Atlantia (9 page)

“It's not for sale,” says the older woman tending the stall, and the large, burly man next to her—her son?—folds his arms and glares at me.

“That ring is mine,” I say. “It was my mother's.”

“What makes you think that?” she asks.

“It has the name Oceana carved inside the band,” I say. “And my name. Rio. And my sister's name. Bay. No one else would know that. You couldn't see the engravings while she was wearing it.”

“This ring did indeed belong to Oceana the Minister,” the woman says. She speaks my mother's name with a touch of reverence, the way Elinor did earlier. “You're right about that.”

“And it should be mine,” I say. “You could come with me right now to the temple, and every priest there would vouch for me. They'd tell you that I'm her daughter.”

“I'm sorry,” the woman says. “But I paid for it. If the boy who sold it to me stole it from you, then you need to take it up with him.”

“Boy?” I ask.

“Yes,” she says. “A young man brought me this ring. If he was a thief, that's not my fault, but I will sell it back to you if you can come up with the money. I won't even raise the price.” She seems pleased with herself for being so fair.

“But who was the boy?” I ask.

“He didn't give a name,” she says. “But he had blond hair. He was young. Handsome. He looked well-off.”

The description could be any of dozens of people in Atlantia, but it also matches Fen Cardiff.

“When did he bring it to you?”

“Two days before the anniversary of the Divide,” she says. “I remember it well. I've been glad to have it. It's a beautiful piece and serves its purpose nicely.”

I'm about to ask the woman what she means—what purpose can a ring have, except to be worn?—when a man comes up holding a tiny jar of water, much like the ones in the other stall that contain the fake dirt. “It's five coin,” the woman says, and the man nods. He gives her the money and holds out the jar, and the woman takes it from him. She picks up my mother's ring and drops it into the jar of water.

It's a struggle to keep my voice level. “What are you doing?”

“You're not the only one who recognizes this ring,” the woman says, holding up the jar to the faint deepmarket light. The ring clinks against the glass. “Everyone knows Oceana the Minister wore it on her blessing hand.”

The man watching is rapt. “Thank you,” he says.

“You're pretending the ring has power to bless the water,” I say.

“No pretense about it,” the woman says, carefully fishing out the ring with a long, thin metal skewer. “You said yourself this was your mother's ring.”

The man gapes at me. “Oceana's daughter?” he asks.

“Never mind that,” the woman says. “It's Oceana's ring, and now your water is blessed. Off you go.”

After he takes the jar and leaves, the woman sighs. “I shouldn't have said that about Oceana being your mother,” she says. “I'm sorry. You can't have everyone following you around the deepmarket hoping that some of your mother's magic has rubbed off on you.”

“My mother wasn't magic.”

“I meant that figuratively,” the woman says. “But you do sound like a girl who takes things literally.” She polishes the ring and then puts it back in its case. “Of course, I suppose everyone knows who you are anyway, but it's better not to draw attention to that fact. Although you're doing your best to get noticed, standing there in those dripping clothes.”

“Why would everyone know who I am?” I ask. Atlantia is a large city. And my mother may have been a public figure, but Bay and I kept to ourselves. We always did a good job of blending in, or so I thought.

“There are thousands of us, but one Minister,” the woman says. “Anyone who ever bothered to enter the doors of the temple for a service probably had you pointed out to them at some point.”

This is not what I want to hear. I knew people paid attention to my mother, of course, but I always imagined myself slipping unnoticed through the streets and the deepmarket. It is true that Josiah and Elinor and Bien all knew who I was, though I assumed that was because they'd been told before I came down from the temple. “
You
didn't recognize me right away,” I point out.

“My eyesight isn't what it used to be,” the woman says. “And I didn't expect the Minister's daughter to be wandering around the deepmarket soaked to the bone.” Then she holds out her hand. “My name is Cara.”

I don't care what her name is, and I don't shake her hand. “You're ruining the ring,” I say. “It's not meant to be put into water—you're going to make it rust, or damage the wood, or wear off the inscriptions.”

“Not everyone wants blessed water,” Cara says. “Some people only want to touch the ring. We're careful about that, of course. Can't have them stealing it. Some people want the ring to bless a scrap of fabric or an object from their home. And don't worry. I've got a special oil to restore the moisture to the wood.”

“Why are you doing this?” I ask. “Why are people paying good money for it?”

“Some people down here worship Oceana, you know,” Cara says quietly. “I've seen them lighting candles to her the way they do to the other gods. And I've heard people whispering that she died early because she was actually one of the gods and it was time for her to go back home.”

“Blasphemy,” I say. Again. I never knew there was so much of it. But it's everywhere. At the workplace, here in the deepmarket.

“Or piety,” Cara says. She takes out a vial of oil and drops some onto the wood of the ring, rubbing it carefully with a soft cloth.

It hurts me physically to see my mother's ring in someone else's hands. Would Bay give the ring to a boy to pawn instead of giving it to me? Perhaps there's another explanation. Maybe Fen stole it from her, and she didn't want to tell me.

I could tell Cara, “Give me the ring,” and she would have to do it.

It's getting harder to hold back.

“I know you want this,” Cara says, “but I'm sorry. I paid too much for it to let it go. I will give the ring back to you if you can bring me five hundred and seven coin. That's how much I paid for it.”

The words I was about to say catch in my throat. I stare at Cara.

Five hundred and seven coin.

The money
is
from Bay. She
did
sell the ring.

