Persis grimaced, imagining Isla composing this flutter under duress from Councilman Shift. Its tone was so stiff and formal she wondered if Shift had made Isla type it out in front of him on a wallport. Setting the flutter to her usual Blake frangipani, she thought out her reply.
The princess fluttered back in record time.
Twenty
BY THE TIME VANIA got back to Halahou, she’d reviewed every bit of information she could find on the prison break-in. She’d also gotten sick over the side of the boat. In a single burst, the Wild Poppy had managed to destroy not only her long campaign against the Fords but also the week she’d spent rearranging the troops according to General Gawnt’s orders, which she knew he’d somehow manage to blame on her. And the spy had done it all while Vania had been off in Albion, failing to talk sense into a clearly lunatic Justen Helo.
How was she ever going to explain this to her father?
She was surprised to find Remy waiting for her on the docks, her short black hair mussed in the breeze.
“What are you doing here?” Vania snapped at her foster sister, disembarking before the sailors finished setting the nanoropes. “It’s not safe in this neighborhood so late.”
Remy pouted. “Moral support, of course. Do you have any idea what they’re saying about this fiasco at the palace?”
Vania wasn’t sure she wanted to know, but then again, forewarned was forearmed. “Thanks, squirt.” She ruffled the girl’s hair a little as they headed for a waiting skimmer. “I imagine it’s not particularly good.”
At first, no one seemed to know how the Poppy had pulled it off. After they discovered the Fords’ prison cells were empty, troops had been sent after all deliveries and repairmen who’d entered the palace that day. One guard recalled a suspicious salter whose skimmer had broken down right at the gate, but though he’d been located, detained, and thoroughly searched along with his skimmer, there was no sign that anything was amiss. With a lack of any evidence and the clearly innocent and distraught salt miner beginning to draw a crowd on the public road, the guards let him go. All the other visitors to the prison that day had been similarly cleared.
It was all so mysterious.
It wasn’t until the guards reconvened at the prison to review the records of all comings and goings that they’d noticed the exodus of a crew of military personnel without any movement orders to match.
Vania groaned. “So no one recognized the guards as prisoners? No one thought, ‘Well, I haven’t seen these people before’?”
Remy shrugged. “Apparently, with all the staffing changes, as well as the influx of soldiers who’d previously been assigned to the Ford estate barricades . . . I was down there today looking for Uncle Damos and I barely recognized anyone.”
“I told Gawnt increased staffing wouldn’t help,” Vania muttered, mostly to herself. “If anything, it’s backfired.” She looked at Remy. “You have no idea how frustrating it is not to be taken seriously.”
“I can’t imagine,” Remy replied, and for a second, Vania was almost positive she heard an edge in the girl’s voice. “Did you find anything worthwhile in Albion?”
Vania remained silent. How much should she say about Justen’s behavior? She didn’t want to upset the girl, but it would be better for Remy to hear it from Vania than get shocked if things went bad for Justen later on. Vania couldn’t quite picture her father being kind if Justen’s treasonous ravings made it across the sea.
Stupid Justen. If he really felt so guilty about all of this, then he shouldn’t have gone to Albion. He should have simply joined those weird Peccants and spent the rest of his life whipping himself and combing the beach on Remembrance Island. At least then everyone would have just written him off as crazy.
“Not much on the Wild Poppy, no,” she said at last.
“Did you see Justen?” Remy pressed. “I heard he’s gone to Albion.”
“Yes.” They passed through the gates to the palace, the sound of the lifter fans echoing off the massive walls of the courtyard.
“Did he tell you why he left?”
Vania rubbed her temples with her fingers. She didn’t have time for a big dramatic scene with Remy. She needed to arrange her thoughts around this break-in. Like it or not, the Wild Poppy took precedence over whether or not her foster brother had decided to betray everything he’d ever believed in for some stupid rich girl.
“I don’t know,” she snapped. “The gossip all says he’s in love with some idiot aristo.” There. That excuse would hold Remy for a little bit, until she had time to explain all the complex political philosophies involved. Hearts and flowers a girl her age could understand. “Her name is Persis Blake.”
“An aristo?” Remy sounded skeptical. “That doesn’t sound like him, and an idiot even less so.” She laughed awkwardly. “You know Justen—he’d sooner Reduce an aristo than kiss one, right?”
Vania looked at the younger girl. There was something odd in her tone—grasping and almost desperate, as if she was trying to convince herself of something she didn’t really believe. Had Justen already infected her with some of his traitorous ideas? Vania made a note in her oblet to screen all Remy’s messages from Justen. For now, let the girl think Justen was being guided by lust.
“This aristo’s especially rich and especially pretty,” Vania said. She accessed an image of the lady in question and turned the oblet’s display toward Remy. “Here. Take a look at her and tell me your brother’s thinking with his head.”
The display sparked to life, revealing Persis Blake in all her splendor. She was at some event or another, in a gown that sparkled like a sunlit sea, her wild yellow and white hair floating above her in a cloudy puff. She was holding a crystal glass of kiwine in her hand, and she had her head thrown back, laughing.
Not a care in the world. Spoiled brat. Vania started feeling sick again. She rolled her eyes and turned to Remy. “See what I mean?”
“That’s Persis Blake?” Remy asked quietly. Her eyes were wide, her mouth open.
Oh no, not Remy, too! They were supposed to be above all this awe-of-aristos nonsense. “That’s her. And believe me, she’s every bit as stupid as she looks. Don’t be too impressed, Remy. Trust me, your brother has made a huge mistake.”
Remy looked from the display to Vania and back again. “That, I believe,” she said at last.
THE DAYDREAM WAS AT full sail, the party was at full tilt, and they were halfway to Remembrance Island, but Persis was certain this trip would go down as the worst event a Blake had ever hosted. Half the attendees weren’t speaking to one another, and the other half couldn’t figure out why.
“Darling,” Isla cooed in Persis’s ear. Persis turned to see the princess wearing a diaphanous white wrap and her most disapproving frown. “You’re neglecting the party, and, worse, you’re neglecting Justen.”
“I’m sorry,” Persis replied. The poison-green petals of her skirt swirled around her knees in the sea breeze, and her split sleeves flapped like angry snakes at her shoulders. “Would you prefer I livened things up by dumping him overboard?”
Isla sighed. In deference to the bright sun, she’d donned an enormous white floppy hat with a hole in the middle that allowed her to pull her hair through and arrange it in layers around the brim. When Persis had picked up the royal entourage at court, she’d said Isla looked like a child’s shell art. Isla had said Persis looked like a clump of seaweed.
The party, in Persis’s opinion, had gone downhill from there.
Justen sat like a lump in the extreme aft, giving monosyllabic answers to every attempt at conversation. He was deeply unhappy that he’d been dragged out on the boat instead of being allowed to return to the lab, though he’d only registered his complaint once to Persis. Noemi, however, had reported to Persis that he’d sent her several messages overnight about the “new address of the refugees.”
