Justen shook his head. “If Noemi ever responds to me, I’ll ask her to put me in touch with him. Or maybe the princess will do it.”
Persis remained silent, fearing any response would connect the dots in Justen’s head. The only person those two had in common was her.
“I wonder,” Justen said, “do you think Tero is the Wild Poppy? I know all along we’ve been saying that the Poppy must be an aristo, but maybe he’s not.”
All right, her and her other friends from Scintillans village. But even that guess was too close for comfort.
“Tero?” She tossed her hair over her shoulder. “He has far too many gengineering duties at court. Besides, I’ve known him for ages. He’s not the sneaky type. He can’t even keep his feelings for the princess a secret.”
“Yes, but remember how he knocked that lord out on Remembrance Island the other day?”
Right. She had let Justen think Tero was responsible for that.
“And if Isla was helping him, he’d have the money and the resources to make all the trips to Galatea that he needed. And the disguises! He’s a gengineer, so he’d have access to the lab to code whatever genetemp he wanted. It makes a lot more sense than some bored Albian aristo who knows nothing of spy craft.”
“It makes more sense that some freshly cooled gengineer knows something of spy craft?” Persis acted as if she was holding back her laughter. “That’s preposterous, Justen. Trust me, I’ve known that boy all my life.” Which was why she trusted Tero in the League, and why she didn’t want Justen sniffing around him. Why, after all this time, did he suddenly want the spy to fetch his sister? And why was he so curious who it was? “Besides, who cares who the Poppy is? Isn’t the important thing that he is effective?”
Was Vania still trying to find the Wild Poppy? Had she enlisted Justen’s help?
“Everyone cares, Persis,” Justen said. “It’s the only thing anyone talks about, on both sides of the sea.”
That she knew. “Oh, Justen, I thought you weren’t interested in gossip.”
He paid her no mind. “It must be Tero. Look at the way he keeps his hair. No one here cuts their hair so short. It’s for his disguises, maybe.”
Now Persis really wanted to laugh. Yes, she supposed short hair would have been a boon to her in her disguises. Perhaps she should let that rumor about her new taste in hairstyles stand and go for it. “I look forward to seeing Tero’s response when you ask him at the luau tomorrow.” At Justen’s confused expression, she explained Isla’s plan as well as the fact that Vania had invited herself.
His face fell, which ignited an uncomfortable twinge in Persis’s chest, one she firmly ignored. She didn’t care if he was despondent. Or care about anything he did as long as it didn’t hurt the refugees anymore.
“Another party,” he said. “Another day away from the lab. I don’t know how any of you can celebrate with all this suffering. You most of all, Persis. How can you worry about clothes and hair and not think about the fact that this is going to be the first luau your mother’s too sick to attend?”
She stiffened.
Justen paled. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it.”
“You did,” she replied bluntly. “You look at me and you hate the fact that I can put my mother’s sickness from my mind while I tell Isla what shoes will best match her dress.”
“She wears white, Persis. It can’t be that hard.”
“It’s not? You do it.” She was safely back in her role now, but her mind erupted with ideas. He truly couldn’t stomach having fun while people suffered. And yet he was asking questions about the Poppy like he’d been sent on a mission from her enemies. Which was it? Who was he? How could she find out the truth?
A flutter zipped into the room; halted above Persis’s head; and switched to its lazy, lilting trajectory toward her palm. Orchid. Isla.
We must discuss the visitors’ clothing requirements. Call me immediately.
She took a deep breath and fluttered back:
Yes, Your Highness.
JUSTEN HAD NO MEMORY of dropping off to sleep at his desk, nanorectors still hard at work, oblets burning bright, but when he woke, it was to find a kimono-wrapped Persis standing above him and shaking him by the shoulders.
“There’s only four hours until we have to leave for court. Do you even know what you’re wearing?”
“Pick something,” he groaned, blinking. “I’m sure Isla would prefer our outfits matched anyway.”
She rolled her eyes. “Oh, you, too? Must I single-handedly dress every person on this island?”
“I thought’s that what you liked doing.” There was something on the edge of his mind he couldn’t quite grasp. Something about last night. After Persis had left, he’d fumed a bit, and then, unable to sleep and unable to do anything for his sister, he’d gone back to work. He scrubbed his hands across his face and toggled up his notes. “Fashion. Fun. Nothing that could remotely be construed as serious.”
Persis fixed him with a glare. “You wouldn’t like me serious, Justen. I promise you that.”
The nanorectors on his desk were blinking blue and green, indicating they’d completed the task Justen had set. As Justen looked at the model they’d built from his program, rotating silently on the desktop, everything clicked into place.
Staring in fascination at the model, he waved her away. “I don’t care what I wear, Persis. Put me in whatever you want. I have more important things on my mind.”
Far more important. He may have found a way to stop it all.
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.”
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