Page 20 of The Enduring Universe (The Rages Trilogy #3)

AHILYA

Irshar’s solar lab glittered with whispers and shadows. Ahilya moved through the chamber like a ghost.

Instruments lay across her path, silvery and silent. No whirrs, no clicks, no hums. No sounds at all except for the quiet murmuring of the sungineers and other councilors at one end. Glass crunched underneath her feet as she stepped over a mess of optical fibers. Ahilya swept her eyes over the uneven ground, and picked up a shattered magnifying glass, then continued on, stopping only to retrieve some other wayward device. Sunlight streamed in through broken windows—windows which were hardly more than holes in the wall. From one of them, she could see the vriksh’s massive trunk, partly obscured by twisting foliage. She looked away from it, shuddering. She could not think of the cosmic creatures and her task to extract them now. She could not think of the price of her failure, and all that it had already unleashed on Irshar. No, today was about something else, and she forced herself to be useful here, to be attentive to her role as a councilor as she was expected to be.

The rest of the council did not pay her any mind. They clustered by the giant inventions table on the other side of the lab. Sungineers made up the bulk of the gathering. Kiana in her mud-stained clothes, leaning on her cane. Umang, a citizen-scientist who worked closely with her, light reflecting on his glasses. Anusha and Ratan, who had been Senior Sungineers of other ashrams once but were willing to work under Kiana now. Compared to the sungineers Ahilya had seen in the Garden, this was a sorry number, but she was thankful they had stayed. More torches and glowglobes lay on the table between them. A soundless spark flickered in the devices, purple ricochets of light. The others murmured in confusion and wonder.

Architects collected around the sungineers, keeping a few steps away as though to not interfere. Chaiyya exchanged a look with Airav, who shrugged in a private communication Ahilya had gotten used to. Garima, who had once belonged to Yeikshar, watched the sungineers without expression. They had all debated Basav joining them, and in the end decided that no matter his expertise, his presence would be construed too antagonistic, even if he attempted to be subservient to Iravan. Irshar could not afford to derail the conversation today, the same way Ahilya could not afford to be distracted.

She paused as another architect strode into the chamber. Naila, the once-Maze Architect of Nakshar, now one of Ahilya’s closest friends, broke into a smile, seeing her. She was not a true part of the council, but she had been summoned from her regular duties at Irshar’s school. Naila circumvented the sungineers, and hurried over to Ahilya, enveloping her in a tight hug.

“I’ve missed you, Ahilya-ve,”

she said grinning.

Ahilya hugged her back, a wry smile on her face.

“I’ve missed you too. How many times must I ask you to drop the suffix?”

“Maybe when we finally destroy ourselves,”

Naila said cheerfully.

Ahilya smothered a laugh and pulled away. The two of them studied each other, searching for signs of injury. Ahilya had no illusions about what she looked like, with lines under her eyes, her skin tired, grief and strain etched into her every movement. Yet Naila had never looked more beautiful.

With her hair cut short now, and laugh lines—laugh lines—curling around her mouth, the younger woman looked like she was part of a thriving airborne ashram, not a citizen of this last refuge of humanity. She had even found kohl from somewhere to line her eyes. It was as though with extinction staring at all of them in the face, Naila had simply grown more confident. Is this what those belonging to Naila’s generation were embracing? To be free and irreverent and furious? Ahilya envied them. How she wished she could associate with them more. Perhaps that would remind her of who she was, and the possibilities of who she could be.

She had spent most of her time in the infirmary since meeting with Iravan. A steady stream of architects and non-architects had entered and exited the infirmary, still reeling from the effects of the Moment shattering, but until now Ahilya had not seen Naila. She had heard from her nurses that Naila was still teaching the children, trying to manage their fear, healing them in her own way so the infirmary did not become inundated. With sungineering no longer reliably working, neither of them had known how the other had fared. Ahilya had received reports about Irshar’s reconstruction, of food and medicines being brought to the council chambers for easy access and distribution, and of Chaiyya using Iravan’s architects to convert this last ashram into a refugee camp. Lying on her cot, Ahilya had not attempted to break the routine that had been prescribed to her by her healers and friends. She had no wish to fight them. She was theirs to command. It was the least she could do—even if it meant the caging of her freedom.

