Page 60 of The Surviving Sky
“Don’t lash out at me, Iravan. I am not the one on trial for ignoring my material bonds. I spoke tomywife, and she said she saw you wheel away from yours.”
“What else can I do to convince them?” he snarled. “Haven’t I paraded around with Ahilya enough?”
Bharavi’s eyes narrowed at his tone. “She’s your wife. It shouldn’t be hard. Don’t you love her anymore?”
Iravan winced.“I—No—That’snot whatI—”
“Well?”
“Rages, Bha, of course I love her. I love her more than I can handle.”
“Then why is it so hard for you to be with her?”
It’s because you’ve taken away my choice, Iravan thought. That, in the end, was why he had stayed away from Ahilya for seven months. He’d been angry with her, yes, but it was more than simplythat—itwas a rebellion of his feelings, precipitated by the uncertainty of knowing whether his entire marriage had been a sham in the service of material bonds, or if he and Ahilya had only lost their way together. The need to preserve the bonds itched at him, like shackles around his neck. Questioning the bonds wasunconscionable—theywere the oldest architectural tradition. Yet as the two roads opened behind his brows, he knew the one that led away from Ahilya led to freedom, to clarity, to the discovery of the Resonance and all that lay unanswered.
He could never tell any of this to Bharavi.
Friends though they were, she still held a vote in the council. In rebelling against material bonds, Iravan would fail a condition of Ecstasy immediately.
Bharavi reached low and gripped his arm. “What is the problem, Iravan?” she persisted. “This isn’t a rhetorical question.”
“Thisfarce—itisn’t easy, all right?” he deflected.
“If you love her as much as you say, then where is the farce?”
“Loyalty is precious to Ahilya, and she’ll stand by those who are hers through a hundred earthrages, even at the expense of everything else. You saw what she was like after Oam.”
“And that’s terrible because?”
“Because I can never measure up! Because I can never love her how she wants to be loved.”
“Why in rages not, Iravan?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” he said scathingly. “Maybe it’s because I must keepso many raging secretsfrom her all the time.”
At this, Bharavi drew back, snapping her notebook shut. She stared at him, her expression grim, readying to chastise.
“She needs to know what excision truly is,” Iravan said, before she could speak. “She needs to know the secrets I’m burdened with as a Senior Architect.”
“No. You haven’t earned the right to tell her that. The true nature of excision is deliberately shared with a select few. You’d be degrading every architect’s dignity.”
“Rages, Bha, she already knows there’s more there than I’m telling her. She point-blank asked me. These half-truths andalmost-lies—youdon’t know what it’s doing to me.”
Bharavi shook her head. “You haven’t earned the right. Not yet. You made a healbranch promise when you became a Maze Architect, and you don’t get to break it.”
Iravan clenched his fists. “How many Maze Architects are in my position, Bharavi? How many of them are childless? You don’t understand the burden ofthis—you,Chaiyya, Airav, all of you with children and the ability to share your burden with your spouses. My creative ways to love Ahilya mean nothing if I can’t be honest with her.”
“Don’t make this about the conditions of the council, Iravan. Have you considered that if things were strong between you two, Ahilya would agree to a child?”
“Have you considered that the reason things aren’t strong is because I have so many bloody secrets from her?” The image flashed in his head again, of himself and Ahilya, with two children who looked so much like her. Iravan’s heart ached in sudden longing, but he waved a hand irritably. He had redirected Bharavi successfully, but this was not the conversation he’d wanted to have either, not right now. “I don’t have the time for this,” he said. “I have to convince the council I’m not an Ecstatic.”
“I’m not sure you can,” Bharavi said, observing him. “And I’m not sure you should.”
Iravan recoiled, momentarily stunned.
The elevator came to rest, and Bharavi strode out toward a corridor that led to the sanctum. Disturbed, Iravan followed her, unspeaking.
The sanctum was a series of meandering corridors grown in the shade of a gigantic neem tree. Healbranch bushes, their white bones visible, flourished along the paths. As Iravan skimmed past, firemint and eucalyptus appeared and disappeared on the walls, his own personal healers. He had expected Bharavi to turn to his own suite; instead, she picked a path Iravan had visited only once, five years before. The Ecstatic ward.
