Across a Star-Swept Sea

Thirty-one

IN THE SHELTER OF the cliffs below Fisherman’s Rest, Persis and Andrine moored their boat and came ashore. The moon was high in the sky tonight, providing little cover as they hiked up to the road and turning the sea behind them into a single silver sheet that stretched all the way back to Albion. They huffed their way to the bluff, hampered by the long robes of the isolated Peccant order they were impersonating and Tero’s last-minute genetemps, which had bloated them both into puffy, swollen versions of themselves. With their hair tamed and covered with dark hoods, and the excess bloat obscuring most of their facial features, they were decently concealed for a nighttime mission, though Persis wondered how much more extreme Tero’s genetemping would have to get if Vania kept inviting herself to Albian social functions. If she gave them more than a passing glance, she’d probably recognize them.

“There might have been a more convenient disguise than this,” Andrine gasped, her face soaked with sweat.

“Don’t exert yourself too much,” Persis replied. “You need as many fluids as you can retain for the disguise to work.”

At last they reached the skimmer, which was charged and waiting for them, thanks to the help of the Ford resistance.

“Is the oblet working yet?” Persis asked as they put their supplies in the back and took off toward Halahou. She was never completely comfortable until they’d regained contact. Their palmports couldn’t receive messages in Galatea, and their oblet had been inoperable since arriving on the island’s shore.

“Not yet.” Andrine slipped it back in her pocket. “But I hear Aldred’s instituted dampening hours. It gives his operatives time to search for seditious messages and purge anything that might have gotten through from dissidents like the Fords. We’ll have to work out a hack for it when we get a chance.”

“Sure,” said Persis drily. “We’ve got all the time in the world for that. I do wish Citizen Aldred would be a bit more respectful of our schedule.”

Andrine chuckled, her eyes turning to slits in her swollen face as they sped through the clear, cool night.

Without warning, the car collided with some sort of unseen barrier, springing both girls out of their seats. Persis crashed hard against the dashboard. The controls slammed into her bloated body, knocking the wind out of her. Fighting for breath, she looked over at Andrine, who lay slumped in her seat, unconscious, blood dripping from a gash near her temple.

“Andrine, wake up!” She shook her friend.

“My, that looks nasty,” said a familiar voice.

Persis turned to see Vania standing there in the dark, her fall of black hair hardly differentiated from the night itself. Several officers in military uniform stood at her back.

“Nanothread.” The captain gestured vaguely into the darkness as she approached. “So strong for such a tiny thing, don’t you think? I’m especially fond of it. So, Wild Poppy is it? Who is hiding underneath all that blubber?”

Persis reached for the wristlock covering her palmport and felt a sudden slash of pain traveling up her arm.

“No palmports, Albian,” Vania scolded, wagging her finger and the empty pricker launch. “Don’t you know they’re bad for you?” She approached, and Persis could see she’d changed from her gown into her military uniform. The sparkly black makeup webbing out from her eyes remained, however, as did her dark lipstick. “It’s nice to finally meet you.”

We’ve met, thought Persis, but what she said through gritted teeth and the pain flowing out from her hand into the rest of her body was “Can’t say the same.”

“It was so easy, in the end,” Vania said, as if bursting to share.

Pain shot through her heart, but Persis clenched her jaw and refused to show it as Vania blabbered on.

“I knew the first boat to land on my island would be yours. Every aristo on Albion was at that party. I knew Justen would find you.” Her entire guard leaned forward as she gripped both Persis’s chins in her hand and swept Persis’s hood back from her face.

Persis could barely remain upright, but she mustered the wherewithal to bat her eyes coquettishly at Vania as her enemy’s eyes widened with shocked recognition. Even captured, she was still Persis Blake.

“Well,” Vania said, breathless with exultation, “that was unexpected.”

THE DAYDREAM SPED SILENTLY across the moonlit sea that separated Albion from Galatea. Tero stood at the helm, while Justen twitched awake on the long bench nearest.

“Welcome back,” Tero said. “For what it’s worth, you look . . . stately.”

Justen sat up, coughing a bit, then looked down at his arms. They didn’t look much different. He brushed his hands over his face, feeling the crags and wrinkles Tero’s genetemps had formed all over his skin.

“You promise you’ve worked out the kinks from last time?” he asked Tero, and his voice came out as a gruff grunt, like he’d spent sixty years barking orders at people.

“Pretty sure.” At Justen’s withering glare, he held up his hands in surrender. “I know how touchy you are about the whole operation. But I’m fresh out of fat coding and the male coding won’t help you much.”

Justen meant to laugh, but it came out sounding more like a growl. “This is going to take some getting used to,” he grumbled. “How far are we from shore?”

“A good twenty minutes yet,” Tero replied. “Don’t worry too much. If we don’t get to Andrine and Persis before Vania catches and doses them, Isla will get them back, even if she has to tear Galatea apart to do it.”

Justen wondered if Tero would be so sanguine about the whole operation if he understood the extent to which his own sister was in danger from the drug. Though Tero had told Justen about a fight the Finches had had with Persis recently regarding her drugging Andrine to keep her away from a mission, the gengineer didn’t seem to understand why Persis had made that choice, which must have happened after Justen explained to Persis how the drug worked differently for regs.

Every conversation he’d ever had with her had taken on whole oceans of new meanings, and every time he started thinking about that, his head hurt more than from the genetemps.

“That’s not good enough,” was all he said. No need to scare Tero at the moment.

Tero gave him a wry smile. “The things we do for love.”

“Persis and I are not in love,” Justen said automatically. “It was all for show.”

The Albian gengineer remained skeptical. “I saw the images of you two kissing in the star cove, you know. Everyone did. Quite convincing.”

“Persis is a consummate liar,” Justen said in his gravelly old man’s voice.