Still, old habits were hard to kill. Every night, while most of the city slept, Ahilya had crept out of the infirmary, walked to the vriksh, and pressed her hand against the trunk. She had vowed to the council she would do as they said. She had told Iravan she could extract the Virohi through the core tree. But in the secret honesty of a few stolen hours, Ahilya sought her fragile freedom, resting her forehead against the tree, breathing it in, searching for peace.

The council had asked her to be here today to indicate their control of her to Iravan. To show him they were ready to cooperate with him, and leash her as he undoubtedly wished. They wanted him to see that they appreciated him keeping his end of the bargain; that they were willing to keep their own. Would they put her in a compromising position, asking her to bend to him? Would he demand answers from her today? She had not told any of them that she’d seen the Virohi in the Etherium. She had not even looked for them again, too afraid to follow through with her appointed task.

Naila’s face softened, reading her.

“He cannot object to our arrangements. No enemies here.”

Or only enemies here, Ahilya thought, but she allowed Naila to lead her back to the others. Nervousness rippled through the gathering, all of them looking up at the doorway every now and then, while they chatted quietly. Everyone here had once been friendly to Iravan, or at best, indifferent. Would he see through it? If he read the council’s control of her, would he be satisfied? Happy that Irshar finally supported him? Or would he be aghast, seeing her brought down in this way?

She could not know. The Iravan she had married would have made the council pay, but this man now could not be predicted. Once, Iravan had rebelled against his own caging by Nakshar’s council. He had found it difficult to navigate the council’s maneuverings with their marriage, though he had tried to leash her too. At least this time, their marriage was no longer a factor. Ahilya tried not to stare at the debris swept away to the corners of the lab.

When he finally arrived, she was the first to notice.

Her husband did not come with any fanfare. One moment the doorway was silent and empty, the next he stood there in his black uniform and silver tattoos, his retinue surrounding him. She had not expected him to come alone, but was surprised by the people he’d picked.

Dhruv was anticipated; Irshar had specifically invited the Senior Sungineer of the Garden, to discuss the technology they were to inspect today. But Manav, an architect Iravan had excised, and Darsh, a child… The two of them flanked Iravan, dressed in similar black kurta and trousers. Manav, his gaze wandering, seemed unaware of his surroundings as he so often was, and Darsh stood, arms crossed, surveying all of them with disdain. The similarity between the three architects was unnerving. It was like seeing Iravan from his past and future. Manav’s skin was as dark as Iravan’s. Darsh had cut his hair like her husband’s. Had Iravan picked his retinue as deliberately as Irshar had? Why these two people?

Ahilya realized the murmurs in the solar lab had stopped. They were all watching Iravan and her, because in the end it came down to them. She felt the energy shift, the quiet tension of the chamber ratchetting into acute danger. She could sense the wariness from her council, at what she would do. If she would betray them now, rebelling against them, showing hostility toward Iravan. What words should she say to make them all comfortable? If she tried to hide her true feelings of humiliation and diminishment from Iravan, he would see through it instantly. He might grow angry with the council, for lying to him about their intentions. He might think they were concealing something, when the only thing the council wished to conceal was their fear of him. If she made a misstep, it would regress Irshar and the Garden back into their cold war.

Should she start with his retinue instead of him—but no. What did those citizens of the Garden know of her, the woman who had brazenly walked in and commanded their king? To Darsh, she was simply another councilor of Nakshar who had once imprisoned him in a deathcage. To Dhruv… well, everyone knew where she stood with him now. This meeting had been long coming, the first of its kind since the creation of Irshar. They had all finally met to negotiate, under the excuse of sharing sungineering technology, but so much had happened between her and Iravan, beyond being representatives of their councils. The loss of their marriage, the fights they’d once had, the reconciliation, the war. All of it political, all of it so personal. She could not forget it. Yet if she and Iravan could not put aside their differences during this dialogue, there was no hope for their nations. She knew this.

Ahilya opened her mind and invited him into her forest.

She expected to see only his shadow, but to her surprise the forest bloomed in both their minds. It was as if in opening the door to her chamber to him once, she had given him access to the vriksh forever. They stood now on opposite ends of the solar lab, and they stood across a small clearing within the twilit Etherium, and Ahilya saw herself walk toward him, in the lab and in the vriksh, while he mirrored her movements. Her eyes couldn’t take it, the strangeness of the two visions, the synchronicity. She stumbled and it seemed to happen slowly, but Iravan was there, holding her up. Her head swam, and she clutched his sleeve, breathing hard.

“Let it go,”

he said quietly.

“Let it drop, Ahilya.”

