Across a Star-Swept Sea

“I’m sorry,” they both said at once, then laughed. It was short-lived, though, like a seconds-long sun-shower from invisible clouds.

“I will take them away if you wish,” Isla said. “Andrine and Tero, perhaps—though their home is not quite so secure—”

“No,” Persis said, defeated. “You’re already asking too much of him.”

“I’m not asking anything of him,” Isla said with a sigh. “Something happened, yes. Once. And we’ve talked about why nothing can happen anymore. He’s a good friend, but—”

But it was impossible. Isla could champion an aristo/reg romance, but only if it was the right kind. Progressive aristo Torin marrying beautiful, brilliant Heloise. Persis, already half reg, snagging famous Justen Helo. But the princess regent of Albion could not be with a common servant’s son like Tero. It might thrill all the regs, but she’d lose even more ground with the aristos who were already dismissing her.

Persis could already hear what Justen might make of that.

Isla’s expression had grown concerned. “Have you been tested?”

She shook her head.

“Persis . . .”

“I don’t want to know.” Her tone was wild, but she didn’t care. This was Isla. She’d been keeping this secret far too long. “We’re all going to die one day, Isla. I could die next week on a mission. Maybe . . . later, after—” but she couldn’t say anymore.

Isla understood anyway. She already knew what it was like to live in the after of a parent’s death. The girls joined hands there, in the quiet, dim room where they’d once played as children, long ago in a world where their genetics meant no more than Isla’s white hair and Persis’s beauty and cleverness, where their heritage hadn’t trapped the former into ruling a country that didn’t want her and the latter into running away from a sickness that had no cure.

“I’ll tell you one thing,” Isla said at last. “Justen is going back into a sanitarium. He’s here to work on finding a cure for DAR, and I’m not about to let his past keep you or your mother from a cure. I don’t care what he might have done in Galatea. Remember learning about the ancients and how they first built nuclear weapons?”

“I don’t think that’s a good example for us to use.”

“They didn’t balk at hiring enemies if they could help. If I can take what I can get out of him in terms of public relations, which you have to admit he’s pretty awful at, then I’ll take what I can get out of him when it comes to his medical talents.”

“Which he’s pretty good at.” Persis could begrudge him that.

“And we’ll find out the truth about his past, too,” said Isla. “Have you even spoken to Remy about it?”

“She knows he invented the drug. She believes he’s a proper revolutionary, though, which doesn’t help his case.”

“Whatever Justen did, it’s clear he’s changed his ways. He wouldn’t be here otherwise, desperate to help the refugees.”

“If helping the refugees is really what he’s after,” Persis replied. “Of which we can’t be sure. What if he’s here, trying to ingratiate himself with us, so he can cause the escapees further harm?”

Isla considered this. “If he is, he’s pretty bad at that, too. Persis, you have to stop thinking the worst of people. And that goes for me as well as Justen Helo.”

“You haven’t seen the Reduced, Isla. You haven’t seen what the Galateans have done to them. If Justen is responsible for that—I don’t care if he regrets it now. He deserves the worst punishment he can get.”

“And what would that be, Persis? What sort of torture are you imagining for your fake lover? Dungeons? Neuroeels? Reduction?”

Persis looked away.

“Nothing?”

And she found that for once, she didn’t have words to reply.

Twenty-four

THE VISITORS HAD BEEN in Scintillans for an entire day with very little fanfare about their arrival. Though the Scintillans’ servants were known for their discretion, it seemed impossible that no one would leak such a juicy story. After all, unlike word of Heloise Blake’s condition, there was no one to hurt. Therefore, the fact that the presence of people from elsewhere remained a secret was a testament to Isla’s ability to shut down conversation before it started. However, her quest might have been helped along just a tad by the rather shocking stories sweeping through court that Lady Blocking planned to divorce her husband, that Dwyer Shift had had a row with his councilman uncle over some unmentionable situation with a pair of fishermen from Sunrise Village, and that Persis Blake was considering cutting her hair.

It was rumored that she said long locks were so last winter.

And yet, no matter how long the visitors might stay, or how many conversations Justen Helo might have with them, he thought he’d never grow used to their very existence. Every time he saw them he was struck with a sense of wonder that left him unsettled—he should not feel the same about seeing a human being as he did upon seeing a sea pony or a mini-orca or a hogfish. They were not otherworldly creatures; they were fellow human beings. No matter what the strange genetics of these people—and almost without exception, they were very strange indeed—there was more to them than their scientific potential.

But without real patients to observe, it was hard to resist. He’d yet to hear back from Noemi, and Persis claimed not to know exactly where the refugees had been moved. Isla, of course, said she was too busy to concern herself with his scientific whims.

Justen had started out frustrated, but now he was just scared. Noemi wouldn’t go to the trouble of moving an entire ward of patients without a good reason. What if Vania’s visit the other day hadn’t had anything to do with tracking down the Wild Poppy? What if it had been about finding the refugees? She’d left in such a hurry, and right after that was when Persis had told him about Noemi’s plan to move the Galatean refugees.

If the revolutionaries tried anything on Albian soil—what would that mean for both nations?

And he hadn’t heard anything from Remy since he’d left. In the first few days, he’d figured she was just angry with him, but her continued silence boded ill, especially since his fight with Vania. Then again, if she had turned against him completely, then maybe she’d be safe in Galatea.

Today he and the male visitor, Kai, were sitting in the shade of the terrace, overlooking the cliffs while the Reduced woman played on the lawn with Slipstream. She squealed with laughter as she chased the sea mink and it wove skillfully around her legs, chattering and dragging along the ground a faded green scarf Ro—whose real name, apparently, was Tomorrow—had been wearing around her hair. Neither sea mink nor girl seemed the least bit hampered by her heavy, long skirt. Justen had wondered why she’d wear such a thing in the equatorial heat of New Pacifica, but the other visitors had all shrugged and said that fighting with Tomorrow would not have been worth it. “She’s a creature of habit,” Chancellor Boatwright—or Elliot—had said at the time. “If she’s hot enough, she’ll ask for different clothes.”

“Everyone here stares at her,” Kai said now. “Is it so easy to forget, in two generations, what Reduction looks like?”

“Yes,” said Justen. “Apparently it is.” Now that he saw real Reduction, born Reduction, he regretted even more the name he’d offhandedly suggested to his uncle Damos of the effects he suspected his experimental drug would have on healthy patients. What was happening to the victims in Galatea— that was not Reduction. This girl had grown into and beyond her limitations. Her nature breathed in her and through her like a tree that springs from a rock. It might grow stunted because of the poor soil around its roots, but there was beauty and majesty in the way it clung to life and thrived in its own way.

By contrast, the drug was merely an artificial shade, smothering its victims. Tomorrow was beautiful, whole, human. People under the influence of the Reduction drug were broken. Broken by him.

“Everything all right?” asked the stranger.

“I wonder what my countrymen would think to see her. If they’d be reminded to honor our past, not exploit