Across a Star-Swept Sea

Thirty

IT TOOK THE BETTER part of an hour to make sure Heloise was stabilized. Sedation would have been easier, but Torin was desperate to avoid it.

“Please,” he’d said to Justen. The three of them were in Isla’s private chambers, where Heloise could rest among the white pillows and swaying palm fronds. “This may be her last party. If there’s any way I can let her have a final glimpse . . .”

These aristos sure had their priorities screwed up.

When he was done, Persis was nowhere to be found.

“She left a while ago,” Torin explained. “Actually, I’m relieved. There are things she doesn’t need to see.”

“She’s seen them,” Justen argued, remembering the night Heloise had almost clawed her daughter’s lovely face off. “You can’t keep them from her. And you can’t let her go on like this, either, pretending it’s not happening. Do you know she hasn’t even been tested?”

“Actually,” said Heloise from the chaise, her voice so hard for once, the woman reminded him of her daughter, “we do know that. And I strongly believe she should be given that right. If she is to die like me, then she doesn’t need to know at sixteen.”

Torin didn’t respond, but his lips were pressed in a tight line. Justen could imagine his fear—that both his wife and daughter would die young, leaving him alone in Scintillans. If the Wild Poppy got Tomorrow back, Justen would make sure that never happened.

“She has too much life right now to dampen it with diagnoses,” Heloise went on. “Look at her, young and beautiful and in love!”

Justen looked away. She wasn’t in love. She was playing a game. A silly, stupid game to keep the peace on her island. She deserved more than that.

Torin took his wife’s hand. “I am glad that she found you right now, Justen. You’ve been such a blessing to our family. Such a help to Heloise and, well, I think you’re good for Persis, too. Before you came along, I was so worried for her. She’s too smart for most of the boys in Albion, you know. They won’t ever love a wife as clever as she, even if they’ll take her for the estate. They won’t love her, and she won’t love them, either. She can’t, with a mind like hers. She needs someone who will understand how brilliant she is, and love her for it.”

Justen bit back his bark of laughter. Brilliant? Persis was occasionally witty with a bit of poetry, but—

“It got to the point that I worried this new phase of hers—the parties and the gossip and the dresses—was her way of trying to prove that she wasn’t the smartest woman of her generation. Like she could be the perfect Albian socialite if she tried hard enough. And, God help me, I indulged her in it. I even let her drop out of school, since at least it meant she’d spend more time home with us. I didn’t want the last—” Here Torin broke down.

Heloise drew his hand to her chest. “It’s all right, my love.”

“Persis is very sweet,” Justen said automatically. But “sweet” seemed somehow insufficient to describe her. She was beautiful and fun loving. She was kind and fiery. She’d been there to help him and to comfort him.

She’d even been the one to give him words to use against Vania.

He found he could not agree with Torin. Many men would fall for a woman like Persis. He might, if he didn’t value more seriousness in his partners. Actually, it was quite touching to see a set of parents so smitten with their child that they’d excuse her faults and mistake her for brilliant. He wondered if his own parents would have seen him that way, had they survived. If they would have told him he was forgiven for his mistakes and that he could make restitution for the things he’d done.

“I don’t think sweet’s the word for it.” Heloise sighed, then laughed, as if remembering. “Oh, the arguments I’ve had with that girl. Inappropriate clothing, daredevil stunts on the pali, political debates . . .” She turned to her husband, eyes as lit up as her daughter’s. “Oh, Torin, do you remember that campaign she started in the village when she was seven to change the Blake family flower from frangipani?”

“Yes!” Torin replied, chuckling. “What was it she wanted to change to again?”

Heloise shook her head, trying to recall. “I think . . . it was those poppies. The pua kala? Because they grow wild on the wall by the star cove . . .”

“Right.” Torin nodded, grinning. “Something about how the pua kala was a far more interesting flower—”

“Stronger and more resilient,” his wife said through giggles.

“With a more important history with the ancients as medicine.” Torin threw back his head, laughing. “You ought to appreciate that one, Justen.”

“She’s right,” Justen said slowly. “Pua kala was valued by the ancients for more than its beauty. It was a highly revered plant.” Medicinal and spiny and wild. Useful and dangerous and tough.

Torin shrugged good-naturedly. “And since they’re both yellow and white, we wouldn’t even have to do any redecorating.”

Heloise was laughing so hard, tears were streaming down her cheeks. “But if we’d changed it, whatever symbol would the Wild Poppy use now?”

All laughter stopped. All three of them fell silent.