“No,”

she whispered. In the solar lab surrounded by her council, she had no power anymore, but the Etherium was still hers. That is why she had chosen to make this move. This was the only honesty she knew now.

But Iravan looked tormented, his brows creasing, as if ashamed himself that this is the way she had chosen to present herself. “Please,”

he whispered back, and there was pain in his voice. Please, my love. You are not an architect. You were always better. Do not seek the Two Visions.

She jerked up to look at his face, both in the forest and in the lab. The both of them realized in the same instant that though he had not spoken out loud, she had heard him. She saw a swirl of emotion on his face, remorse that this was what they had come to, that she could not even speak with him except in the hidden forest of her Etherium; shock that she could speak to him in the forest when such a thing was unheard of before; curiosity whether this forest was to become the only place of sincerity for them, separate from the rest of the world.

What did it mean that they had connected now so intimately in this unseen space when they were driven so far apart in real life? What did it mean about their marriage? Was there any hope of his return? Ahilya blinked, the questions hurtling to Iravan through the forest. He wrapped his arm around her body, tightening his hold.

“You do not need it,”

he said, softly but slowly, as though to hear his own voice.

“Let it go, Ahilya. I am here.”

He pulled away, gently in the Etherium, retreating into the shadows, and this time she obeyed.

Lucidity returned to her with a blaze of pain. Within the solar lab Iravan’s hand tightened over hers. He straightened her, pulling her close to him, his arm tucking hers under his so they were attached side by side, like they were once meant to be—a farce he was presenting, just like her civility to him, for the betterment of their two nations. A deep exhalation filled the chamber, telling her both their reactions were received well.

They approached the rest of Irshar’s council and experts, Iravan’s retinue following them. Memory flashed in Ahilya, of the time Eskayra had left Nakshar to find her fortune on the same trade route that Iravan had arrived on from Yeikshar. It had been a conglomeration of three or four ashrams, Nakshar among them. Don’t go, she had asked Eskayra, and though Eskayra asked her to come with her, Ahilya could not leave her sister. Iravan had blossomed into the void, young and virile, sweeping her away with his love and magnetism, until they somehow arrived here.

Ahilya’s grip tightened on his arm. My love, he had called her now when their thoughts had met, but that was accidental surely, a mistaken utterance due to force of habit. He had not indicated once in the last few months that he cared to return them to what they had once had. Eskayra had wondered if she had a marriage at all, and Ahilya had not responded, but it was because she was hoping for something long dead with Iravan. There might have been love once, but under the weight of who he was now, it had shattered like delicate sungineering in a storm. Who would either of them have been had they never come into each other’s lives? Iravan had said once that he’d never have traveled this path to Ecstasy without her; that she’d made him possible. This is what she had wrought?

Ahilya wished to draw herself away, but she forced herself to walk alongside him. Dhruv gave them an inscrutable glance, and walked over to the sungineers and the councilors. Iravan followed more slowly with her, and though she expected him to speak, to take charge when they reached the table where everyone had congregated, her husband lingered back, bearing the furtive glances from the others like she did. He seemed as lost in his own thoughts as she was in hers. They stood there, together yet apart, in this temple of sungineering.

For a while, all of them simply watched as Dhruv wordlessly tinkered with some of the devices on the table, replacing some parts with others he had brought. He gestured to Darsh, and the young boy, his sleeves pulled back just like Iravan, began trajecting.

The instruments on the table began to whirr and buzz. The lab came alive as blue-green tattoos grew over Darsh’s skin. Golden light spilled from the sungineering devices, holograms flickering and dying. The residents of Irshar muttered, the sungineers glancing at each other. Airav sat up on his wheelchair.

“How are you doing this?”

Kiana asked, intrigued.

“Replaced the transformers with the energex,”

Dhruv grunted. He gestured to the small rectangular glass pieces he’d removed from some of the devices.

“I can see that,”

Kiana replied dryly.

“But the energex works on Ecstasy, and Ecstasy works on trajecting into the Moment. How are you doing this with the Moment broken?”

Dhruv scowled.

“It doesn’t matter.”

“I only ask because we are doing something similar,”

Kiana said, her voice smooth.

“Like what?”

Dhruv asked.

“Let me show you,”

Kiana answered.

“Darsh, if you wouldn’t mind stopping, please?”

The boy looked startled to be directly addressed. He glanced at Iravan, then at Dhruv, who nodded. Darsh left the Deepness, and the solar lab swam in gloom again, the golden light that had been charged with Darsh’s Ecstasy quietening.

