Across a Star-Swept Sea

Nineteen

PERSIS MANAGED TO KEEP it together until she’d reached her bedroom, until she’d engaged the privacy screens, until she’d sat down at her vanity, unwound her mesh veil, and stared in the mirror at the rashy burns all over her face.

She met her angry, amber gaze in the glass, and her eyes began to sting.

“I did it,” she grumbled to her reflection, “though I’d rather have tossed him off the pali.”

The whole way back from Galatea, she’d been planning to do just that. Capture Justen as she’d captured his sister, drag him to the throne room for interrogation—maybe even utilize those neuroeels Isla claimed to have in the dungeon.

Six months as the Wild Poppy, and she’d never felt such an urge to get violent. Six months playing dumb, and she’d never felt as stupid as she did right now. She’d invited Justen into her home. She’d introduced him to the princess. She’d told him all about her mother’s illness. She’d kissed him in the star cove. And, worst of all, she’d shown him the refugees in the sanitarium—the poor, broken people he was responsible for creating. And all the time, Justen had been lying to her. All the time, he was a worse enemy than Citizen Aldred himself.

Here she was, the most celebrated and loathed spy in New Pacifica, and she’d been taken in by a freshly cooled medic with a kind face and a famous name.

She’d planned to confront him with all that the very second she got home to Scintillans, but then she walked onto the terrace and saw him talking to Vania Aldred. Captain Vania Aldred, his “old friend.” Captain Vania Aldred who’d toppled the Ford estate, and who’d apparently come to Albion specifically to seek out the Wild Poppy. Possibly with Justen’s help.

Persis needed a plan. A good spy would neutralize her enemy as soon as possible. A great spy would go a step further. If Justen was working for the revolution in Albion, it would be better to play his game and use his position against him. She just had to find out if he suspected her first.

She looked at the girl in the mirror. Her eyes were glassy with unshed tears, bloodshot and baggy with exhaustion from the mission and the genetemps. Her face was swollen and red, her lips set in an angry line. Not the beautiful socialite any longer and not the skillfully disguised spy with the masculine features and corresponding beard. In this moment she was Persis, raw and unfiltered. The scared girl with the sick mother and the best friend trying single-handedly to yank her country back from the brink of revolution. The silly teenager with a crush on a famous boy who’d made her promises so convincing she’d almost risked it all in the star cove. And she could scrub and primp and style and none of that would change.

But she’d learned her lesson. She smoothed her expression as well as she could. She could do this. She was the greatest spy in New Pacifica. Bit by bit, she vanished, leaving only the steely determination of the Wild Poppy.

The screen pulsed. “Persis?” came Justen’s voice.

She pasted on her most vacant smile, until even the Wild Poppy was hidden beneath the mask of Persis Flake, and disengaged the screen.

Justen strode into her room, and it was all Persis could do to keep her eyes on her reflection and her mask in place. “Where have you been all day? You were gone when I got up this morning.”

“Oh, I’m sorry, darling. Andrine and I went to a spa and I turned off my palmport for relaxation purposes . . .” She gestured to the rash. “As you can see, it wasn’t quite as relaxing as I’d hoped.”

In the mirror, she saw the annoyance on his face evaporate. “Oh, Persis. What did you do to yourself this time? Have you put any ointments on it yet?” He reached for her cheek, but she jerked away from his touch.

“A slight allergic reaction.” To him. “I’m managing.” She always managed. She’d do it again, and he’d keep his war criminal medic’s hands off her.

“Allergic reaction to what?”

She rolled her eyes. Were they really talking about her pretend spa treatments? “My facial scrub, of course. I think . . . hibiscus? Can’t remember. Anyway, what do you want?”

“Nothing. I”—he sounded almost sheepish—“I was wondering if maybe we could go swimming again.”

Persis almost gasped. Was he serious? She really had melted in the star cove, then. And before that, too, when she’d led him right to the heart of the refugees. Even if he didn’t suspect her of being anything more than Persis Blake, he’d managed to get quite a few secrets out of her already. And maybe he wasn’t even after information, but just hoping to relax with a pretty, stupid aristo who would kiss him on command.

Either way, he could forget it.

“Are you sure you wouldn’t rather take your Galatean friend?”

“Excuse me?” Justen spluttered.

Now Persis did face him, and let just a sliver of the rage she felt show on her face. “I know you think I’m stupid, Justen, and you’re probably right. But if there’s any hope for you at court, it might help if you weren’t openly consorting with Citizen Aldred’s daughter.” She turned back to the mirror. “Especially since you’re supposed to be madly in love with me.”

