If this is the moment of my own death, this time I want to inhabit it. I reach out and hold True’s hand, and his fingers tighten around mine. And I imagine what our transport looks like moving up through the water, from dark to light, past the uncurious fish and the dying coral, on to things I have never seen but know enough to imagine, like sand on a shore, and birds swimming on the surface of the ocean, dipping their beaks down to eat.

“Remember,” the deepmarket siren says to all of us as the transport stops. “Our voices are the Below’s best weapons. We are miracles, meant for this moment.”

I don’t know that I’m a miracle, but I do believe I was meant for this moment Above, however long or short it may be.

CHAPTER 23

The door slides open, and for the first time in my life I see both sky and land, and they are blue and gray and green and brown and so much lighter than the deep of the ocean that I feel dizzy.

I am Above.

Whatever else happens, I am Above.

It is all glinting light and moving air, light coming down from the sky and reflecting on the water, on the metal bridge that leads from the transport to the shore, air touching every inch of my skin, warm. The sun is a hot, orange circle, like a single piece of coin burning as it dips toward the ocean. I grab on to the rail of the bridge that leads to the land, unsteady on my feet. And then I think I’m going to be sick. It is disconcerting in the extreme to be standing over the water, to see the top of the ocean. It might be how people who live Above would feel if they could stand over the sky.

“It’s all right,” Maire says, and she holds my arm and helps me cross the bridge.

I take my first step ever on real land—on sand, fine and white and brown and mixed through with grass and shells, so much texture, more than even the woodwork in the temple, more than I’ve seen in all my life.

I suck in deep lungfuls of the air, rich and warm and oxygenated, even though I know it’s also thick with pollution and the particulate matter that will eat my lungs away with cancer. My hands still have salt on them from the sea, from my attempt to surface hours ago.

“Rio,” True says. “Trees.”

He’s right. There are silver-gray trees with ash-colored moss hanging from them growing right up out of the sand a few feet in front of us. The color is similar to the trees I know, but they are not the trees I know—these trees are alive, and when their leaves fall off, no one bothers to put them back on because new ones grow. And you could never reattach these fallen leaves—soft, brittle as paper, crumbling in my hands as I bend down to pick them up. I can’t help myself.

And then Maire’s voice is in my ear, and she’s pulling me back up to my feet and away from the leaves. When I turn around, I am stunned to see that the transport has already disappeared Below.

I didn’t even hear it go.

Maire speaks to me quickly as we cross the sand to join the other sirens, who ascend a low, wooden platform. It appears as if it were made from trees like the ones growing on the island. “I have a plan,” Maire says, “for you and True to escape.”

I listen.

“Behind those rocks on your left,” Maire says, “there is a little inlet. Climb in and swim and follow the curve of the inlet. You’ll find a cave, farther back along this shore. Hide there. Wait until it’s nearly dark, if you can. And then swim from this island to the main isle and go to the temple. You’ll see it as soon as you come over that rise.” She points across the water to the shore of the main island.

“How do you know all this?” I ask.

“One of the voices told me,” Maire says. She sounds sad. “This way is best. You would never have survived the floodgates. Your lungs would have burst in the ascent. That’s why I told Nevio what you were doing. We were just in time.”

So she was the one who betrayed me. But how did she know?

“It was another way up,” Maire says, “and you hadn’t chosen mine. At least you have a chance this way.”

“She’s telling the truth,” True says to me softly. “But I think you know that.”

“No,” I say. “I don’t.”

We’ve reached the other sirens. They stand in a line on the platform, their robes of blue undulating in the wind.

People sit in boats near the shore, waiting. People from the Above. “What are they carrying?” I ask, loud enough that the other sirens can hear. “Are those weapons?”

“It doesn’t matter if they are,” one of the sirens says, her tone so confident that I almost believe her.

The sirens have no weapons except for their voices. This is a fool’s errand, one of Nevio’s devising, one that will end in destruction and silence. Why is he doing this? Does he want to be the last siren in the Below? Does he even want to save Atlantia at all?

Nevio himself is nowhere in sight. The other sirens look around for him, too. “It’s all right,” one of them says. “He must be here somewhere.”

The people in the boats wait. The boats are gray, like the trees.

The deepmarket siren raises her arms. The rest look up at her, eager to respond.

“What are the gifts given to we who live Below?” she asks, exactly as my mother used to do on the anniversary of the Divide, as Nevio did this year on the day Bay left and again on the transport.

Where is Nevio now?

And why did he cause the breach in the deepmarket? So that the sirens would come up to try to save the city, thinking that the breach had been an attack from the Above? Will he tell the people Below that the sirens offered themselves as sacrifices to save Atlantia, or will he tell the citizens that the Council purged the Below of our dangerous, evil presence?

Either way, he thinks we are all going to die.

Are we?

“Save your voice,” Maire whispers to me. “But move your lips. So that you don’t draw attention from the others. Don’t try to escape until I tell you.”

After a beat of silence, the sirens all begin calling in response, their voices as textured as this land Above. And it is true that their voices are even more powerful here. I feel the air shivering with sound.

“Long life, health, strength, and happiness.”

“What is the curse of those who live Above?” the deepmarket siren asks.

“Short life, illness, weakness, and misery.”

“Is this fair?”