Page 50 of The Surviving Sky
“Nothing. The magnaroot stars didn’t become thorny. Nothing happened at all, and I wasn’t expecting it to, either, was I? After all, we’d just landed. It would have to be days,weeks, before another earthrage occurred.”
“So, you didn’t signal the Disc?” Ahilya asked, crossing her arms over her chest.
“No,” Naila said, barely glancing at her. “I only knew something was wrong when my own citizen ring began chiming. The Disc must have realized on its own that the earthrage was happening and begun flight procedure, prompting my ring to chime. But I didn’t feel a change in the magnaroot or see it become thorny in either my first vision or the second.”
Iravan exhaled deeply. “All right. You may go, Naila.”
For an instant, the Junior Architect lingered. Her gaze flickered between Iravan and Ahilya, and she opened her mouth as if to say something more.
Then, changing her mind, she hurriedly bowed to Iravan and left the classroom, gathering up her own bag from the floor. Ahilya strode over to the bench and sat down where Naila had been. She raised an eyebrow at her husband.
Iravan grinned, his sincere smile cutting through her. “So, that’s that.”
“You believe her that easily? She’s nervous. Maybe she’s lying.”
“She couldn’t have.” Iravan gestured at the black, velvety, teardrop-shaped leaves peeking out on the walls around them. “See those plants? They’re veristem. Veristem is part of the Psychephyta of plants, created by architects for specific purposes.”
“Such as?”
“Detecting lies,” he said simply. “Veristem blooms into white flowers when someone around it is lying. It doesn’t just bloom when a person is deliberately lying; it blooms when a person is lying tothemselves. It doesn’t depend on interpretation; it’s not bound by literal intent or subjective perception. It bypasses the individual and goes down to the truth, tofacts.”
Ahilya drew in a sharp breath, remembering the spiralweed hidden in the library, the lethal plants she’d repeatedly brought Dhruv for his battery, the lies the sungineer had undoubtedly told to supply her with her archeological equipment.
“That,” she said quietly, “is a dangerous plant.”
“It is extremely dangerous,” Iravan agreed. “Its use is heavily regulated by the council. The Academy is the only place it’s grown so abundantly. Young architects lie about being overworked, or about testing trajection’s limits, so they’re carefully watched during training. But you see what it means?”
“Naila wasn’t lying. Not to herself or to us.”
“She wasn’t evenaccidentallylying. She did everything she was supposed to do. EverythingIwould have. And if she didn’t sense the magnaroot change, I wouldn’t have, either.”
“Then how could the alarm have failed?” Ahilya asked, rubbing her forehead tiredly.
“There’s only one explanation,” Iravan said in grim satisfaction. “An interference in the Moment caused it. The Resonance I’ve been feeling.”
He explained what he had said to the council a week before, about the patterns he had seen in the length of earthrages, and the mysterious Resonance. Ahilya listened silently as he told her about the silvery particle throwing him out of the Moment, how it had danced in front of him with a vague familiarity, and the many times he had noticed it throughout his seven months in the temple. Her husband was as eloquent as ever, yet Ahilya shook her head when he finished.
“I don’t think this is right,” she said, finally understanding what had been nagging at her. “The alarm might have failed when we were out in the jungle, but Naila said the trajection of the Disc Architects released the flight raga.”
“All trajection releases a raga,” Iravan said. “Ragas are residues, byproducts of trajection, audible as melodies to architects and indiscernible usually to non-architects. It’s a matter of consciousness sensitivity, but unlike other ragas, everyone needs to hear the flight raga. That’s why the solar lab amplifies it as the flight alarm duringtake-off—”
“Right,” Ahilya said, frowning. “So, one way or another, everyone in the cityheardthe alarm. Naila’s own citizen ring was chiming. If everyone heard the alarm, why didn’t we? You were trajecting the entire time in the jungle, powering our rings. I saw you.”
Iravan frowned, his excitement waning. “Yes. I see.”
“Do you think our rings are flawed?”
“All of ours? All three at the same time? No, I don’t think that’s possible. But I think you’re right. We’re no longer investigating the alarm. We’re investigating why the magnaroot didn’t respond in the Moment and why our citizen rings didn’t work. One is related to trajection and the other to sungineering.”
Iravan stared in front of him, clearly thinking hard. His wheelchair skimmed around, back toward the courtyard, but he stopped past the doorway again, his face pensive. As Ahilya joined him, the leafy doorway closed in soft creaks, the classroom shuttering now that it was no longer in use. She watched him closely, the tightening of his jaw, the fingers curling on the wheelchair, the tap-tap of his foot.
“When we returned from the jungle,” she said, “Bharavi mentioned your trajection was something like she’d never seen. Does this have to do with Ecstasy?”
“It has nothing to do with Ecstasy,” Iravan snapped. Ahilya recoiled, but his expression softened instantly. “I’msorry—butit has nothing to do with Ecstasy. Bharavi shouldn’t have said that.”
“Is there more to Ecstasy than I know?”
“What makes you say that?”