In the reflection, she saw Justen blink in astonishment. “Persis, are you . . . jealous?”

Not even the girl she pretended to be would fall that fast. She rolled her eyes. “What I am is very concerned about our image as a couple. The moment I leave you alone on the estate, you start inviting your Galatean lover by?”

“I didn’t know Vania was coming,” Justen said. Or lied.

Persis whirled around. “Wrong answer again, Justen. My goodness, you’re dreadful at public relations. You’d think, living with a propaganda machine like Citizen Aldred, you’d have picked up a few tips.”

He shook his head in confusion. “What are you talking about?”

“The correct response to my accusation is ‘She’s not my lover. We’re just old friends. I actually think of Vania more as a sister.’” Persis dropped her Justen impression. “That’s the sort of thing people expect you to say. You should practice, you know, in case we have one of these spats when gossips are listening. Honestly, Justen, if someone like me can manage this, I don’t understand why you’re having trouble.”

Justen plopped onto Persis’s hammock. The golden silk fanned up around him, bringing with it a cloud of Persis’s signature flowery scent. “Because I’m not a courtier, Persis. I’m not good at being political and charming. I’m a medic. All I want to do is work in my lab and make sick people well.”

Liar. Liar, liar, liar. How she wished she could scream it at him. He was reclining on her bed and he was staring at her with that infuriatingly earnest expression, as if every word from his mouth were pure as fire. She’d fallen for it once. She’d wanted to believe him so badly she’d almost endangered the refugees all over again. She’d almost endangered herself.

She hadn’t realized how hard she’d been hoping the prison medic was lying until she heard Remy confirm it: Justen had invented the Reduction drug. He was responsible for this entire nightmare. On the boat, she’d almost managed to convince herself that Justen might have been telling Persis and Isla the truth, or at least part of it. That he did regret the direction the revolution had gone in. And maybe that meant he regretted the part he’d played in creating the pinks.

Except that didn’t add up, either. If Justen Helo had honestly wanted to defect to Albion and atone for the sins of making the Reduction drug, then he would have told them so at once. He certainly would have brought up his special knowledge of the drug when he’d been shown the damaged refugees. He seemed deeply disturbed by what he saw, to be sure, but Persis knew all too well how something like that could be faked.

And then she’d seen him entertaining Vania Aldred.

If he truly was working for the revolution, the best thing Persis could do was make him think everything was going according to plan. If he truly was their enemy, capturing him—branding a Helo a war criminal—would only ignite the aristo-reg conflicts Isla was trying to avoid. For a moment, Persis stood at the edge of a precipice every bit as high as the Scintillans pali. But here, there was no glass-walled lift, here there was no zip line and the safety of a silk hammock. Here she was about to embark on the most important mission the Wild Poppy had ever undertaken.

“I spent all day in the lab,” he said now, “while you’ve been getting your skin flayed off for fun. And I plan to go back first thing tomorrow morning, too.”

“If you really cared,” she said, her tone as smoothly superior as possible, “you’d still be there, helping them move the facility, instead of talking to your dear old friend.”

“They’re moving the refugees?” Justen asked.

No, but let him report to Vania that they were. That would buy Persis some time to find a new safe house with Noemi. And it would also give her the opportunity to find out what Justen might be leaking to the Galateans.

“Darling, if you’d just get a palmport. They’re the only way to stay in the loop in Albion. Noemi fluttered me when she couldn’t get in contact with you.” That sounded believable. Justen knew how her countrymen depended on their palmports.

“Where are they going?” he asked. Too quickly? Maybe even frantically? Was Justen understandably upset that he hadn’t been told, or concerned that he’d given bad information to his revolutionary buddy?

“Oh”—Persis flicked her hand in the air—“somewhere inland. Such a hassle, really. You’re going to spend so much time traveling to and fro, you’ll hardly have any left to spend with me.” And she planned to keep a much closer eye on him from now on.

“I’m not here for a vacation. I have to have my work. Otherwise this is all for nothing. I can’t stand by while my countrymen keep suffering.”

“I beg to differ, Justen.” He’d stood by just fine for six months now. “As we discussed, part of your bargain with Isla was that you spend time with me—”

“I don’t expect you to understand, Persis,” he replied coldly. “Just tell me where they’re moving the lab.”

Not likely. Fake Persis may pretend she didn’t care, and real Persis might not fully understand all the intricacies of Justen’s work and the further damage he might potentially do, but both of them could unite under the banner of keeping him as far away from the refugees as humanly possible.

