The Drowned Orchard

About this book

On the floating city of Saltlight, nobody has tasted real fruit. Halcyon Provisions owns every food printer and charges by the flavour. Temperance "Tem" Okwu, sixty-one, sonar-eyed and short-tempered, was once the finest salvage diver on the Float. She has not taught anyone in eleven years, not since her last apprentice used her lessons to bring a drowned tower down on people's heads. Then three children break into her shop with a stolen data-tag: a liar, a boy who is afraid of water, and a deaf girl who talks with her hands better than anyone alive. The tag points to the Glasshouse at Fennick Deep, a sealed orchard forty metres down, still lit after sixty years. Halcyon wants it, and so does Tem's old apprentice. The children will go with her or without her. Tem has to decide what she owes them, and what she is willing to teach.