Across a Star-Swept Sea

discussion about the visitors’ interpersonal relationships. “Persis, if you would be so good as to return your guests to Albion? I have already called for a royal guard ship to escort our visitors—”

“We’re not getting on any of your guard ships,” said the light-haired one. She turned to Captain Wentforth, who had drawn away from Chancellor Boatwright, though their hands were now clasped tightly. “Tell her, Malakai.”

Captain Wentforth sighed. “I agree with Captain Phoenix.” Phoenix. What ridiculous name was next? “We’ve come to find other survivors of the war, not be imprisoned by them. If you want us to come with you, we will do so in our own vessels.”

“Absolutely not,” said Lord Blocking. “We don’t allow flying machines in New Pacifica. Yours will be destroyed.”

“Oh, no they won’t!” said Chancellor Boatwright. “We don’t know your laws. If you won’t allow the gliders, we’ll just remove them. Boats, I assume, are all right? We’ll just go back to our sailing ship.”

Isla turned to her. “And how many more of you are there . . . on your ship?”

Chancellor Boatwright shut her mouth and cast a long look at Captain Wentforth.

He swallowed. “We mean you no harm, but we must insist that we be allowed our freedom.”

“By what means,” said Lord Blocking, “are you insisting? What weapons have you got?”

A flutternote buzzed against Persis’s palm. She shifted the edge of her wristlock to allow it entrance to her palmport. It was from Isla.

This is a disaster. We must keep the visitors a secret from the court until we learn their full story. I wish to agree to their autonomy, but I can’t show weakness in front of the Council members. What do you advise?

Persis advised a diversion. Quickly, she manufactured the Poppy’s knockout dose. It was a stretch of her resources, but as long as she got back to the Daydream soon, she had the proper supplements to counteract any negative effects. Once made, she instructed the nanos to aim it at Lord Blocking. He was as good a victim as any, and deserved to be shut up.

Seconds later, he slumped to the sand.

“Oh dear!” Persis exclaimed as Lady Blocking screamed. “I do believe the hike was too much for our dear Lord Blocking. He needs a medic!”

“He has a medic,” Justen growled. He was already kneeling at the man’s side, fingers of one hand pressed against the aristo’s neck, while his other hand pried open the man’s mouth. “Odd. He’s asleep. No sign of tachycardia or obstruction of his airway—”

“Oh! Oh!” Lady Blocking squealed. “They did it! They hurt him! My poor husband! They—they—”

“They made him go to sleep?” asked Andrine, her tone mocking. “Oh, the unmitigated horror. What a tragedy.” She glanced at Persis, who shrugged. If Andrine wasn’t speaking to her, then she wasn’t getting kept in the loop when Persis deployed her knockout drugs.

“We did nothing of the sort!” the one called Captain Phoenix cried.

“He needs medical attention I can’t give him here,” said Justen. “Persis, I need the wallport on the Daydream. Perhaps we should transport everyone back to the yacht, as the princess requested. The sooner, the better, for Lord Blocking’s sake.”

Persis narrowed her eyes at him, but his expression was utterly guileless. A medic would recognize drugged sleep. A medic as skilled as Justen would recognize exactly the nanodrug Persis had used. Which must mean—

He was helping them?

“Right away,” was all she said, and rounded up the others.

“I’ll stay with my brother,” Andrine said, and Persis nodded. It wasn’t quite a conversation, not exactly a reconciliation, but they didn’t have time for anything else. Andrine knew what to do, and neither of them wanted Isla left alone with the newcomers with only Tero for protection.

After all, Andrine’s brother was an excellent gengineer, but it was Persis and Andrine who were the spies.

And it was Persis who assisted Justen into the cabin with the unconscious Lord Blocking, while Dwyer walked beside them, aristocratic and useless. Persis and Justen dumped the sleeping lord on the nearest hammock belowdecks and engaged the privacy screens before Lady Blocking could slip in, too.

“The wallport is right here.” Persis pointed it out for Justen, while she checked her supply of supplements in the cabinet. The one for the knockout dose was there, and she grabbed it, patting away the sheen of sweat that had sprung up on her face.

Justen smirked. “I don’t really need it. Blocking will be fine once he sleeps it off. I suspect Tero slipped him a knockout drug through his palmport to shut him up, since he was making the situation with the visitors so much worse. He probably has all the latest applications, as well as access to the supplements to run them.”

“Tero.” Persis nodded and popped the cap. “I suppose that makes the most sense.” And as long as Justen was the one coming up with her alibis, she had no business disagreeing with him.

“Though I do worry about leaving them alone out there. Even though that one with the orange hair is Reduced, our party is still outnumbered. I’m surprised Tero didn’t knock them all out.”

She took a long draft. “Maybe he didn’t take enough supplements to make more than one dose.”

Justen made a noncommittal hmmm. “Or maybe he thought that knocking them out is no way to respect their autonomy.” He looked down at his sleeping patient. “Though it’s not as if Blocking’s has been respected, either.”

“Well.” Persis lifted her shoulders. “He didn’t deserve respect.”

“That’s where you’re wrong, Persis,” Justen said sadly. “We all deserve it. We all deserve to live in a world where our rights aren’t violated at the whim of our leaders. It doesn’t matter if our leaders are kings and queens, or the people who claim to save us from them.”

Persis blinked at him, unsure how to respond, no matter who she was pretending to be at that moment. All of a sudden her luxurious cabin on her fabulous yacht felt very stuffy and cramped. Justen stood an arm’s length away. His face shone with perspiration and his short hair stood in black spikes all over his head. She recalled quite vividly that they still had not had a chance to talk about the urgent way he’d kissed her the last time they were on this boat.

They still hadn’t had a chance to discuss the way he’d invented a terrible pharmaceutical weapon, either.

Justen wore an expression that switched between disappointment and apprehension. “I didn’t say anything back on the beach—not because I agree with what Tero did but because I didn’t want to cause a scene. These people, these visitors . . . they’re going to be difficult enough to deal with.”

Persis couldn’t argue with that. Justen might be her enemy, but right now he was the only New Pacifican she could talk to about what they’d just seen. “Is it possible that their story is true? Could they really be from elsewhere?”

Justen shrugged. “I don’t know. There isn’t supposed to be any elsewhere.”

“Maybe they’re descended from people who abandoned New Pacifica a long time ago.” In school, Persis had learned of people who’d left the islands. Back when the creators had first landed, there’d been a few aristos here and there who’d threatened to secede, to pack up their plantations of Reduced and go elsewhere. The histories Persis had studied had made note of it. But the books also always maintained that those who’d left had led suicide missions. There was nowhere else to go.

Justen looked skeptical. “There was a lot of genetic variation among those four—did you see it? We don’t have that here. Wherever they’re from, it has a population much, much larger than ours. And they said they didn’t expect New Pacifica to be here, which means they’re using old maps. And their eyes—” But now Justen shook his head and chuckled dismissively.

“What?”

“Nothing.” But Persis had learned to read that expression. He was lost in that brain of his. Unlike her, Justen had always had the luxury—indeed, the privilege—of letting people know when he was thinking hard and had never had to hide it. Right now, he was thinking very hard indeed, and it was all about the single realm where Persis’s skills did not lie: the scientific.

Since the arrival of the visitors, she’d been strategizing about all the things this would mean to Isla, to her