“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.”
“No,” True says immediately. “He wasn’t that kind of a person. He isn’t that kind of a person.” He frowns. “What did they get in exchange?”
“Five hundred and seven coin,” I say.
“That’s a lot of money,” True says. “What do you think they used it for?”
I don’t want to tell him that I have the money. I don’t know him well enough. But I also don’t want to lie to him. “I’m cold,” I say. “I’ve got to get home. I just wanted to see if you knew anything about this.”
“No,” True says. “But I can try to find out more.” He smiles at me. “Does this mean you changed your mind? About working together to find out why they left?”
“Yes,” I say, and I feel a twinge of guilt that it will have to be an uneven partnership. I want to know what he knows. I want his help in discovering what we can. But my main focus is to get to the Above, and I can’t tell him anything about that.
“How much do you charge for each of these fish?” I ask True.
“Ten coin,” he says, sounding surprised at the sudden change of subject.
I try not to smile. A pittance, when you consider all the use they will be to me. “I want to buy ten,” I say, reaching into my bag and counting out twenty coin. “I have enough money to buy two right now. Will you save eight more for me? I’ll pay you the rest tomorrow. I don’t need the bowls or the water.”
True’s face is astonished and happy. “Of course,” he says. And then he reaches into the bowls and stills the fish. “You can have them all now,” he says. “I trust you.” He counts out ten and puts them into a sack. It’s heavy when I take it from him.
“Thank you,” I say.
“I’ll see you tomorrow,” he says.
I’m sure that I make a fine sight on the gondola, shivering in my sodden machinist’s clothing. I find myself wishing that Bay could see me right now, sailing toward the temple with a bag full of metal fish. Would she laugh? Would she cry? Is this anything like what she planned for me?
All I know is that it’s the best I can do.
CHAPTER 9
When I swim in the lanes, I keep my eyes open wide and turn to the side, slither, slip. My body feels like it is not my own and like it is exactly, only me. I evade the fish, glide away from them. The ocean sings to me. My sister sings to me.
And then I lose the rhythm, and the fish brush against my body. One. Two. Three. Four. I’m dead four times before I get to the end of the lane.
It’s not good enough. I’m not good enough.
But I will learn. Nothing can be as hard as holding in my voice all these years. I will do this. I’ll learn to swim around the mines, and I’ll earn enough money to buy the air I need.
I stand up in the swimming lane.
Today more people are watching.
One of them is True.
I wave to him. He lifts his hand in response and comes over to the side of the lane to talk to me. I pull off the cap I wear to keep my hair out of the way. The metal fish swim around me—I’ll have to catch them in a moment. I meant to find True in the deepmarket after I finished racing, but he’s found me first.
True’s not smiling, but he seems—I can’t think of a better word for it—enchanted. It’s the way people sometimes look when sirens speak. But I don’t know why, because I haven’t said anything at all, and certainly I haven’t spoken to him with my real voice.
“You’re very beautiful,” he says.
He looks as stunned to have said it as I am to hear it.
“I mean,” he says, “the way you swim. It’s beautiful.”
“Thank you,” I say, and I feel like he has dropped a piece of light into the dark sorrow of my heart, like a coin into a wishing pool. The warm gold feeling doesn’t last, but it flickers as it goes down. “How did you know I was racing?”
“I didn’t,” he says. “I was here for something else. This was luck.”
“I have your money,” I say. “Let me get out and I’ll give it to you.” I rented one of Aldo’s temporary lockers for today so I could keep the coin secure until I finished swimming.
True shakes his head. “They’re a gift,” he says. “I want you to have them.”
But he needs to take the money. He’s got to earn enough to rent a stall in the deepmarket. I’m about to argue, but Aldo has come over to join us. He ignores True and leans over the lane, addressing me. “They liked it,” he says. “I had people asking when you’d swim again. They thought it was interesting, the way you tried to get past the flickers in the water.”