Page 96 of The Surviving Sky
Dawn was breaking over Nakshar. Very few people seemed to be awake. Ahilya walked through the city, uncertain where she was headed. Her feet carried her past the dilapidated Architects’ Academy, past the broken fig-tree library, past the solar lab, and through the roads leading to the temple.I’m looking for him, she realized, when she stopped finally at one of the empty terraces of the ashram.I’m still looking for him. She gazed out to the sky and the dark clouds, wishing she could get away from Nakshar altogether. How long had it been since she’d tried to study dust patterns from a terrace much like this? Two weeks, at the most. She could scarcely believe her life had come to this in such a short time. Ahilya wiped her face with a corner of her shawl and turned to see Naila striding toward her.
She stopped short. “Naila,” she whispered. “What are you doing here?”
“I came to visit you,” the Junior Architect said.
“How did youknow—”Ahilya began, but then shook her head. She’d learned architects had their own methods. Did it matter how Naila had found her? “I was just about to leave,” she said instead.
“Then may I accompany you?”
Ahilya nodded tightly. For a while, they walked next to each other in an awkward silence. Ahilya did not know what to say; she could hardly summon the energy for thought. The last time she had seen Naila had been in the Academy with him.He…theyhad been making progress. They hadtried. Non-architects never fully understand. Love is meaningless when a person can’t feel. Perhaps she had never known him at all.
“I heard you got information from the yaksha,” Naila said. She had been leading the way, keeping to quieter streets. The effects of Bharavi’s Ecstasy were rampant. Branches lay across the road, scorched. The earth had cracked, the ground unlevel. Several trees warped on the path, their trunks split in the middle.
“Yes,” Ahilya said.
Naila gave her a sidelong glance, and Ahilya remembered that the Junior Architect had meant to accompany her into the jungle before hehad…She cleared her throat and told Naila what she and Dhruv had found: the interference in the elephant-yaksha’s transmission signal.
The Junior Architect considered this. “How do you explain that?”
“Maybe there’s habitation down there for the yakshas, like I said.”
“I wonder if it’s some kind of jungle plant,” Naila mused. “Some species that could block the signal?”
Her response was very much that of an architect. Ahilya shrugged, unable to work up even resentment. “Maybe. But the jungle is recreated constantly. Why would these plants grow in the exact same place after every earthrage? It doesn’t make sense.”
“Unless they’ve adapted somehow.” Naila bit her lip, then glanced at Ahilya again. “Did you learn anything about the dust patterns?”
Ahilya did not reply. It was no surprise the Junior Architect had thought of the dust patterns now, when they were headed away from a similar terrace where they had once had that discussion. But her question mattered little. Ahilya had discovered nothing useful in the books from the architects’ archives. She had thought studying the dust would give her information on how earthrages began in the firstplace—afeature of the planet’s tectonicplates—butall she had found was evidence of multiple epicenters and overlapping storms. Naila had been right all along. The architects had studied the patterns thoroughly; they had found nothing. And now everything was lost to Ahilya with the divorce: her marriage, her study, her purpose.
Naila didn’t press the issue. They walked in silence, the sun rising higher. Ahilya pulled her shawl closer. She couldn’t feel the warmth of the day. The heat passed right through her.
“I should have come to you,” Naila said abruptly. “After theexpedition…afterOam…”
Her hands were clenched around the sleeves of her translucent robe. For the first time, Ahilya considered how Naila was, in so many ways, still a child. The burden she carried as an architect, theresponsibilities—Ahilyawould never know it. Impulsively, she reached for Naila.
“I’m glad you weren’t there,” she said, pressing the architect’s hand. “I would not have lost you, too.”
Naila smiled weakly. “If I had been out there with you,we—noneofus—wouldhave survived.”
Ahilya snatched her hand back. “What are you trying to say?”
“That kind oftrajection—I’mnot capable of it. Had I gone out there, you would have died. I don’t have the skill to do what Iravan-ve did.”
Hearing his name was like a stab through the heart. Ahilya suddenly realized Naila had led them to the temple. She took a step back, drawing in a sharp breath.
“Why are we here, Naila?”
“Please—heonly wants totalk—”
“Iravan put you up to this,” Ahilya said, taking another step back.
Naila raised a pacifying hand.“Please—it’saboutBharavi-ve—Hesaid he needed to explain.”
Ahilya stopped, shock arresting her movement. Even now, despite everything that had happened, she couldn’t help the wave of hurt and betrayal that swept at her. “He toldyouabout it?”
“I—Idon’t know the details.Please—Idon’t know anything except he wants to explain something about Bharavi-ve. He said it’d be the only way you’d come.”
“And he askedyouto deliver the message instead of coming himself?”
