Across a Star-Swept Sea

gengineer, and that the unfortunate incident was just a mistake, or we wouldn’t ask you again. But we are asking. Can you do it?”

Tero’s lips made a thin, stern line. “Yes. I’ll do it. For you, Persis, and for Andrine. For the League.”

“Thank you,” Andrine said, exasperated.

“But not,” he added, “for you, Your Highness.” And he reached over and tapped the oblet off.

In the split second before the connection ended, Isla’s eyes met Persis’s.

The princess regent of Albion looked guilty.

Seventeen

PERSIS STARED DOWN AT the pricker in her hand. She doubted very highly that Justen Helo would approve of what she was about to do. Not that his opinion should matter. She was only pretending that he was her boyfriend, after all.

She gritted her teeth and rolled up her sleeve, remembering all too well the last time she’d attempted genetemps. Tero promised he’d filtered out all the bugs. He swore he’d gotten it right this time.

But he also seemed to have a lot of stuff on his mind.

“Persis?” said Andrine, huddled close by her side on the narrow cabin bench. She, too, held a pricker, but seemed to be waiting for Persis to go first. The boat they’d borrowed from the fishing village smelled of salt and seaweed. “We’re still going through with this, right?”

“Of course. I trust your brother, don’t you?”

“Sure. As far as I can throw him.”

“Slipstream is great,” Persis argued.

“We’re humans, Persis. Not weasels.”

“Sea minks,” she corrected.

“Whatever.” Andrine stared at the pricker in distaste. “You don’t think—you don’t think anything’s going on with Tero and Isla, do you?”

Persis had vaguely suspected that Tero had a crush on her best friend. His palmport apps, his adoption of “your highness” when all her other friends were still calling her Isla, his ability to use any excuse at all to run errands from the Royal College of Gengineers’ lab to the court . . . and that was fine. But his anger and Isla’s guilty expressions yesterday—had things moved beyond unrequited crush? With the ruler of the realm? Was this what came of Tero growing up in Scintillans and seeing Persis’s parents live happily ever after? There was a huge difference between a reg marrying a random aristo and one falling for the princess regent. Maybe Persis should have been paying more attention to what was going on with her friends.

And maybe if Justen Helo knew what she was thinking, he’d get all revolutionary again.

She took a deep breath and jabbed the pricker in her arm. “Tero is always making her those palmport apps.” The burn began deep in her muscles and she winced and reached out for the pallet shoved in the corner of the cabin.

Andrine followed suit. “That might prove he doesn’t like her. I mean have you seen the supplement she has to take to run that jumping threads application? It’s like drinking rock slurry.”

Tero had warned them there might be dizziness in the half hour it took the genes to reach maximum expression in her system. She stumbled over to the rough linen cushion and collapsed, and the boat pitched beneath her feet as Andrine joined her.

“Too bad your father geolocked the Daydream,” she slurred to Persis. “At least there we could be sick in comfort.”

“Sick,” Persis agreed through chattering teeth, “but also far more suspicious. I think this particular genetemps will be harder to explain away as a party drug gone foul, and they’ve stepped up their monitoring of all boats from Albion.”

Papa’s restrictions might be a blessing in disguise. Someone in Galatea would eventually correlate the appearance of the Daydream with a visit from the Wild Poppy. There were enough commonplace fishing boats in the Scintillans Village that Andrine and Persis could commandeer one without anyone getting wise. A new round of tremors overtook her and Persis hugged herself and clenched her jaw to ease the pain.

“This . . . had . . . better . . . be . . . worth it, Persis,” said Andrine, who sounded similarly pained.

Persis reached over to give her friend a comforting pat, but every move sent arrows of agony through her flesh. “Don’t worry,” she ground out. “If it goes wrong, I’ll treat you to a full body wax.”

Andrine forced a laugh, and everything went dark.

WHEN SHE WOKE, PERSIS could tell by the angle of the sun that at least an hour had passed. She stood up, her muscles stiff and slightly sore from the spasming. Andrine was still asleep, but the evidence of the drug’s effectiveness was there on her face. Persis crossed to the mirror they’d hung above the cabin door.

“Well, Tero,” she whispered, and her voice came out deep and gruff. “Good job.”

A fine, downy black hair covered Persis’s face from the bottom of her nose down past the collar of her shirt. Her hands, when she reached up to touch her face, seemed swollen—the palms were wide, the fingers broad, and the knuckles far more evident. Her feet felt tight inside her slippers, and she was sure she’d find the same changes wrought there. Her amber eyes seemed darkened to a muddy brown and even her complexion appeared darker, though it was difficult to tell beneath her new beard.

What would everyone think of her now? Stylish, feminine aristo Persis Blake had been wiped off the map, and in her place was a rough-looking man. She couldn’t picture the image before her as the toast of Albion society, couldn’t picture him luring Justen into the water and kissing him against a rock wall. A giggle escaped her lips; but in her new rough voice, it came out sounding more like a grunt. Here she was, rough and furry, and freer than she’d been in days.

She ran her fingertips over her mouth. It remained much the same. These were the lips Justen had kissed. Would he even recognize them now, surrounded by so much hair? Maybe, if she looked like this, she’d never be put in the position of having to kiss people she didn’t want to in the first place. If she looked like this, she could be a Council member. If Isla looked like her father, she could be a king.

But she still couldn’t date Tero Finch.

Last night, as Persis swam in the star cove and trumpeted the great opportunity to be found for regs in Albion, Justen had reminded her that they weren’t spread out equally. Noemi would never run her own sanitarium. Tero had grown up to be a gengineer, but his sister, Andrine, despite her service to the princess, would never be a Council member. And a princess regent could never rule the country or marry a reg.

Just because things were better in Albion didn’t make them perfect.

But that was neither here nor there at the moment. She needed to rescue Lady Ford and the others, who were in far more immediate danger than any women or regs in Albion.

Quickly, she gathered up supplies to complete the transformation. When she was finished, her hair had been painted with dark temporary dye and arranged in a flat, unobtrusive tail down her back. The fuzz on her face had been transformed into a trailing mustache and a neatly kept beard. Dressed in a squarish coat, cropped trousers, and cylindrical cap, she looked every inch the part of a salt miner from Galatea’s southern shores.

A moan at her back gave her pause, but when Persis looked around, Andrine was still deeply asleep. The sedative Persis had added to Andrine’s dose of genetemps should last for several hours. She double-checked, but the moan appeared to be a false alarm. Persis took a breath, then let it out. Andrine would no doubt be furious when she awoke, but until Justen figured out how to fix the problems with detoxing the regs who got Reduced, Persis refused to let her friend be put in more danger than strictly necessary.

Andrine’s family was Helo-cured. If she was caught and Reduced, she might never recover, and Persis would definitely never forgive herself. Andrine, so young and so brilliant—doing all this because of her loyalty to Persis? No, it wasn’t worth it.

Then again, Persis had never been tested. She might have an aristo mind and never even have to worry about Darkening, or she might be a reg through and through. If she were caught and Reduced, she might never