Fredan appeared in the doorway, his face drawn, his usual butler’s air of indifferent formality utterly absent. “Persis. You’re needed in your mother’s room.”

She took off without another word.

Outside, dusk had descended on the lawn, but the sound of evening insects gave way to screams and crashes that ricocheted across the stone and crystal columns and polished floors. Persis was relieved they’d be swept away by the wind as soon as they reached the lanai. At the door to her mother’s room, she saw the extent of the damage. Every piece of furniture was overthrown, every item of clothing ripped from the cupboards. Her mother, wild-eyed and wailing, was digging through a trunk of monsoon gear, shouting hoarsely.

“Where is it! Where did you put it! Give it back!”

In the corner stood two maids, wringing their hands and looking on in horror.

“Where’s my father?” Persis asked.

“Down in the village,” said one of the maids. “Fredan sent a flutter.”

“And the night nurse?”

“Not here yet.”

Persis swallowed and crossed to her mother, recalling the advice Noemi had given her and her father. Keep her calm, talk her back into rationality. She could do this. If there was anything she was good at, it was making people behave the way she wanted.

Heloise’s hair had escaped its clips, sending bronze spirals cascading down her back. Persis brushed one aside. “Mama?” she asked softly. “I’m here to help you. What are you looking for?”

Heloise Blake turned and her eyes went even wider, if that was possible. “You.”

“Yes, Mama—” Persis began, when her mother grabbed her by the throat and threw her against the wall.

“You!” Heloise growled, shoving her against the stone. “You stole it! Who are you?”

“Mama!” Persis said, though her voice tripped over the syllables. “It’s me, Persis.”

“You stole my face.”

Her muscles relaxed. Here was the heart of the episode. She’d seen this one before. “Yes, Mama,” she said calmly, blinking until the threatening tears subsided. “I’m your daughter. We’ve heard that all my life, remember?”

Heloise’s hands crept up to Persis’s cheeks, her fingers curved into claws. “Give me my face back.”

Persis neatly caught her mother’s wrists before she did any more damage to her inflamed face. “Mama, please. Look at me. I’m Persis.” She moved Heloise’s hand to her own face, let it caress her own cheek. “We look alike. We always have. You’re the most beautiful woman in all Albion, and I’m lucky that anyone thinks I resemble you.”

Sometimes this worked. Sometimes her mother remembered. But Heloise’s eyes were still wide, her pupils constricted to tiny points. Her nails were now raking across her own skin. And then, suddenly, she slumped against Persis. Justen stood behind her, a pricker in his hand.

“What did you do?” Persis cried as the maids rushed to help support her unconscious mother.

“Sedated her,” Justen said. “She needed it. You did your best, Persis, but—”

“You had no right to medicate my mother,” she said, her tone low and dangerous. She’d been getting there. She just needed more time. And Justen Helo was never, never allowed to give anyone she loved a drug.

She swept by him and followed her servants to the bed, where they were laying Heloise down. At the edge of the platform lay the cracked remnants of a hand mirror, its rotating lifters bent and clicking as they tried to turn. That was probably what had set the whole spell off. Sometimes her mother lost track of the passage of years and failed to recognize her own reflection. She tapped the mirror off, swallowed, and said in as steady a voice as she could muster, “You may be a medic, but you aren’t ours.”

“I have a little more experience dealing with DAR than you do,” he replied. “When they reach a certain point of confusion, they can’t be reasoned with. There’s a feedback loop that happens in their brains, and—”

“Save it for your lab reports.” The maids had wisely retreated, and Persis took her mother’s limp hand. Her parents’ bed was suspended from the ceiling on long lengths of silk, and swayed slightly as she perched on the edge. Her mother was sleeping, her face so relaxed in repose that she looked much younger than forty. She looked, indeed, like Persis herself. “You don’t know her.”

“Do you think that’s the first time a member of a patient’s family has said that to me?” he asked softly. “It’s true. I don’t know your mother. I wish I’d known her when she was well, when she was all the things she wanted to be, all the things you love about her.” His voice came from very close now, but Persis would not turn toward him. “I don’t know—I can’t know—how you and your mother feel. But I have seen people go through this before, and I do know the best ways to help.”

Her heart pounded in her chest and her skin burned from more than the chemicals she’d used to remove her genetemps facial hair. Justen’s voice was sweet and soothing. He was surely trained for that—bedside manner, they called it. He knew just how to talk to patients and their families. Just how to keep them calm.

He was a bigger liar than she was.