No. It wasn’t possible. Justen looked at the stunned faces of Persis’s parents. Her rich aristo father, her brilliant reg mother. Both thought that Persis was strong willed and brave and the smartest girl in Albion. They’d raised her to be patriotic and kind, on an estate the farthest south of any in Albion, and they’d given her a swift yacht and a clever sea mink and an education alongside the princess of the island.

But it simply wasn’t possible. He’d been living beside her for nearly two weeks. He knew her well, and more than well enough to know that Persis was too simple, too shallow, too . . .

No.

Justen had met her in Galatea. In disguise. She’d introduced him to the princess, and sat in her throne room. She’d introduced him to Noemi, and visited the refugees at his side. She’d prevented the Albian courtiers from sending out messages on her boat, and then been handed the visitors like she’d know what to do with them. She’d come to find him when he’d been fluttering with the Poppy, then disappeared the moment he was distracted.

She wasn’t the most foolish person in Albion. He was, because he hadn’t seen it before now.

Persis Blake was the Wild Poppy.

HER HIGHNESS PRINCESS REGENT Isla of Albion stood in the middle of her throne room, her head held high, the white swirls of her outrageous gown floating around her of their own accord, powered by tiny, buzzing nanobots. Her white hair was arrayed in enormous wings that shot out from her head. She looked very intimidating.

Torin Blake, however, was standing before her and he did not seem remotely impressed. All he’d been able to ascertain so far was that Persis, along with Andrine, was long gone from the royal court, and possibly from the island altogether. “You will tell me what you and my daughter have been up to,” he stated firmly, “and you will do so right now.”

“Will I?” Isla replied haughtily, looking from Torin to Justen to Heloise. “I think you will watch your tongue in my palace, sir.”

He shook his head. “Don’t you talk like that to me, young lady. You want to launch military operations against Galatea, I’m all for it. You want to use my daughter and my boats and my tenants to sneak around playing spy games, I’ll have something to say about it.”

“Officially,” offered Tero sheepishly, arriving in the room with Kai and Elliot in tow, “it was Persis who used those things, which she technically has the right to, being a Blake and all.”

“Tero!” Isla cried, exasperated.

The gengineer shrugged his shoulders. “What, you think we’re going to get away with denying it? These are the Blakes, Isla, not the Blockings.” But he flinched as he looked at his lord and lady anyway.

“So it’s true,” Justen said. “You two and Persis—”

“And my sister,” Tero added matter-of-factly.

“You guys are the Wild Poppy?”

“The League of the Wild Poppy, yes.”

“Tero,” Isla tried again. “Shut. Up.”

“Don’t you dare shut up, Finch,” said Torin Blake. “I may not be able to tell Her Highness here what to do, but you’ll listen to me.”

For the first time, Justen could appreciate an aristo’s power. He wanted answers out of Tero, too.

The Blakes were looking from Isla to Tero, their faces drained of color. Kai and Elliot were remaining silent, clearly realizing that this matter was none of their business.

“You are saying,” Heloise began slowly, and Justen was sure it took all her strength to speak aloud, “that my daughter, with the assistance of a few of her school friends, has been spending the last six months running back and forth from Galatea in disguise, defying Citizen Aldred and his entire army, in a foolhardy and possibly deadly attempt to liberate imprisoned Galatean aristos and other dissidents?”

Tero grimaced but nodded.

Heloise turned toward her husband. “I knew we spoiled her.”

“Noemi Dorric is fired,” Torin said. “Fired. She’ll be lucky if she can get a job vaccinating cuttle jellies when I’m done with her.”

“Sir,” said Justen quickly, “Noemi Dorric is a skilled medic and—”

“And she had no business helping my daughter with such dangerous activities and not telling anyone!” Torin whirled on Justen. “And what, exactly, did you know about all this, Citizen Helo?”

Justen raised his hands in surrender. “Nothing! Believe me, I’m even more blown away by this than you are.”

Completely blown away and more than a little fascinated. His mind reeled with replays of conversations he’d had with Persis that now overflowed with double meanings. When she’d comforted him in the sanitarium, confided in him in the star cove, scolded him on the Daydream—all those times, she was New Pacifica’s most infamous spy.

She’d known all along that he was responsible for the Reduction drug, yet she’d welcomed him into her home. Why? To keep a closer eye on him? Why had she let him visit the refugees, if she only planned to rip him away? And what had she made of his confession an hour ago at the party? What had she been thinking while they danced . . .

