Across a Star-Swept Sea

Twenty-seven

ELLIOT NORTH HAD ONCE thought the brightly colored velvets and silks the Posts wore back at home were garish and over-the-top. Now, thanks to the hours-long ministrations of Persis Blake, she realized how tiny her worldview had actually been. Now she knew garish. Even the brightest fabrics in Channel City had nothing on Albian fashions.

“I can’t wear that,” Elliot said when Persis showed her the gown she’d chosen for the party.

“I know, it looks terribly complicated,” Persis had replied, “but the zip goes right here, and you step into it like so, and then we wind this piece around after you’re inside.”

That hadn’t been exactly what Elliot meant, but somehow she’d found herself fastened into the outfit anyway. She gasped when she saw her reflection in the mirror. Her curves had been pushed and squeezed and lifted and restrained—harnessed, really—revealing the figure usually hidden underneath her work trousers and coveralls. Her hair had been pomaded and glittered and curled until it fell in sparkly ringlets halfway down her back.

“But for that truly exotic touch,” Persis said, “I think we need makeup. Sit.” Elliot, helpless to resist now, sat and let Persis go to work on her face with a palette the size of a dinner plate. The Albian aristo was an odd one, to be sure. When Elliot had first met her, she’d placed Persis in the same boat as her sister, Tatiana: pretty, rich, spoiled, and lazy. And though the first three were certainly true, she was beginning to have her doubts about the fourth.

“Persis?” she asked as her gorgeous host painted her lips a rich plum. “May I ask you something?”

“As long as you don’t move your mouth too much.”

Elliot took a deep breath and raised her eyes to the other girl’s. “Why do you pretend to be stupid?”

The brush stilled on Elliot’s lips. Persis turned away to the table, to find a blotter. “You think I’m stupid?”

“No. I don’t.” She’d seen Persis, her flashes of seriousness, her eagerness to help Elliot and Kai when they worried their friends had gone missing. She’d seen her go head-to-head with the black-clad revolutionary when Andromeda and Ro returned. Persis had acted like she hadn’t a care in the world, but every word was carefully crafted for maximum impact. “But I see you pretend to be, and I don’t know why. If you’re the heir to this estate, wouldn’t it be best to try to gain the respect of the people here?”

Persis shrugged. “Not really. I won’t have any power once I’m married, so it’s better not to spend my life regretting what was once mine.”

What an odd way of doing things they had on this island. Who cared if the heir was a boy or a girl? Still, Elliot knew something about managing without official power. “I ran my estate for years without any power at all. My father was supposed to be the one in charge, though you wouldn’t know it from the inside.”

“How nice for you, Chancellor. And yet, you gave it all up for a man, too, didn’t you?” There was a sharp edge to Persis’s pleasantness this time, and Elliot was taken aback. But she was no longer the frightened child living under her father’s thumb. She was a Luddite lord and a Cloud Fleet explorer, and she knew that the paint and the clothes and the hair were more than fashion for Persis Blake. They were armor.

“See what I mean?” Elliot said. “If you didn’t care, you wouldn’t be cross.”

“I’m cross,” Persis drawled, as if it was a word from a foreign language, “because you’re calling my life choices into question. In my house. While I dress you in clothes I bought for you. Now, hold still while I do your eyes.”

Elliot sighed and closed her eyes while Persis began to paint them with gold. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m not being a very good guest. It’s just—where I’m from, a mind is a precious commodity. Our most precious commodity. One would never have one but pretend otherwise.”

“You are saying I’m acting Reduced?”

“I’m saying when human intelligence is all that’s keeping the world alive, we should use every bit we’ve got.” Elliot blinked her eyes open. Persis was staring at her very seriously.

“Where I’m from,” the beautiful aristo said, “a mind is precious but temporary. In Galatea, they destroy them as a means of punishment. And everywhere, there are those who will lose theirs in time, and there is no way to prevent it. I may be one of those, Elliot. I just may.”

JUSTEN ENDED UP BEING almost physically dragged from his desk by two Scintillans servants who cared a tad too much about how the estate presented itself at a party they weren’t even attending. He was bathed in perfumed water, shaved, styled, and arrayed in a pair of silk slacks and a dark blue long silk jacket with a mandarin collar. After it was all over, Justen stood before the mirror in his bedroom and admitted that Persis may actually have the marked talent for clothes she always claimed. The material was not quite as dark as his usual revolutionary black, but the richness of the blue didn’t look alien on him, either. The lines of the suit were simple and snug, and the design lacked all the nonsensical embellishments favored by the men of the Albian court. The material was subtly shot through with a shimmery golden thread, and the jacket buttoned up the front with a row of round star sapphires.

He probably could have done without the star sapphires.

