Atlantia

I’m out of time. The guards burst through the door. “Go,” Maire says to me, and she starts calling to them, her voice so strange, a laugh and a cry and a song.

The guards all stare at her. Though some of them are supposed to be immune, none of them look my way.

As I slip away, I can’t stop listening to Maire. She’s singing that lullaby again, but this time Maire has turned it angry, into an attack. “They sing and weep,” she says, and I suddenly realize that line could be about the sirens.

And then Maire goes silent. Caught. What did they do to make her stop? Or did she know I was gone?

I hurry through the back hallways. Why did Maire tell me all of this at the floodgates? She knew she’d be imprisoned this way—did she want it like that? Certainly there were hundreds of places where we could have met where we’d be much less likely to get caught.

Why teach me this way, instead of in person? Why get herself locked away so that we have to trust the shell, so that she can only answer the questions I ask?

Does she not entirely trust herself, her own eagerness to have her sister’s daughter as a pupil?

Or is there another reason, one so dark and deep I can’t even begin to fathom it?

My mother and my sister trusted Maire. But they are both gone. Neither of them can tell me if that trust turned out to be justified.

It is entirely possible that they were both betrayed.

As I come back out into the plaza, I lift my eyes to the sky and to the stone-and-glass version of the floodgate exit—the temple’s rose window, high and colorful against the daylight.

Maire took me to the floodgates to talk about my mother. But she also took me there to remind me of what death looks like. Bodies laid out on the stone, cold water coming in, someone you love going up. She wanted me to recognize that trying to go through the mining bay or in the transports isn’t safe. She wanted me to see her as my way to the Above.

Instead, she has reminded me of another way that I can leave.

I can’t leave Atlantia the way my sister did.

But I can try to leave the way my mother did.

Of course, there will be one significant difference.

When I go through the floodgates, I’ll be alive.

CHAPTER 8

I wonder how much a tank of air will cost. What if it’s five hundred and seven coin, exactly the amount of the money that Maire says Bay left for me? If so, would that be a message from Bay, a signal that she wanted me to find a way to follow her to the surface?

The day after Maire takes me to the floodgates, I go straight to the deepmarket when I’ve finished work and make my way through the stalls, listening to the air vendors, the ones who sell shots of pure, heady air flavored with scents and spices.

I make several passes up and down the rows of sellers, paying attention to how each vendor sounds and to what they’re saying, wondering who to choose. I find myself slowing down, stopping, in front of the stall bearing a placard that says: ENNIO, AIR MERCHANT. Ennio is a slight young man, full of movement. When he sees me, he holds up a small canister. “Our most popular scent,” he says. “Lavender. It’s restful, if you’re having trouble sleeping.”

I shake my head at him. “I need more air than that,” I say. “Plain air.”

I don’t know if I’m using the right words—will Ennio know what I’m really asking? He does. His eyes shutter, and his voice becomes tight and low. He wants me gone and that lets me know that I might be on the right track.

“No,” he says. “No. I don’t sell that kind. My air is for people who want to stay comfortable right here in Atlantia.”

I think he’s lying to me. Why? Because I’m young? A girl? Because he doesn’t like the sound of my voice? I’m tired of that getting in my way. “How much would plain air cost, if someone were to sell that kind?” I press. “A tank of it, pressurized? Can you tell me that, at least?”

I think he won’t answer, but he does. “A thousand at best,” he says, “and there’s no guarantee that you’re even getting what you pay for. You might have an empty canister or one that won’t do you a bit of good because it hasn’t been pressurized correctly. And you won’t live long enough to take more than one or two breaths of that. Some want to try to go up on their own, and there are those who don’t mind profiting from the stupidity of others. But no one’s ever made it Above unless the Council’s taken them up.”

A thousand coin. Almost twice the amount Bay left me.

“I should turn you in,” Ennio says, watching me. “The Council likes to know who asks these kinds of questions.”

“There’s no need,” I say. “I wouldn’t try it. I wanted to know what was possible.”

“Going Above isn’t possible,” Ennio says. “You’re young. Don’t throw everything away.” I nod and do my best to appear chagrined.

He’s no siren. He told me what I need to know, but he doesn’t have the power to change my mind.

Aldo has pinned up the brackets in the usual place on the wall of the market stalls nearest the racing lanes. I’m surprised to find that I feel a stirring of excitement. It will be nice to have a distraction, something to do with my body. I’ve been restless since Bay left and I stopped swimming, and of course there are reasons for what I’m going to do—I have to get strong enough to swim to the Above and fast enough to get around the mines, and I have to win enough coin to buy an air tank to take with me. I don’t think Ennio will refuse to sell to me if I show up with a thousand coin in hand. And the way he spoke about the air and the sellers tells me that he, at least, attempts to sell air that will work.

But I don’t see my last name—Conwy—on any of the brackets. I read them over again and turn around to see Aldo walking in my direction. He shakes his head.

“They said no,” he tells me, when he gets close. “Neither the bettors nor the other racers were willing for you to take her place.”

“Why not?” I ask. “Didn’t you tell them that I could keep up with her in training?”

“Yes,” Aldo says, “and they know it anyway from seeing the two of you swim together. But you didn’t earn her place. Bay did, and she’s gone.”

I suppose I can understand this. Although I’ve seen Bay and myself as two halves of the same whole for years, everyone else might not feel that way. “All right,” I say. “I’ll start at the bottom. In the low brackets.”