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.
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollins Publishers
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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 painted dark colors, 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 your island 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, and I know how hard it is.”
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 migh
t 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.
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