“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.”