Across a Star-Swept Sea

Thirteen

SEVERAL HOURS LATER, PERSIS and Justen were still at the sanitarium, with no sign of departure on the horizon. Justen and Noemi had tested the regs in the facility and learned that Justen’s hypothesis was correct—every one of them was descended from those who’d received the Helo Cure. The next step was seeing if there was a way to counteract or overcome the effects. To pass the time, Persis was playing chess on the floor with a few of the recovering patients. But she wasn’t paying careful enough attention. She kept accidentally winning.

She’d also fired off a few flutternotes whenever she was sure no one was watching. She fluttered Isla that a problem at the refugee base was keeping her from fulfilling the princess’s public relations quest, but that she and Justen were working on it together. She fluttered Andrine to get an update on Remy’s transport back to Galatea. Andrine had been charged with giving the girl some very explicit instructions as to what she was to do when she arrived home, since Persis didn’t want to place Justen’s sister in the path of danger. Remy was to gather information, not hunt it down.

Finally, she fluttered her parents—on a frangipani flutter, naturally—saying she and Justen would be late for supper.

And she thought. Was it possible that the Galateans were not aware of what they were doing to their people with this drug? They’d begun by using it solely on aristos, a symbolic punishment meant to enslave the upper class as the aristos had once enslaved the masses. The revolutionaries’ first victim had been the old Queen Gala, followed by her entourage. It was only recently that they’d expanded to punishing regs who ran afoul of the revolution in this manner. Did they mean the sentences to be for life?

“Excuse me, Lady Blake?”

Persis looked up from her most recent game to see Lord Lacan standing there, his face grave. Lord Lacan was the first aristo she’d rescued who was aware of her true identity, thanks to Remy’s unmasking her during the man’s rescue. The other aristos in his party, thankfully, had been out of sight when Remy had knocked off her cap. Though every new person who knew her secret was one more node of danger, she was glad it had been Lacan and not someone like Lord or Lady Seri.

She excused herself from the board—a good thing, too, as she was two moves away from another checkmate—and retreated with him into a quiet corner.

“Rumors have been flying around the facility like your little spun-sugar flower messages,” the old man said to her. “There’s a problem, I understand, with the reg refugees?”

“It’s not of concern to you or your family, sir—”

“You’re wrong,” Lacan replied. “The regs you rescued along with me are my friends. Anything that hurts my countrymen hurts me as well. May I see them?”

Persis blinked, surprised by the vehemence in his voice. Then again, even Reduced, Lacan had a presence about him. He’d been one of the most powerful voices for reform before the revolution, which is why she was so mystified that Aldred made him a target for imprisonment and Reduction. Even Remy Helo seemed to have been curious. Lord Lacan was responsible for changing at least one Galatean reg’s mind about the revolution—and one who’d been raised to believe in it more strongly than anyone. Maybe that’s why Aldred found him so dangerous. He was one of the only pro-reg forces out there who could challenge Aldred’s despotic rule. Lacan was an aristo, but not the kind the revolution was meant to challenge.

Persis led him into the next chamber. There were seven refugees here, all regs. Lacan observed them for a moment, their sullen, confused faces, their clumsy movements and mumbled groans.

“This is an abomination,” he said at last. “We must tell my countrymen what is being done to them, what they truly risk the longer they allow Aldred to control the island. Everything I fought for, the integrity of the Helo Cure itself—” The old man’s voice broke on the words, and he shook his head.

“I know.” Persis put a hand on his arm.

He looked at her hand, at the yellow leather wristlock covering her palmport. “You are a very young person to be taking this on all on your own.”

“I’m not on my own,” she replied in defense. “I have helpers, and Noemi, and the support of the princess—”

He cut her off, his tone contemplative, as if he hadn’t even heard her. “This is what I’ve been thinking ever since I came back to myself. How young you are. How young you and that little soldier girl looked as you grappled on the ground in Galatea. How young Princess Isla is.” The Lord Lacan looked down at his wrinkled hands, at the bandage covering his thumb. “I was ten years old when I took over my family estate. Twelve when Persistence Helo came to me and told me about her cure, when I decided to give it to every Reduced person on my land. My neighbors, all those people older and wiser than I, they all told me how foolish it was to listen to some reg who managed to get herself a medic’s training. Said even if it did work, I’d have a lot harder time managing an estate full of regs than I would if they were Reduced.”

“And you were right, in the end.”