And I used some of the coin to purchase time in the swimming lanes. If I hadn't done that, I could go right home and come back with the rest of the money to buy the ring today.

But Bay wouldn't sell the ring just so I could buy it back. She must have wanted me to use the money for something else, something so important that she was willing to sell our mother's most prized possession. What could it be?

Did
Bay want to help me buy an air tank so I could try to swim for the surface? Or did she intend me to use the money to get there in another way? Should I be trying to bribe some Council member to get me on a transport? Or did Bay give the money to Maire to indicate that I
could
trust my aunt, that I should follow her Above?

I wonder if True knows anything about the ring. Did Fen talk to him about it?

“Do you know anyone named True?” I ask Cara. “A boy, about my age? Brown hair, brown eyes? He says he comes to the deepmarket most evenings.”

“Yes,” she says. “He's often around, pushing that cart of his, selling those fish he makes.”

Fish?

I don't think I've heard her right.

Someone else brushes past me to buy a blessing from my mother's ring, and I take a step back. So True works as a vendor in the evenings. Unlike the stalls, the carts are always on the move. How am I supposed to find him?

As I start scanning the crowd, he comes into view, pushing a cart very carefully. He's not calling out for customers; he's looking down to make sure he doesn't lose any of his wares.

Seeing him right now feels like I offered up a prayer and the gods answered it immediately. Like I threw a coin in the wishing pools and what I wanted appeared before my eyes. I'm not sure I like it. It seems suspicious. Things like that don't happen, and they especially don't happen to me.

I leave behind Cara and my mother's ring and walk toward True. As I come closer, he glances up and his eyes meet mine. He looks surprised as he takes in my wild, wet hair, my still-dripping clothes, but he doesn't say anything. He seems to think I should be the one to speak.

“There's a question I need to ask you,” I say. “About Bay and Fen.”

True glances around at the busy deepmarket. “Can you ask it here?”

“Maybe not,” I say.

True nods and starts pushing his cart again. “Come with me,” he says. I follow him around the corner of a row of stalls. The plastic-and-wire slats keep out much of the light and it's a bit dim and deserted. “There,” he says. “It's quieter here.”

I mean to ask him about Fen and the ring, but I'm distracted by the wares in True's cart. They're
moving
.

Small metal fish swim in glass bowls filled with turquoise-colored water.

The fish are simple and beautiful, a few pieces of scrap metal put together, and even though there is very little detail on them, somehow you know exactly what they are.

“How do you do it?” I bend down to examine them more closely. “What kind of join did you use so they can move like that?”

True's face lights up and he takes a fish out of the bowl to show me. “I call it a fishtail solder,” he says. “You attach it at the front and the back with a smaller rod. It's actually three pieces instead of two.”

“How do you know to do this?”

“I work on the gondolas,” he says. “I repair them, at night. So I'm used to working with metal and machinery.”

“When do you sleep?” I can't imagine when he has time, between night work on the gondolas and making and selling his creations in the deepmarket.

“For a few hours in the mornings,” True says. When he smiles, it goes all the way to his eyes, making them crinkle. Everything about him seems warm—his smile, the open way he looks at me, his hand when it brushes against mine as he gives me the fish so I can take a closer look. “I don't mind missing out on some rest. I like working on the gondolas, and I like making machines of my own. But how do you know about joins and solders?”

“I used to put the leaves back on the trees,” I tell him. “At the temple. They had to be flexible, too. But we should have done something like this. It would have given the leaves greater range of motion.”

The fish are so fast and fluid. If I had some to practice with, I could use them to simulate the mines. I've chosen the floodgates because they're nearer to the surface than the mining bays—I'll have a better chance of survival with a shorter swim and less of a change in pressure—but there will still be plenty of mines to get around. I could try to avoid the fish while I swam in the tanks. It would give the people in the stands something different to watch. They could make bets on how many times I come up against the fish, how fast I can make it to the end of the lane.

True's fish are exactly what I need.

“How long can they go like this?” I ask.

“Almost ten minutes,” he says. “Then you have to take them out and rewind the machinery.”

“Do you sell many?”

He shakes his head. “People buy them now and then for their children's birthdays. I wish I could afford a stall so I could have a chance at selling more, but to pay for a stall, I'd have to sell more fish.” He laughs.

“But they're beautiful,” I say. “People should be saving their coin to buy them.” I wish I could tell him this in my real voice.

But I think that somehow he understands, because he sounds very sincere when he says, “Thank you.”

A bucket of metal parts set behind the bowls catches my eye. “What's this?”

True tries to grab it away from me, but I've seen some claws, a gargoyle mouth, a stretch of silver, meshy metal wing. “It's something I'm working on,” True says.

“You're trying to make the bats,” I say.

“It's hard to get them to fly,” True admits. “They keep crashing and breaking.”

It would be interesting to ask him more, to try to help him figure out how to make the bats work. But I don't have time. I have to get Above. And I can't tell True about my plans to get there. He can't help me, and he might try to stop me. Or worse, tell someone what I'm trying to do.

“So what was it you wanted to ask me?” True says. “About Bay and Fen?”

“It's about a ring,” I say. “It used to be my mother's, but after she died, Bay wore it every day. I guess I thought it had gone to the surface with her, if I thought about it at all. But I saw it today. The vendor said that a boy who looks like Fen brought the ring to her two days before the anniversary of the Divide. So Bay must have asked him to sell it. Unless he stole it from her.”