That being said, the party was the perfect opportunity. He’d see Isla again and be able to communicate to her the importance of being put in touch with the Wild Poppy as soon as possible. With the kind of information Justen had to give him about the prisoners, the spy would have to agree to put Justen’s sister at the top of his priority list. For the first time since Uncle Damos had started using his drug, Justen felt a ray of hope.

As he exited onto the terrace, he saw the other guests waiting to depart for the royal court. His eyes went first to Tomorrow—pretty, carefree Tomorrow, who couldn’t possibly comprehend what she meant to the human race. She was dressed in a swirly, sleeveless confection of emerald green with a high neck and a massive, bubbly skirt that floated about her feet as she bounced on her toes with excitement. Her hair had been arranged in a series of braided crowns that twisted around her head, studded with both rosy and yellow frangipani blossoms, which Justen found a nice touch on Persis’s part.

Both captains were present—Andromeda in a gown of diaphanous deep red draped about her body like she was some ancient goddess. The voluminous folds were gathered at each hip, and girded with thick cords of twisted bronze material that Justen couldn’t tell were metal or fabric. Her hair was swept back into a long tail banded intermittently with the same material—pulled back from her face like that, the foreign captain’s most prominent feature was her unusual blue eyes, large and glittering with her ancient, radical gengineering. Persis was aiming to cause a sensation. He hoped Andromeda was prepared.

Captain Wentforth’s outfit was similar to Justen’s own, though the full, pleated lines of his basalt-gray frock coat were more like the foreign style he’d been wearing when Justen first met him. His shirt was a pale, silvery plum, open at the throat, with wide cuffs that extended past his wrists to cover a good chunk of his workman’s hands, though, rather than concealing them, they drew the eye like a well-placed frame.

Of the lot, Elliot North looked most uncomfortable in Persis’s choice. Her form-fitting violet creation was sleeveless, plunged deeply at the halter neck, then fell in straight, simple lines to her feet. At first, Justen thought that was all there was to the dress, and he was surprised by Persis’s restraint. But then, the chancellor moved, and he saw that behind her, fanning out at either side of her hips like a vast set of wings, was a wide, structured train in a pleated, lavender-tinted rainbow of fabric. The wings varied in shade from cream to purple to the charcoal and plum tones that Kai wore, giving the pair a subtle visual tie that made explicit the connection Justen and everyone else had been noticing since the visitors arrived. Elliot’s dark hair spilled down her back in curls and sported jewels Justen couldn’t believe he actually recognized as belonging to Persis’s own collection. That she’d lent them to the visitor took him by surprise, though he just as quickly realized it shouldn’t have. As rich as she was, she seemed to prefer her pretty things be used rather than hoarded for herself, whether that meant letting refugee children manhandle Slipstream or lending jewelry to near strangers.

Justen nodded at the visitors. “Are we ready for our first Albian luau and all that entails?” He gestured to his own outfit with a rueful grin. Three of them chuckled, while Tomorrow bounced again.

“I think you all look wonderful,” came a clear, soft voice at his side, and he turned to see Lady Heloise Blake standing with her husband. She wore a soft, draped dress of shimmering rose gold, which set off the color of her copper-bronze hair. Her husband, standing at her side, echoed his wife in a creamy yellow shirt and maroon brocade slacks. His only ornament was a lei of frangipani, which Justen had already been told was a tradition of the aristo houses. Each lord wore his official flower in a lei.

“Lord and Lady Blake,” Justen said, with a deeper nod. “I wasn’t aware you’d be attending.”

“I wouldn’t miss it,” said Heloise, giving him a discreet squeeze of the hand. Justen understood. Like her daughter, Heloise must love a party, and given the progression of her illness, he doubted she’d be well enough to ever see another.

“You all look marvelous, if I do say so myself,” came Persis’s voice from somewhere behind him. Everyone’s eyes turned to her.

As she no doubt had intended.

Justen ought to have guessed that if these were the outfits his false lady love had procured for her guests, her own would eclipse them in every way. But even with that understanding, as he heard the gasps around him, he barely avoided joining in. The tiniest of earthquakes seemed to rustle through him, the kind that shakes petals off flowers, as Justen became aware of the gulf between what he was supposed to feel for Persis Blake and what he actually did.

Maybe it was the way he’d first met her, ill with genetemps sickness and wrinkly from the code. Maybe it was his own prejudices against aristos, even if his dismissal of Persis was slowly being worn down by her infuriating effervescence, her ingratiating pride in her family and her home, and her determined insistence that her life was perfectly fine just as it was. Maybe it was his own sense of self-preservation, seeing as he was supposed to pretend to be in love with her. Whatever it was, Justen had grown quite adept at ignoring how jaw-droppingly gorgeous Lady Persis Blake was.

