“What won’t work?” I ask. “What am I supposed to do Above? And why did you tell him about True?”
Maire doesn’t answer. She pulls me to a window in the long hallway. “It’s all falling apart,” she says. “Look.”
The plaza is flooded. Not by much, but the entire surface is sheeted in several inches’ worth of water. It’s so beautiful that I can’t keep from staring—a pool, shining like a lake in pictures of the world before the Divide. The bare silver trees reflect on the water, making two of each of them—one in the water, one above.
“Another problem,” Maire says. “It began last night. A small, slow leak, but we haven’t been able to stop it or drain it yet.”
“How can you work with Nevio?” I ask. “He’s part of the Council that killed my mother.”
“You know what he is,” Maire says.
So she does know that he’s a siren. Of course she would.
“I know what he is,” I agree. “And I know what you are.” I can’t hide the hatred in my voice. “You gave Nevio a shell. I saw it in the safe in his office. You’re his collaborator.”
“I have never spoken with Nevio that way,” Maire says. “There’s only one other person I’ve spoken back and forth with through a shell the way I have with you. And that was your mother.”
Out in the plaza, peacekeepers direct people away from the water. Maire touches the wall next to the window, and I wonder if there are voices in here, too.
“The shell you found in his office,” she says. “Was it white?”
“Yes.”
“That was the shell Oceana and I used to communicate, near the end, when they were watching her,” Maire says. “She had it with her when the Council poisoned her. I’ll never forget that, hearing her whisper what they’d done, and then the silence after.” Maire’s eyes stay dry, but her voice sounds rough and sad. “Nevio took it from her just after that, before she ran away to find me. He knew the shell was important, but he didn’t understand why or what it did. He must not have seen her speaking into it. I’m not surprised he’s kept the shell. He doesn’t like mysteries.”
“She tried to keep you safe,” I say, “but you didn’t do the same thing for her. What kind of sister are you?”
Maire turns away from the water, and I take a step back. For the first time, I think that she looks like Oceana. I see the same weariness in her eyes that I used to notice in my mother’s, but in Maire’s it is even more profound.
“I need you to do what you do best for a moment,” Maire says. “Listen.”
“To you?”
“To the city,” she says.
And I do. I can’t help myself. Atlantia no longer screams, but breathes the way a child does after he has cried all he can and is tired and broken and empty. I listen to Atlantia’s sounds and I look out at all her sights: the colorful houses, the iron rivets, the metal trees, the sky, the people who are so sure they are blessed.
“When I first heard you, that day in the temple,” Maire says, “I knew we needed you. I knew how powerful you might be. You’ve had to keep your voice hidden, which means that when you do speak with your full voice, you have a raw power that the rest of us no longer possess.”
“Did my mother know that?” I ask. Was she trying not to hide me, but to make me strong?
Maire smiles. “Yes,” she says. “Of course, making a siren hide her voice can also have the opposite effect. It can destroy a child who isn’t strong enough.”
This is what I hate about Maire. Right as she tells me something I desperately want to know, she gives me terrible answers to questions I never thought to ask.
“I have been waiting for you,” Maire says. “But I can’t wait any longer. We might succeed, if you join us. We’ve found you just in time.” She shakes her head and smiles, a sad smile. “How could Oceana hide you so long from me? Especially when we were friends again, near the end, and she told me everything else?”
I hear tenderness when she speaks of my mother, and I can’t bear it. “Don’t talk about her,” I say.
“So you won’t allow me to speak of my own sister,” Maire says. Her eyes flash and she looks dangerous, but she keeps her voice on an even keel. “Then let’s continue to speak about you and your extremely useful voice. Pure and untrained. The most powerful voice I’ve ever heard.”
That can’t be right. “The Minister—” I begin.
Maire shakes her head. “Nevio isn’t as powerful as you. But his talent is unusual, and I don’t know that any siren in history has been able to mask their voice as well as he has masked his. The sirens have changed. The Minister can hide and use his voice. You and I are in the same family, and we can control things in addition to people. It seems that even miracles evolve.”
Even miracles evolve. The bats did. They made their wings blue like glass and water. They changed to suit their environment.
And now they are dying.
“The Minister is speaking to the other sirens right now,” Maire says. “He is telling them that we are the Below’s last chance for survival. He will let them know that we are going to the Above to remind the people there of their place in the world, and of ours. He will say that the people of the Above are tired of providing for us Below, and they do not plan to continue to do so. The Minister will say that this mission is essential to the survival of Atlantia. He is right.”
“Atlantia will die without us?”
“Yes,” Maire says. “It will. Two weeks ago the Above stopped sending food, and our stores are almost depleted. The city is breaking, and we are running out of materials to repair it.”
She doesn’t use her voice to convince me. She doesn’t have to. This all makes sense to me, so much so that I wonder why it’s taken the people Above this long. Why wouldn’t they hate us? Why wouldn’t they want our better lives? But I also have the distinct feeling that there is something Maire isn’t telling me.
“Do they want us dead so that they can take over Atlantia?” I ask. Is that it? Then they could have our city and our longer, easier lives.
“They want us dead,” Maire says to me very quietly, her voice sounding the way it did in the shell. “They’re the ones who put the mines in the water to keep us from coming up. And they don’t care about Atlantia.”