Ahilya felt Iravan’s attention shift. The two of them watched as Kiana gestured to Umang. He reached over to an adjacent table and pulled some of the equipment and torches from the expedition closer. In the darkness and silence, Umang spread the torches out and stepped back. All of them stared at the devices. Ahilya could hear everyone’s breaths, too loud in the quiet chamber. Work, she willed silently. Please work now. It all depended on this.

“Are we waiting for something?”

Dhruv finally asked, glancing at Kiana.

The instruments sputtered to life, flickering in purple shadows. Iravan froze, suddenly alert. Dhruv’s mouth dropped open. He glanced about them all to confirm that no architect was trajecting, then rounded on Kiana.

“How are you doing this?”

he demanded.

“We don’t know.”

Kiana resettled her cane, shifting her weight. She had declined a chair. What were they all trying to prove to each other? When had they begun thinking like this.

“All our sungineering died when the Moment shattered, of course,”

Kiana said.

“But then some of it began again in fits and spurts. It is not reliable, but it is something, and we thought you might know. These devices were based on the prototypes you once made in Nakshar. After the success of the energex and radarx, I kept those devices close and managed to save them during the crash, but they were your technology. Once they worked on constellation lines, each time our expeditionary teams took them to the jungle, but now they seem to be working without such trajection. What do you think is happening?”

Iravan watched Dhruv closely. The sungineer stared at the devices, deliberately not touching them. Ahilya got the sense that he did not want to claim ownership of them, not until he knew more. Sure enough, he muttered.

“My devices always worked on Ecstasy, and this is not it, otherwise, these would react to Darsh too when he gave these other ones life.”

His fingers nudged the Ecstatic devices he had been tinkering with, then he looked up at Kiana.

“You have a theory, don’t you?”

Kiana nodded.

“Yes. You’ll hate it.”

“Well?”

“A field.”

Dhruv let out a sputter of disbelief.

“You cannot be serious, Kiana. You might as well claim the sun revolves around our planet instead of the other way around. The theory of a trajection field was discredited long ago.”

“Maybe it was simply misunderstood,”

Kiana said.

Dhruv gave her a look of disbelief, but Naila cleared her throat, placed a gentle hand on his arm and said kindly.

“Would you like to speak down to the rest of us?”

He snorted, but Ahilya saw amusement in his eyes. Naila and Dhruv had maintained their friendship, despite their separate allegiances to Irshar and the Garden, despite their differences as an architect and a sungineer in this new world. How had that happened? When had Naila replaced Ahilya in Dhruv’s estimation? The well of quiet devastation that always accompanied any thought of him grew larger in Ahilya’s heart.

Dhruv threw up his hands as all of them watched him.

“We have to look back into our history to understand this,”

he said.

“As a technology, sungineering is new, very new. Yes, it began about four hundred years ago, but back then it was simply a few non-architects mucking about trying to see if they could capture the sun’s energy. Their experiments were laughed at, and the early sungineers had to prove the worth of their inventions. Even then, their results were not trusted. It took hundreds of years for acceptance of a single idea. The field nearly died out several times. That is what sungineers had to contend with. Because architects could not conceive of a science that didn’t involve them.”

The architects in the chamber exchanged glances. Next to Ahilya, Iravan remained still.

“It was a technology born out of chaos,”

Chaiyya said, speaking for the first time, her voice a protest.

“Ashrams ascended to the sky a thousand years ago, but the time immediately after was marked by infighting, each ashram unsure of its place. Subsummation, collapse, and crashing of certain ashrams—all of that took place for a hundred years. Sungineering could not be given that much importance then, not when it did not help with survival, not in those times.”

“It took hundreds of years because of architect arrogance,”

Dhruv snapped.

“And the only reason sungineering was allowed to exist was because it helped architects—an effect that has lingered into our time.”

Chaiyya relapsed into silence, though her eyes did not leave Dhruv. Airav’s face was expressionless, but Ahilya saw him shake his head very slightly toward Chaiyya.

Kiana cleared her throat.

“In order for sungineering to progress,”

she said.