He chuckled. “Yes, I was. At twelve years old, I was young and idealistic and lucky that I happened to be right. So that’s why I know it’s foolish to tell you how dangerous this whole Wild Poppy business is and utterly pointless to say you’re too young to pull it off. Because I know from experience that sometimes it’s only the young ones who are crazy enough to change the world.”

VANIA SCOWLED AS SHE scrolled through the files on her oblet. General Gawnt’s new strategy of beefing up the security at the work camps meant far more administrative work than Vania liked. He was doing this to annoy her, of that she was certain. Now, instead of being at the front lines of the Ford siege, waiting for the moment she could watch the final barriers fall, she was stuck in an office in the Halahou royal palace, reviewing files on troop movements.

Annoyed, she flipped back to his memo. His fat face looked like little more than a smear in the oblet display.

“With these new measures in place, we feel certain that the menace of the Wild Poppy will soon be apprehended.”

What nonsense. The Wild Poppy was not intimidated by guards. He’d waltzed into a heavily armed estate and tricked an officer and all his soldiers into releasing Lord Lacan and his family. She’d reviewed all the witness interviews there.

Well, all except the missing guard’s. The young one who’d apparently showed up out of nowhere then disappeared along with the Poppy. A plant? A spy? Her records were obviously faked and led nowhere. And it seemed the Poppy had done something to the surveillance records when he showed up, as the entire block of time had been erased.

Vania wasn’t giving up, though. While Gawnt attempted to unmask the Poppy with brute force, she would do it with finesse, and she would start by tracking down every person who’d ever interacted with the spy—even if that meant detoxing the idiot nanny who’d let the Ford children slip through her fingers.

“Captain Aldred?” came the voice of her assistant. “You have a visitor. It’s Citizen Helo.” As always, there was a reverent hitch in the woman’s voice as she pronounced the name. Helo. Vania wondered if her own name would hold such importance to future generations.

Also: finally! Justen hadn’t been answering her messages for a week. She knew he was devoted to his research, but this was ridiculous. “Send him in,” she called.

But the figure who came through the door wasn’t Justen. It was Remy.

“Oh.” Vania pasted a smile on her face to hide the disappointment. “You’re back from your school trip at last?”

Remy’s eyes widened and her hand went to her smooth cap of dark hair. “Yes. Glad you didn’t miss me too much.”

Vania chuckled. “Of course I missed you, squirt. Especially at dinner. You wouldn’t believe how boring it gets without you or your brother to distract from General Gawnt’s speeches.”

“You haven’t seen Justen, either?” Remy said. “He’s not at the lab, you know.”

“Oh?” Vania said, distracted. “Well, you know Justen. He’s probably sequestered in some sanitarium somewhere, mopping the brows of pathetic Darkened.”

“I don’t know. We . . . haven’t spoken in a while,” Remy pressed. “We had a fight before I left. And he hasn’t answered my message to talk in person.”

“Probably forgot his oblet somewhere.” Vania shrugged. “If ever someone needed a palmport, it’s your brother.”

Remy nodded. “He never would, though.”

Vania made a sour face. “For good reason. They’re disgusting and decadent . . . and dangerous.”

Though the combination of nanotechnology and gengineering was all the rage in Albion and was starting to catch on even among aristos in Galatea before the revolution, Citizen Aldred had held the practice up as an example of the needless, wasteful indulgences that characterized the upper class, then outlawed the technology before it became popular among regs. Vania remembered how Justen had helped her father prepare tracts that railed against the unknown ravages palmports might be doing to the body’s systems as it drained resources to power itself.

Vania had only ever seen them, dead and useless, on the palms of Reduced prisoners, but she’d watched videos of palmports in action—marvelous, spun-sugar flutternotes that carried encoded messages and applications that would generate small items, toys, or even chemicals if you’d taken the proper supplements.

Sometimes, when she ran out of neurotoxin prickers in her weapons bracelet, she wondered if some enterprising gengineer might write a palmport application for them. You know, if it wasn’t illegal. Imagine not having to carry poisons around. Imagine just being poisonous, at the press of a button and the downing of a supplement. . . .

“Vania!” Remy waved her hand before Vania’s eyes. “Are you even listening to me?”

She looked up at her little foster sister. Up—when had Remy gotten so tall? She was no longer the child who’d always tagged along behind Vania and Justen, begging to be part—any part—of their activities.

“Sorry, squirt,” she said. “I’ve just had my hands so full with the Ford siege, and now Gawnt’s got me trying to track down the Wild Poppy . . .”

“Really?” Remy said, her eyes alight with interest. “What have you found so far?”