Justen felt knocked sideways as if by a giant wave. Persis Blake was the most skilled actress he’d ever known. He’d handed her all that information, and she’d talked to him about dancing.

He looked at Tero. “When she left, what did she take with her in terms of drugs?”

“Drugs, now?” Torin Blake roared.

If Kai and Elliot had seemed out of their depths at the party, they looked completely lost now.

Tero appeared ill at ease. “The usual. Supplements for knockout doses. Enough genetemps for her and my sister and the targets.”

“Genetemps!” Her father threw up his hands in despair. “This is a disaster.” He turned to the princess. “I want you to send a security detail down there to get my daughter back. Now.”

“Please,” Isla scoffed. “Do you think for a moment that Persis would let a few paltry Albian soldiers stop her? She’s outwitted the entire guard force of Halahou city prison.”

That might have been the wrong thing to say. Heloise put her head in her hands. Her shoulders were shaking, though Justen couldn’t tell if she was laughing or crying. His medic instincts warned him that the fragile woman should probably not be involved in this, but at the same time, he wasn’t about to be the one to point it out. And he had other things on his mind, anyway—like what Persis had taken from his conversation with her as the Poppy.

“Did she request doses of the Helo Cure?” he asked Tero.

Tero’s eyes narrowed. “Yes, she did, but I didn’t have any on hand. Given the gengineering requirements, it would take a while to code. She did order some, though. Why?”

Justen shook his head. “Nothing.” If she asked Tero for the cure, that meant she trusted his information. She did want to protect herself and Andrine should they be captured, and anyone else. But she hadn’t told Tero why. Had she simply been in too much of a rush?

“You mean for Ro?” Elliot asked anxiously. “The cure. It’s supposed to be for Reduced like Ro, right?” She looked at the others. “Does anyone here but Persis know what that Vania girl is planning to do to her?”

“She won’t hurt her,” Justen stated firmly. “All she needs from Ro is a genetic sample, but having her in Galatea is insurance.”

“Insurance for what?” Elliot asked.

“That I won’t bomb Halahou into oblivion, for a start,” Isla muttered.

“Insurance for me,” Justen clarified, as the visitors’ eyes went wide. “Vania wants me back and she thinks if she has Ro, she’ll get me, too.”

“Why?” Elliot asked again.

Justen sighed. “Because I’m the one who wants to experiment on her.”

Kai’s face turned severe. Elliot’s turned into that of an avenging goddess.

“Wait just a minute—” Kai said. “You can’t simply kidnap people and run experiments on them without permission—”

“I wasn’t going to,” he said quickly. “I simply wanted a sample of her genetic material for my work. At most, a brain scan. Nothing invasive or painful, and naturally I was planning on asking for permission first, and explaining to all of you—”

Kai held up a hand. “I don’t need the details right now. The important point here is that whatever it is that Vania is planning to do to my friends, clearly Persis—who is apparently quite learned in these matters, what with being such a good spy neither her parents nor her lover had the slightest inkling that’s what she was doing—”

“I’m not her lover,” Justen grumbled defensively. He especially didn’t need Kai throwing around terms like that in front of the Blakes.

But Kai had also set Justen’s thoughts on another track. Vania knew all he needed from Ro was some genetic material. Material he might already easily have had. A strand of hair, a scrape of cheek cells. It was all a Galatean scientist would need as well. Something Vania could have gotten from Ro just by asking nicely. Something she might have gotten from Ro without anyone ever being the wiser.

“Apparently Persis thought it was so important that this not happen that she ran off to Galatea at a moment’s notice,” Kai finished. “Am I right?”

Justen’s mind whirled. There was no pressing need to take Andromeda and Ro in the middle of the luau, to separate them from their friends.

“And now she’s off,” Kai went on, “alone but for Andrine, trying to rescue our friends. I don’t know much about Galatea, but if someone is risking her life to rescue Andromeda and Ro, I feel duty bound to help.”

But Vania had done it like that anyway, and she’d told Justen about her plans, too.

“Persis and my sister had to go quickly,” Tero was explaining. “Persis believes it will be easier to intercept the visitors before they reach the Halahou city prison than try to get them out later. If that’s where they’re going.”

And when Justen had refused to join Vania, she’d injured him, but she hadn’t captured him. She hadn’t silenced him. In fact, she’d left him alone, so he had time to . . .

Warn the Wild Poppy.

The truth hit him like the smack of a wave. Vania wasn’t after Andromeda and Ro at all. They were merely perks of the process. She’d been laying a trap for the Wild Poppy. And Justen and Persis had fallen right into her hands.