“And you share her expertise in the clandestine arts and other methods of spy craft?” Tero replied. “Impressive. I guess medic training really is more comprehensive in Galatea than I’d thought.”

“There’s no need to be sarcastic.”

“There’s no need to deny it,” Tero said, “especially not to me. I know what it’s like to have completely inconvenient feelings for one of these girls. I tried to hide mine for months. It’s hard.”

Justen sighed. He liked the Albian gengineer, liked him even more now that he knew he was doing something more with his time than tinkering with Slipstream, but the last thing Justen needed was Tero, who’d only come out about his . . . whatever it was with the princess tonight, giving him relationship advice. Especially not when he was about to attempt the hardest thing he’d ever done.

“Persis and I are not in love,” he repeated at last.

“Really,” Tero said flatly. “Why not?”

“Excuse me?”

Tero raised his hands. “Look, I’ve known that girl my whole life. She’s basically a kid sister. Used to follow me around the beach in the village, bugging me to play with her. But I’m not blind. I know what she looks like in a bathing suit these days, and I know what kind of brain she’s got hidden under all that hair of hers, too. I would never have signed on to this whole Poppy nonsense otherwise. Because of who she is, she has to protect herself. I’ve never seen any guy who could match her. And then you came along and you didn’t care one bit that she was the heir to Scintillans. You called her out, Justen. No one does that. And then, you helped her mom, you’re helping the refugees, and you’re taking genetemps to go rescue her.” Tero shrugged. “I also saw you two making out on this very boat on that trip to Remembrance Island. There’s something there.”

“Believe me,” Justen said ruefully, “it was faked.” Mostly, at any rate.

Besides, Justen was pretty sure she hated him for his involvement in the Reduction drug. The Persis he’d thought he’d known might be able to forgive him, but the Wild Poppy, who risked her life to protect the victims of the revolution—no. Not her. She’d made it quite clear in the Poppy’s flutters.

And Tero would never understand. He’d always known the real Persis, bathing suits or no. To Tero, someone developing real feelings for his brilliant, charming aristo friend was no big surprise. But Justen didn’t have the right to feel the same. He’d spent the last two weeks dismissing every point Persis made because he’d idiotically decided that she wasn’t smart enough to be correct about things. Yet even when she was acting her flakiest, she still managed to make more sense than his revolutionary friends back home in Galatea. He’d known it, even if he hadn’t wanted to believe it. How odd that an array of gorgeous dresses and a few well-placed dumb comments were all it took to disguise her true self. Was it because she was a woman? Was it because Justen was actually far shallower than Persis had ever appeared to be?

He’d taken her at face value, because she was pretty and rich and dressed so nicely. He’d wanted to think the worst of an aristo, the same way everyone wanted to think the best of him because he was a Helo and a medic. He’d relied on his reputation to bring him to Albion, to get him an audience with the princess, to give him the lab space he’d needed. But the Wild Poppy—Persis—had seen through all that. As Persis she’d urged him to do better with the gifts he’d been given. As the Poppy, she’d neatly cut him off from all the things he’d used his borrowed reputation to gain. She was an aristo, but every member of her spy league other than Isla was a reg, and Persis was not using her aristo status to ply her trade.

It was Justen, the supposed revolutionary, who had thought he should be trusted merely for being a Helo. And if Persis chose to trust him now—as he hoped—it wasn’t because he was a Helo, it was because he was trying, at last, to make up for the worst thing he’d ever done to the family name.

He almost laughed. Love from Persis Blake? He’d settle for forgiveness. Any hope of something more was pointless. Justen used to think that, although Persis was beautiful and kind and charming and funny and whatever else he’d most recently realized about his Albian hostess, she did not have the qualities he looked for in a woman. She wasn’t smart enough. She wasn’t serious enough. She wasn’t dedicated to the betterment of mankind enough.

He’d been such an idiot.

“I think,” he said slowly, “a girl like Persis Blake deserves someone much better than me.”

Tero’s grunt sounded remarkably skeptical, even over the sound of the water rushing beneath them. “Maybe you can revisit this topic once you’ve saved her life. I hear girls like it when a boy rescues them from his evil sister.”

“She’s not my sister.”

Tero rolled his eyes. “Right. Sorry, I really need to stop trusting my own eyes, don’t I? Vania’s not your sister, Persis isn’t your girlfriend, you’re not wearing a bushy gray wig and trying to sneak into the Galatean royal labs to steal some expired medication on a shelf somewhere. Silly me.”

“It might be expired,” Justen muttered, “but it’s better than nothing.” And what was he supposed to do? Sit around in Albion and wait while Isla’s royal guard went to Galatea and demanded the return of two Albian nationals? The relative arguments of Albian immunity from the revolution versus the crimes the Wild Poppy had committed on Galatean soil would take a significant amount of time to untangle; and until they were released, Andrine and Persis were in danger every moment of being Reduced. If it wasn’t already too late.

The port of Halahou loomed large before them, but Tero moved east, beyond the city limits to the edge of Queen’s Cove. The cove was silent now, the water still and peaceful but for the occasional dark hump of a mini-orca back breaking the surface to breathe.

“Did you see that?” whispered Tero. “You know, we studied them in school but I’ve never seen them in person.”

Justen wondered if his companion would be less in awe of the creatures had he seen them eat the corpse of their last mistress. He wondered if Tero would be so calm about the almost-certain capture of both his sister and his friend if he knew what happened to regs who received the Reduction drug.

Justen had been thinking that if he wound up with genetemps sickness, he’d drop Tero down a lava tube. But if the gengineer’s sister was permanently damaged by the drug Justen created, what would Tero have the right to do to him? If Persis was damaged . . .

Justen shook his head. He just wouldn’t let it happen. That was all.