“sungineers had to appease architects. I think we can all agree to that much, no matter the cause of it. When sungineering was given credence, it occurred because of an accident—a famous one in sungineering circles, where we tapped into trajection as a power. That accident birthed modern sungineering. We took the architects’ understanding of trajection as our own. Architects were sacrosanct, each one important above any other life. So sungineering accepted that as a wisdom, and as a limitation. Architects had their mystical understanding of what trajection was, but sungineers translated the importance of an architect into a field. When an architect trajected, they emitted a field of trajection. Every sungineering device in the past, from a tiny glowglobe to the largest heat shields, all contained a key part—the transformer which took an architect’s raw and scattered trajection field and converted it into usable energy. We use that technology now… or well, we had been, until all this happened. And for a long time, sungineering accepted architects’ understanding of trajection as a field, centered around each sacrosanct architect.”

“But everything changed with the invention of the deathdevices,”

Dhruv said, taking up the explanation again.

“Things like deathboxes and deathcages were created so that Ecstatics wouldn’t simply be killed, they could be severed from their power. Architects were still sacrosanct, but sungineering’s understanding of trajection evolved with these devices. Think of how a deathchamber works. Deathdevices cut off active trajection. But why does architecture not simply fall apart or detach from that of the main ashram, if we carve the Moment out?”

“Because constellation lines still hold,”

Naila said.

“Each time we used those devices in an airborne ashram, we patrolled the lines, and rebuilt them when they frayed.”

Dhruv nodded approvingly at Naila.

“You can see why sungineering evolved to dismiss the importance of individual architects, no matter what architects themselves preached. We learned through the deathdevices that the energy we were capturing was not from an architect’s unique field. It was from the act of creating constellation lines—or in the case of Ecstasy, of trajecting Ecstatically into the Moment. Sungineering cuts out when architects stop creating constellation lines, even if the ashram stays afloat through pre-constructed lines. This is why when a deathcage rises, though architecture remains stable, sungineering cannot work, not unless new lines are created and maintained and an architect is actively trajecting. Our understanding and manipulation of this changed everything.”

Everyone fell silent. The whirrs and clicks from the expedition’s equipment hummed into whispers before dying. They stood there, all of them trying to understand the implications of what Dhruv said.

Ahilya was not surprised. She knew most of this from her research as an archeologist. To an untrained eye, the effect was the same. Field or constellation lines, sungineering worked the way it always had—on trajection. And architects were revered like they always had been—society’s most significant class.

Yet politically, the change was immense. With an evolved understanding of trajection, and architects’ role in it, individual architects no longer emanated absolute power. The change in society was undoubtedly slow, spanning centuries, but gradually, the work became more important, as opposed to individual superhumans. Architect Discs came into being, becoming more popular in every ashram—focused on a unified vision. Non-architects were allowed to marry architects, their desire used to augment an architect’s trajection. Council structures changed, rules for shift-duty were created, and ultimately, sungineers and architects worked together to keep an ashram afloat, protected from the earthrages. All ashrams—even the most conservative ones like Katresh and the Seven Northern Sisters—understood that, united, their nations had far more power than any one individual.

Until Iravan and Ahilya arrived, to bring humanity to its worst phase yet, dependent not just on individuals, but on two individuals. Two unstable, unreliable, mistaken individuals who didn’t know their own minds let alone that of the people they served.

A great panic seized Ahilya. She was close to hyperventilating. Without thinking, she extricated herself from Iravan, chanting the things she had been taught by her nurses in the infirmary. My name is Ahilya. I am a complete being. I am an archeologist. There are people in Irshar who will take charge when I cannot. I am not alone. I am not alone.

Iravan didn’t respond, but her movement away from him broke the others out of their contemplation. They gazed up from the devices to Ahilya, as she walked away from her husband and closer to Irshar’s council.

“The theory of a trajection field,”

Kiana said quietly, bringing them all back.

“was discredited. But if this is working now…”

She waved a hand toward the purple sungineering devices, and all of them stared.

“Maybe architects are emitting a field.”

“Though they are not trajecting?”

Naila asked skeptically.

“Though they are not in the Moment, not making constellation lines?”

She paused, then her gaze flipped to Manav, then darted between Ahilya, Iravan and Dhruv.

They were all thinking of the same thing. In Nakshar’s solar lab, only a few months ago, the excised architect Manav had done something similar too. Dhruv had found a weak Ecstatic signature emanating from Manav. But Manav had not been supertrajecting or displaying any tattoos, similar to whatever was powering this device now.