Not tonight.

At first glance, her dress appeared to be the same deep sea blue as Justen’s coat, but as she moved toward them, he saw a thousand shades of green and blue and black in the carefully ruched fabric that hugged her curves, then at her knees spread out in waves—there was no other word for it—that rippled around her as she moved, fading in color the way the sea does when it nears the shore until finally, at the floor-length hem, they exploded into frothy white. The crest of the bodice sported the same lacey froth, and her yellow and white hair was piled high on her head in an arrangement so complicated that Justen didn’t even want to know how many people had to help her. In her hair and wound about her neck and arms were delicate strands of gold that twinkled—actually twinkled—with odd nanotech bursts of iridescent blue and green that reminded Justen of nothing more than . . .

“You’re dressed as the star cove,” he blurted.

She smiled and took his arm. “You noticed.”

THE VISITORS WERE WHISKED away to rejoin their newly arrived companions as soon as they reached the court and, in truth, Persis wasn’t sorry to see them go. She had as much curiosity about them as everyone else, but their arrival had complicated everything from her home life to her plans for the Poppy—and for Justen.

Her father had installed his wife at one of the garden tables near the water organ, which had been tuned to play lively, rippling music one might dance to. The water cascaded rapidly through the musical locks, the tempo creating rushes of white water and tiny waves. It was perfect positioning—away from crowds and too much conversation but not suspiciously withdrawn from the festivities. As soon as Persis was assured they wouldn’t need her assistance, she set off to find Andrine and Tero . . . only to be led right back to the visitors.

“Can’t it wait until after the luau?” Andrine begged. “People from elsewhere are about to be introduced at court. This is the most exciting thing to happen in centuries.”

“This and the cure,” Persis said, but relented, though she was sure Andrine would feel differently if she knew how time sensitive their rescues had become. For aristos, they could afford to wait—but regs were in serious danger from the moment they were arrested by the Galateans to the moment the League came to their aid.

But for now, she’d stand back and let Isla have her moment. Her best friend was standing on the dais above the court, her hair winged out in massive petals meant to invoke the royal orchid and her dress swirling about constantly thanks to the nanobots in the hem meant to make her skirt move like she stood in a breeze.

The visitors stood in an arc behind her. Aside from the four Persis knew, the ship brought with it a couple of natural regs older than Persis’s parents named Admiral and Mrs. Innovation, as well as half a dozen crew members with equally silly names. Though Isla’s courtiers had tried to dress the rest of the Argos crew before their introduction, Persis felt a little pleased that none were quite as successful in their mission to give the visitors more suitable Albian dress as she’d been.

In another life, Persis would have counted that a triumph and spent the rest of the evening listening raptly to their stories of the sea and their far-off home. She would have danced the night away with whatever boy asked nicely enough, gossiped with her friends, then sailed home with her parents—all equally exhausted and exhilarated by the party.

Instead, she waited impatiently for Isla to finish with the formal introductions, cast worried glances back at her parents on the terrace, kept an eye out for Vania Aldred, and tried to plot the Wild Poppy’s next move.

The next move was Justen. It had to be. He had asked too many questions about the Poppy yesterday to be merely an interested bystander. And given what she knew about his history with the revolution, she could not afford to let him suspect how close he really was to the spy. It had been hard enough to act flattered and flirty during the trip to court on the boat, and—perhaps for the benefit of her parents—Justen had been doing exactly that. Gone was the glum, frustrated scientist she’d been dealing with ever since her last trip to Halahou. Justen had been as cheerful as a sea mink, displaying charm she hadn’t seen since the night he’d first had dinner with her parents, and he hadn’t mentioned Vania or the Wild Poppy even once.

Persis was suspicious, to say the least. She was no longer the trusting girl who’d taken him to the star cove for swimming and kissing. Whenever Justen acted lighthearted, he was hiding something.

After Isla introduced the visitors, and they repeated the story of their home island and the mission that had brought them to New Pacifica, the party started in earnest. Naturally, the visitors were mobbed by guests who wanted more information. Invitations to the luau had gone out to aristos and regs alike, and Isla stood by and watched with satisfaction at the way her subjects were interacting.

Persis joined her. “A successful party, Your Highness.”

Isla rolled her eyes. “You never do use my title without a laugh in your voice. Even in your flutters, I can hear it.”

“That’s your interpretation,” Persis replied. “I have nothing to do with the tone of my voice in your head. And, for what it’s worth, your flutters always sound bossy to me.”

“Oh no, that I intend,” Isla replied drily. She frowned. “Speaking of bossy, here comes Shift.”

