Nessa had bought half a broken copper plate for the price of its metal. Arun had paid far more for the other half. The seller’s grandfather had called it a map to a lost city. Arun believed him.
This gave each of them a reason to consider the other a fool.
They met at the harbour office. Iona, who measured buildings and land for the council, had offered a fee for a drawing of the old seawall. She needed its heights and water levels marked clearly. Nessa arrived with her plate wrapped in a flour sack. Arun arrived with his in a velvet box. Iona put both on a table scarred by compasses, moved the velvet box out of the way of her tea, and fitted the broken edges together.
The plate showed a stair. One half bore three little suns and the sign that island children still chalked above their doors: ABOVE. Arun’s half carried BELOW and a crooked line between them.
“A royal vault,” Arun said.
“A drainage drawing,” said Nessa.
“Then you won’t mind selling your half.”
“You can afford velvet. Make an offer.”
Iona tapped the crooked line with her pencil. “I can afford neither of you. My offer is forty crowns for one accurate survey, with both names on it. Nothing comes out of the ruins. Sign before you go.”
Half of forty crowns would pay one month’s rent on the narrow shed where Nessa now repaired lamps. It would not buy her father’s old shop back from the man who now kept fishing nets in it. She had been looking at his price through the window all winter, as though a price might become smaller from exposure.
Arun wanted proof that the lost city of Tareth lay under the harbour. He had written a booklet about it. His old teacher had sent it back with a letter: An old object can travel. Find where it belonged, then you may have proof. Arun had kept the letter. He quoted it more often than his booklet.
The plates had come from a warehouse torn down on shore. Nessa and Arun had bought them legally and could sell them. The ruins under the water belonged to the island. Iona reminded them twice.
“The measurement fee is still there if you find an ordinary drain,” she said. “I have boats touching bottom at tides when they shouldn’t. Ordinary drains interest me.”
Nessa signed. Arun read the terms until Iona turned her pencil round and began rubbing out the word offer.
He signed too.
Outside, Arun proposed dividing the fee equally.
“For equal work,” Nessa said.
He tucked his plate under his arm. “Certainly.”
They walked toward the harbour by different streets.
Nessa reached the exposed seawall first. At low water, a black stair ran down its outer face and disappeared beneath green weed. Three sun marks cut into the wall matched those on her plate. She held the plate with the suns uppermost. Its crooked line tilted toward the stair.
Arun came scrambling over the rocks, carrying a rope and the expression of someone who had not intended to arrive second.
“The lowest sun marks the shortest day of winter,” he said.
“It is also lowest.”
“Symbols have layers.”
“So does this weed. Watch your boots.”
She had already found the small marks he had copied into his notebook as a separate alphabet. They were round, regularly spaced, and one retained a copper peg.
Nessa pointed. “Repair pins. The plate was fastened to a board. They aren’t letters.”
Arun crouched, annoyed enough to look closely. His hand stopped over the dark horizontal stain below the third sun.
“And that isn’t a crack. It’s an old water line. Your stair goes under it.”
At present the sea lay a man’s height below that stain. At high water it would cover everything they were standing on.
They fitted the plates together again. The crooked sign meant BETWEEN. It lay between ABOVE and BELOW. Below it were two hooks facing each other. Nessa had thought them handles. Arun had thought them crowns. On the seawall, two iron rings stood on opposite sides of the stair.
“Between the rings,” Nessa said.
Arun lowered his rope. It fell past the last visible step, struck something, then dropped another yard.
He drew it back with the end wet.
They could ask Iona’s crew to help. But the crew would leave for the outer harbour tomorrow and not return for a week. Nessa’s rent was due in two days.
The tide was rising. If they went down now, they would have to come back quickly. Nessa did not like letting her rent choose for her.
“We look from the landing,” she said. “If there’s no sound way down, we stop.”
Arun agreed so quickly that she made him repeat it.
Below the weed, six steps remained. The seventh had fallen away. Beyond the gap, a stone landing projected from the wall above a pool. Arun’s rope fell short of the landing when tied to the ring. Nessa took her shop rope out of her bag.
“You brought that?”
“You brought velvet.”
They joined the ropes, tested the rings from above, and descended one at a time. Nessa went first. Arun stayed until she had checked the landing, then came down with his notebook inside his shirt. She left the joined line in place. No one said anything about finding a second exit.
A short passage led into the wall. Water lapped at its entrance. Inside stood a stone basin and a tall brass measuring post, crusted with salt. ABOVE, BELOW and BETWEEN were marked on its face. A float rested in the basin. A rod joined it to a pointer on the post.
Arun’s lamp lit rows of numbers on the brass. The marks at the bottom were recent enough to be legible. Higher ones had almost worn away.
Nessa pressed her hand against the brass post. It was cold and solid. There was enough brass here to buy more than a month’s time.
Then the pool outside rose into the basin. A float lifted. The pointer moved.
“It works,” Arun whispered.
His whisper irritated her. “We are allowed to speak to a drain.”
But she spoke quietly too.
It was a water gauge—a device for measuring the tide. Water entered the basin from the harbour. As the float rose, it moved the pointer up the numbered brass post. The plate showed the stair leading to this room, where someone could read and repair the gauge.
A name ran across the top of the post. Arun knew the letters from old harbour stamps he had collected.
Tareth.
He reached for his notebook, missed its pocket, and reached again.
Nessa held the lamp while Arun copied the name. Then he measured the brass post and she wrote down its width. They checked the pointer against the water outside. It stood too high. A stone under the float kept it from dropping all the way.
They marked the stone on their drawing. Iona would need to know the gauge was wrong before using it to check the harbour’s depth.
“We’ll tell Iona about the stone,” Nessa said. “She can decide who moves it.”
Arun looked at her. “I didn’t suggest—”
“I’m telling myself.”
She laid her small wrench on the floor beside the lamp. She had brought it in case the vault contained portable fittings. It fitted the brass post’s metal nuts very well.
Water reached the wrench before they finished the drawing.
Nessa picked it up, put it away, and told Arun to close his notebook.
At the landing he offered to go last. She refused. He had wet his sleeves measuring the basin and could no longer feel his fingers properly. She watched him climb, then tested the knot between the ropes again. It was his knot. She had checked it before going down; she checked it once more because now it had to carry her.
Halfway up, a boot slid on the weed. She stopped swinging against the line and waited until her sole found stone. Arun lay above the edge with one hand stretched down. It was not far enough to reach her. He stayed there anyway, until she made the step.
Iona paid them the following morning, after seeing the chamber herself with her harbour crew. Her crew removed the trapped stone. Their permit allowed that repair. The brass stayed.
Arun spread his corrected drawing across the office table. Nessa placed her plate beside his, this time without its sack. They would sell them together if they sold them at all, with the location and the survey attached.
“Equal work?” Arun asked.
Nessa counted her twenty crowns. There was another month’s rent to find after this one.
“You can have half,” she said. “But the pins go in the drawing as pins.”
He bent over the paper. In the margin, carefully, he drew a little circle.
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