Ahilya looked at the excised architect, the way his eyes roved over the solar lab, fastening on nothing, the slight humming under his breath, the manner in which he clutched a blue ice rose. Manav’s excision had destroyed him, but he had fared better than most other excised architects. He was alive, with brief flashes of lucidity. Bharavi had worked with him, trying to understand Ecstasy for her own study. Manav had been Nakshar’s foremost expert on the power before her. Had his expertise extended in some way after his excision, enabling him to use Ecstasy beyond what was known possible? What would he tell them now if he could?

Dhruv turned to Iravan, a frown on his face.

“When Manav did something similar, you said it was because he had a second yaksha.”

Iravan nodded slowly.

“An entity related to Manav came to my rescue twice during my challenge with the falcon. I suspected it was a second creature bound to him, an incorporeal one, though I once excised him from his other yaksha. Manav and the creature seemed to be working in concert, both of them supertrajecting to rescue me, but while the yaksha was in the Deepness, Manav himself was not. He was in the Conduit, seeking to join his second yaksha in the Deepness, sending out sporadic signals of Ecstasy toward it, perhaps from the time I excised him. That is why you detected an energy signature from him though he did not glow.”

“Isn’t glowing a necessary quality of trajection, though?”

Naila murmured.

Iravan shrugged.

“There are effects of trajection and Ecstasy on the body. This much has always been known. But the precise nature of the effect has always been a guess. We have always thought that trajecting gives us only blue-green tattoos, but my own skin radiates in silver, even if I act in the Deepness or the Moment instead of in the evervision. In Manav’s case, he was excised from one of his counterparts. Perhaps that had an effect too, his body continuing to be dark even though he was supertrajecting.”

“Supertrajecting while not in the Deepness, according to you,”

Chaiyya said, frowning.

“Is that possible?”

“The Deepness, Moment and the Conduit are inseparable if you know to look at them in that manner. It is simply a matter of perception. Separation is a quality of the Two Visions, it’s a learned phenomenon. Once you unlearn it, the realms are really the same. That is what the evervision is—the plane in which I operate.”

“You’re saying the Moment is not really destroyed,”

Airav said, interrupting.

“That we can unsee it if we only change our perception.”

“The Moment is destroyed,”

Iravan said flatly.

“That is a fact. But just like you can see the Moment as its own thing from within it, and as part of something greater while outside of it—from the Deepness or the evervision, for instance—you can see all the other realms as unique and different, while still belonging to a whole. Don’t fool yourself about the Moment’s viability though. No matter which vision I see it from, it has shattered. That remains unchallenged.”

“And you know all this for certain?”

Kiana asked.

“That more than one yaksha can exist for an architect?”

Iravan made a balancing motion with his hand.

“How much certainty can one have about these things? We are all walking in the dark here. I stand by the explanation, however. It seems reasonable.”

“And what are yakshas, if I can ask?”

Umang said, speaking for the first time, his voice diffident.

Iravan looked to Ahilya in deference. After all, she had been the expert on the creatures for a long time.

But unsure of her role, Ahilya remained silent, and Iravan sighed with a hint of long-sufferance at her unspoken mutiny against his wishes.

“Yakshas are split halves of a cosmic being,”

he said.

“Just like an architect. In their corporeal form, they are massive creatures, but in their incorporeal form…”

He shrugged.

“I would imagine they contain some similarity. The ability to supertraject. A sentience. A loss of memory. A familiarity of their architect halves. In their simplest forms, yakshas are beings of pure desire, without any true agenda or planning—simply seeking their architects as a fulfillment of their nature, like a river running downhill, compelled by gravity. The falcon-yaksha evolved enough to transform from a creature of pure desire into one with an agenda, but that took thousands of years, and it was a learned phenomenon for the falcon. Perhaps its desire to seek me was just that strong, that it evolved from being a passive creature into one with conscious purpose.”

“You’re claiming the evolution of consciousness and sentience as a function of desire,”

Airav said, raising a brow.

“Do we have a better explanation?”

Iravan countered.

“We’ve debated it in architect circles, but this is the prevailing theory, is it not? What else does our world work on? What else is the substrate of trajection?”

“If that is true, then could yakshas be powering this somehow?”

Chaiyya said, pointing at the purple devices.

“You said Manav’s second yaksha helped you in your time of need. Then could there be similar non-corporeal yakshas, present here now, invisible to our eyes, giving us mysterious energy to use?”

“Corporeal or not, yakshas only do Ecstatic trajection,”

Iravan said.