The councilman was stuffed into a long, glittering frock coat loudly encrusted all over with hibiscus made from rubies. Persis longed to give the man a few fashion pointers. “Lovely party, Princess,” he said. “You always can be counted on for an event like this.”

“Thank you, sir.” Isla nodded her head.

“Pity it’s so crowded,” he said airily, “but I guess that’s what comes of inviting regs to court.”

“Seeing as the visitors are almost exclusively regs themselves, I could hardly avoid it,” Isla replied. Her dark eyes burned in her face, but her expression remained serene. Persis admired her friend’s restraint.

Tero appeared, a tray with two flutes of kiwine in his hands. “Some refreshments, Isla?”

Shift scowled at him. “Don’t interrupt your betters, boy.” He swiped a glass off the tray as the three teenagers stood there in shock. “A good server will wait for a break in conversation.”

“I’m not a—” Tero went silent as Shift drained his glass and turned away.

“As I was saying, these regulars are completely forgetting their place . . .” he trailed off. “I feel . . . odd.”

“It’s the app,” said Tero with a roll of his eyes. “As I said, I’m not a waiter. I’m a gengineer and you just drank my latest surprise for the princess.”

Isla looked at her own glass of kiwine. “What is it?”

“If you had taken it?” Tero shrugged. “Supposed to be a lie-detection app. But you already have that voice-modulation and heat-monitoring app I gave you last month. Without those installed, I’m not precisely sure how his will run.”

Persis bit back a smile. Tero didn’t look the least bit contrite, and who could blame him?

“You drugged me?” Shift looked as green as kiwine.

“Technically, you drugged yourself. I never offered you a drink . . . sir.” He peered at the aristo’s dilated eyes. “I think you should sit down.”

Isla was openly grinning as she sipped from the other glass of kiwine. “Oh, Tero. I take back every mean thing I said about that time you messed up the genetemps. This is too, too entertaining.”

“This is outrageous,” Shift slurred. “Dealing with a child and her slum friends . . .”

“Interesting.” Tero’s tone was one of a scientist mid­observation. He and Justen had more in common than Persis would have thought. He took Shift gently by the arm and led him to a seat, and the girls clustered around.

“We aren’t going to make the same mistake with the boy as we did with you,” Shift was saying, to Persis’s shock and Isla’s open delight. “Without your fool father around, he won’t be exposed to as many ridiculous ideas about reg equality.”

“‘Fool father,’” Isla repeated ecstatically. “Please tell me someone’s recording this!”

“All scientific observations,” Tero said. His oblet was in his palm, glowing red. “Royal College of Gengineers standard policy, Your Highness.”

“Oh, Tero, I could kiss you.” She looked at Persis. “And note that he says my title properly.”

“Maybe because you kiss him,” Persis replied. Shift was sweating profusely, his lips quivering and popping. “What’s happening to him?”

“If I had to guess,” said Tero, “it’s that the app is working on him like a truth serum. Which is a bit like a lie detector but . . . backward?” He cocked his head.

Well, wasn’t that handy. She knew a few people she’d like to try it on. And certainly easier than neuroeels.

“Best thing that ever happened was that accident,” Shift was saying, his face all red as he glared at the princess. “It’s just too bad you weren’t on the boat that day.”

Persis hadn’t realized her jaw could drop so far.

“I think that’s all we’re going to need,” Isla said. “Any more insults and I’ll demand more than his resignation. I’ll need his head, too.” But beneath her haughty face, Persis could tell the comment had hit more than Isla’s political pride. She still missed her parents and brother immensely.

“Sir,” said Tero, and there was the mocking note that was missing every time he addressed Isla as Your Highness, “I’m afraid you may be suffering from a faulty palmport application. I think it’s best we find you a medic.” That, too, was Royal College of Gengineers procedure. Tero had just taken his sweet time getting to it. A flutter spun from his hand, no doubt calling for a medic to take charge of the councilman.

“You,” Shift growled as best he could. “Don’t think I don’t know what you’re up to. Grasping, uppity little reg. You won’t sleep your way onto the throne, I can promise you that.”

Tero straightened, then looked down at the aristo darkly. “I think the poor man has suffered enough,” he said, and opened his left palm again.

Isla put her hand in his, covering the port before the knockout drug could be released. “Don’t,” she said softly. “I’d like the soon-to-be ex-Councilman Shift to be awake to see me dance with my boyfriend.”

Tero looked at Isla. Isla looked at Tero, a tiny smile on her face.

“You want to dance with me?” he whispered.

“Desperately,” she whispered back, before looping her arm in his and walking out into the crowd.

Persis watched them go, unable to contain her smile. At least one romance on this island would end happily. “Convey my regrets to your nephew, Lord Shift,” she said as the court medic arrived.