed by the leaves. She pulled it to her and handed it to Dhruv. He drew in a shocked breath.
“You didn’t,” he said in disbelief. “Buthow—”
“I wasnervous—Iravanbeing out there with me. With us.” Tears filled her eyes, but she forced them away. “When we were out in the jungle, I took the box out of my bag and tied it underneath my clothes with a rope. It’s inside. The spiralweed.”
She could remember it, how panicked Oam had been that she’d left them in the jungle for long moments, how panickedIravanhad been. She had been too focused on her husband, on getting the sample without him noticing. She had been too vindicated in her success. And she’d left Oam to gather the specimen; she’d left himagain—tohis death the next time.
“It doesn’t look like the forcefield is activated,” Dhruv said, examining the glass cube.
Ahilya’s voice was toneless. “It’s only a single source leaf. The forcefield is inside the box. It’s the best I could do. Maybe you can still make the battery. You won’t be transferred.”