“You can go now,” she intoned, still focused on her mother. “My father and the night nurse will be along shortly.”

“I can stay.” She felt his hand on her shoulder, pressure and heat searing right through the silvery fabric. “This is what I’m good at, Persis. Let me help.”

She bit her lip. A day ago, that would have been all she wanted. The grandson of Persistence Helo, dedicated to the cause of helping Darkened. Ministering to her mother. Recruited into the League of the Wild Poppy. Kissing her in the star cove. But it was all a lie. Justen wasn’t here to help—he was her enemy, and he had no idea what Persis was truly capable of.

“Here,” Justen said, though she’d offered him no answer. He had a tube of ointment in his hands, and he was dabbing it on the scratches marring her mother’s perfect cheeks. He offered her another cloth. “You could use some of this on your rash, too.”

She took it, but the words “thank you” stuck in her throat, the aristocratic manners of Persis Blake warring strongly with the Wild Poppy’s need to flatten this man.

“She’ll sleep for at least four hours with this sedative,” he said. “When the nurse gets here, I’d like to consult with him about what just happened. My observations are from a clinical standpoint, so they might be more useful—”

“Than mine,” Persis finished. “I understand.” Like it or not, Justen knew how to care for Heloise far better than Persis did. “Excuse me while I see how soon my father can be expected.” She also needed to send in a maid to clean up the room before her father returned. It would upset him far more than necessary.

Torin Blake always put on a brave face, but his wife’s bad spells were destroying him, and there was nothing, absolutely nothing that Persis could do to help. If anything, he would rather not see her whenever things got bad, as if dreading the day Persis followed the same path.

Secretly, Persis wondered if that was why her father had let her drop out of school and was indulging what he called her current “phase” of parties and dresses and silly court intrigue. After all, the prospect of losing one’s intellectual capacity hurt somewhat less if you’d spent your life wasting it anyway.

Her mother, on her better days, was less understanding. “Fashion is certainly art, Persis,” she’d told her the last time they’d discussed her sudden apathy toward intellectual pursuits, “and worthy of your time. But I always thought you were more interested in politics. I’d hoped, someday, you could finally become the female voice we need on the Council.”

Persis couldn’t pursue politics. At least not until she was done being the Wild Poppy. But she could hardly explain that to either of her parents. If Papa wouldn’t let her go to Galatea on shopping trips, he’d flip if he learned she was risking life and mind every time she crossed the sea. No, they’d just have to spend a little while longer being utterly baffled that their previously book-ravenous daughter refused to talk about anything in public except her ever-expanding wardrobe.

Lies upon lies. She lied to her enemies as the Wild Poppy and to her friends who didn’t know her secret identity. She lied to her parents when they asked her why she no longer wanted to join Albion’s intellectual salons or continue her studies at school, and to Isla when she explained away her mother’s absences from court. She lied when she pretended to the public that she was in love with Justen Helo, and to Justen when she pretended that she didn’t know exactly what he’d done to his countrymen. There was almost no one left now who Persis could tell the truth to.

The night breeze blew across her heated face, bringing with it the scent of sea spray and frangipani. She heard a few playful barks and Slipstream darted up the stone path threading down the pali. His coat was wet from the sea as she scooped him into her arms.

“You know it all, though, Slippy.” His big otter eyes shone in the starlight, his fish-scented whiskers tickled her cheeks as she nuzzled him. “Now tell me what to do.”

Instead he stretched out his long neck to sniff at the golden flutter that had halted above their heads and was drifting slowly downward. An orchid. Persis opened her palm.

Dearest Persis,

I have decided that tomorrow would be an excellent opportunity for you to throw a small party for our friends on the Daydream. It’s been quite a while since you have used the yacht for any social events, which apparently seems strange to some of the courtiers. I believe you shall invite me, the Finches, Lord and Lady Blocking, Councilman Shift’s nephew Dwyer, and of course your darling Justen must attend.

It would please me very much if you were to pick us all up at the docks near the court tomorrow morning. Perhaps a sail out to Remembrance Island is in order?

Princess Isla, Regent of Albion

Persis grimaced, imagining Isla composing this flutter under duress from Councilman Shift. Its tone was so stiff and formal she wondered if Shift had made Isla type it out in front of him on a wallport. Setting the flutter to her usual Blake frangipani, she thought out her reply.

Of course, if you insist, I’d be happy to throw a boating party tomorrow. However, I feel as if there may be a better way to spend our time at the moment. I have very important news about Justen and me.

The princess fluttered back in record time.

I insist.