“Non-corporeal ones might be invisible to us in the first vision, but they reflect in the second vision and I don’t see any in the Deepness. I don’t even see any in the Conduit or through the evervision. Besides, these devices don’t work on Ecstasy, do they? They don’t have an energex, and they did not light up when Darsh was supertrajecting just now. You said they worked when your architects were using the Moment during their expeditions.”

“I said that they worked even when the architect stopped, and the Moment was destroyed,”

Kiana clarified.

“Yes,”

said Iravan.

“So what you’re really asking us is if we know of any other secret power. One we have been hoarding from you and that could be charging these.”

His eyes twinkled in morbid amusement at this roundabout way the council had thought to confront him, and he shrugged.

“I can assure you we do not have any such resource. I came here in good faith today. I would tell you if I were aware of such a thing.”

Dhruv nodded his assent, though his gaze was still fixed on the expedition’s device. Ahilya imagined his mind racing. She recognized his look—the same one he’d had all that time ago when they’d been analyzing devices from her own expedition with Oam out in the jungle. How long ago that seemed. How many things they had achieved and lost and learned about their world since then? Yet they did not know all the answers.

Kiana removed her glasses and rubbed at her eyes.

“I cannot believe I am asking this. But what exactly is trajection? Whether trajection proper or Ecstasy or whatever you are doing, Iravan.”

“It is manipulation of consciousness,”

Naila said.

“It is a usable energy,”

Dhruv responded at the same time.

“It is the harnessed power of desire,”

Ahilya said tiredly—and all eyes turned to her.

Chaiyya tilted her head. Airav nodded. Iravan studied her, and a small smile grew on his face.

“It is indeed,”

he said quietly.

“Which brings me to the real reason I am here. I bring you a gift.”

At his nod, Dhruv removed a solarnote tablet from his pocket. It buzzed to life with Darsh’s Ecstatic trajection, and images filtered on it of trees within a jungle. Captured through Dhruv’s drones was an image of—

“A city,”

Iravan said.

“Your city, if you should wish it.”

The citizens of Irshar gasped. Dhruv settled the tablet so images on it became visible to all of them, dust rising gracefully from the surface of the earth, columns building as mud hardened. Structures rose from the jungle, as trees whipped, breaking into wood chips and rearranging themselves into houses and apartments, a wall here, a fence there. Ahilya recognized the site, the very same one she had been in a few days ago, the one the Virohi had showed her as a possibility for building a new home. How had Iravan found this? Why had he picked this site, and not any other? And was there no end to his powers, to single-handedly build a new city? She remembered the effort of her expedition, their grubby hands, the rumpled clothes, the dirt streaking their faces.

The others were murmuring, and Kiana leaned forward studying the screen.

“This could work,”

she said approvingly, having forgotten sungineering mysteries for a brief time in light of more pressing issues of survival. She was already contacting Eskayra through her sungineering beads, gesturing to Umang to apparently call others of the expeditionary group.

“I’m pleased you are pleased,”

Iravan said dryly.

“But you will have to excuse me now. Other duties await. You have Dhruv here to answer any other questions you may have. He speaks with my voice.”

He made to leave, but Ahilya leaned forward and laid a hand on his arm.

“Wait,”

she said.

“For all of our endeavors to go uninterrupted, and for the Garden and Irshar to continue working together, we need more communication between our nations.”

Iravan raised an eyebrow.

“I am not going to make regular reports to your council, Ahilya, as entertaining as this has been.”

“That’s not what I mean. I—we—propose an ambassador. Dhruv will certainly tell us everything you wish him to, and if not him then one of the Ecstatics you’ve already posted here. But perhaps Irshar can send you someone too.”

Iravan’s gaze traveled over the gathering.

“Who do you have in mind?”

“Me,”

Naila replied, stepping forward.

Ahilya could see Iravan knew what they were doing. Naila was here for this reason alone, and they’d picked her of all people because she had been his favorite student once, capable of extracting knowledge and truths out of him without being obvious. He was going to laugh at them, call out this manipulation, this subterfuge. He was going to tell them he’d already seen through their clever ways hidden behind their sungineering discussion. He was going to refuse.

“You did want architects in the Garden, did you not?”

Ahilya asked quietly.

The implication was clear. Take Naila or have her be sent as a spy.

Iravan watched her for a second, then sighed.

“Very well. But if she changes her allegiance—”

“Oh, she already has,”

Naila said dryly.

“Shall we go, sir? Tick-tick. Duty awaits.”