Vania bit back a sigh. She really didn’t have time to explain this to a little girl. “Not much, but more than I’ll be reporting to General Gawnt, that’s for sure. If anyone is going to catch the Poppy, it’ll be me.”

“Can I help?”

“Maybe in a few years.”

Remy blinked, hurt, and now Vania did sigh. Justen was much better at putting his little sister off than she’d ever been. That was probably why he was working his bedside manner in a sanitarium and she was interrogating royalists as part of the military police.

“All right, squirt,” she conceded. “Here’s a way you can help. There’s this story coming out of the Lacan estate about a missing soldier—some young recruit who apparently ran off with the Poppy. But no one seems to know where she came from. I’ve got tons of military recruit records to go through. Maybe you can help track this girl down.” She handed Remy the oblet.

“Trina Delmar,” Remy read on the display. “Yes, I think this is something I can handle.”

Good. That would keep her busy, and it was doubtful Remy could cause much trouble combing through some static records. It was odd that Remy and Justen hadn’t been in contact—though sometimes Justen and Vania spent weeks without talking, Remy and her brother were much closer. At least, Vania thought they were.

Maybe she’d missed a message from him explaining his extended absence? She checked again. Nothing from Justen, but in her queue was a message from a former classmate. She clicked on it and her oblet sparked up a video from a popular gossip source.

Justen Helo, hero to the revolution, spotted getting cozy with an Albian aristo? Oh, Helo, say it isn’t so!

Jaw hanging like a fish, Vania played the video over and over in disbelief. The gossip sweeping Halahou was that Justen Helo was over in Albion romancing one of the most ridiculous aristocrats around.

The girl’s name was Persis Blake, and according to the story, she was one of the richest, prettiest, and stupidest girls on the whole island. Her father, who probably also had pumice for brains, had defied Albian tradition to name her his heir, which made her one of the most eligible bachelorettes in New Pacifica.

Vania didn’t understand. This had to be some sort of misunderstanding. Or maybe a vicious lie perpetrated by Galatean royalists. Justen wouldn’t run off to Albion without telling them first. And he certainly, certainly wouldn’t fall in love with someone as shallow as this Blake girl was.

Justen had always been uninterested in romance. Too much work to do. Hadn’t they had the conversation a hundred times, while their silly classmates got tied up in unproductive and melodramatic relationships that burned quickly and left nothing but anger and hurt feelings in their wakes? Vania had used these hurt feelings in her missions—one old classmate had been more than ready to reveal to Vania that an ex-lover was attending royalist meetings. Poor boy had been two months in his work camp, thanks in part to the bitterness born of a failed romance. Those sorts of feelings were beneath people like Justen and Vania. At least, that’s what Vania had always thought.

But even if Justen decided at last to take notice of something other than his precious research, he would never have taken up with an aristo, even if she was obviously named for his famous grandmother. Not an aristo. Not her Justen. No matter how beautiful or charming or rich this girl was. Justen didn’t care about that stuff.

If he had been sighted in Albion—well, Vania was sure there was an explanation. Sometimes Justen got so caught up with his research that he grew absentminded. Maybe he was collecting data at a sanitarium in Albion, thinking he’d only be gone on a day trip. That would explain the lack of messages. Justen would go to the moon if he thought it might help him in his research. And maybe he’d found the trip so fruitful, he’d extended it and neglected to message them. And maybe this aristo was . . .

Well, Vania couldn’t quite imagine what an aristo would have to do with a sanitarium. None of the aristos in Galatea ever got their hands dirty with the reg disease.

And she couldn’t imagine where someone might have gotten the idea that Justen would ever fall for an aristo, no matter how pretty she was. He’d have to be Reduced to be that stupid.

Or maybe Vania was the one acting Reduced. After all, aristos lived to be charming and flattering and seductive. Maybe Justen wasn’t too smart to fall for their ways at all. Maybe, because he’d always been too busy to get involved with anyone before, he was completely blindsided by this Albian aristo’s seduction techniques.

And of course the Albian aristos would want him on their side, if they could get him. He was far too valuable to the revolution to leave in their hands. Even Vania’s father would agree with that. Hadn’t he often said that Justen was one of their best assets?

This took precedence over any silly record combing. Vania needed to find out where Justen was and what he was doing. She’d message him, and if there was no reasonable response to these ridiculous rumors, if he didn’t have a good answer for why he needed to stay on that aristo-infested island of Albion a moment longer than absolutely necessary, well then, she’d just go and bring him home herself.

And she could look for the Wild Poppy on the way.