Across a Star-Swept Sea

Vania looked questioningly at Persis. What new trick was this?

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Persis replied truthfully. “I left Justen safe and sound in Albion.” And he should still be there.

“Lies,” Vania said, and wagged her finger at Persis. “All lies. I’ll tell you what you did to him, you aristo scum. You turned him against his family, against his work, and against the revolution. The Justen that Remy and I know would never have gone anywhere with someone like you. He never would have left us here, abandoning everything he believed.”

Persis narrowed her eyes, more confused than ever. What kind of information did Vania hope to get from her now? If she knew Justen was one of her spies, why was she accusing him of treason against the revolution? As the sky in the east grew ever lighter, she took another look at Justen’s unconscious form. Galatean military uniform, slightly longer sideburns than she remembered him having, and that flaky light color in his hair. She recognized it now. It was the same temporary hair dye she used when she was in disguise.

Had Justen been sneaking around Galatea in disguise? Impossible notions began boiling up in her mind. She’d left him at the court, tending her mother. There was no way he’d come here, unless . . .

Unless he was telling her the truth back at the luau. Unless he’d come to help. If Justen hadn’t been lying to her, it changed everything. Everything. Maybe Isla’s forces were in Galatea, even now. Maybe that’s what Remy had come to tell her.

But why like this? Why not simply overtake Vania and her crew of guards? She looked to Remy, but the girl’s expression was harsh and closed, as it had been the day they’d fought near the skimmer, as it had been the moment she’d woken up in Isla’s court. Something had gone terribly wrong.

“The Justen I know,” Persis said, directing her response to Remy, “wanted to help people. He knew that the revolution was never meant to torture anyone.” There was not a glimmer of recognition in the girl’s eyes. Whose side was she on? Had Vania won the girl back to the revolution? If so, it must have happened recently, since Vania seemed to have been sincerely surprised to discover the Wild Poppy’s true identity.

“Helping people? Was that what he was doing partying with a princess in Albion?” Vania asked snidely. “How exactly does that help anyone?”

“Everything she says is a lie,” Remy said now, her voice as cold as Vania’s had ever been. “She sits here and lectures us on the true meaning of revolution, and she’s as bad an aristo as any of them.”

Vania put her hand on Remy’s shoulder. “Don’t worry,” she said. “We know how to take care of aristos around here.”

Thirty-three

JUSTEN WAS NEVER, EVER, ever taking genetemps again. This was worse than three days sitting in the sun and drinking nothing but kiwine. He felt split at the seams somehow, as if the code breakdown had left his body in the wrong position and slightly out of place. How anyone found this fun was beyond his reckoning. How Persis could tolerate it regularly was inconceivable.

Slowly, the universe came back to him, and he blinked and groaned.

“Oh!” cried a voice that sounded something like his sister’s. “He’s waking up.”

His eyes began to focus, but the second he tried to move, he was overcome by waves of nausea. He rolled onto his stomach and tried to swallow, but his tongue was dry and coated with some sort of powder. He spat into the grass, a pale mark against the dark ground.

Grass. Ground. He was outside? The last thing he remembered was entering the royal lab in Halahou. He blinked again and attempted sitting. This time, it worked.

He was, in fact, on the ground. The sky was lightening all around, the soft silver blue you saw right before dawn. In front of him stood Vania and Remy along with a few guards, and . . . to his right knelt Persis Blake, tied hand and foot with nanoropes. She was wearing a dark, voluminous robe, and her yellow and white hair was tangled all over her face and neck, but her keen, amber eyes were as bright as ever. She stared at him, her expression pointed, as if there were a million or two things she’d like to say.

He knew the feeling.

“Justen!” Remy threw herself to the ground next to him and hugged him. “You’re all right. I was so scared when I saw you in the lab—I thought maybe she’d hurt you.”

“What?” he croaked. “Vania?”

“Yes?” Vania answered sweetly.

“Vania’s the only one who’d hurt me—”

“See what I mean?” Vania rolled her eyes. “Totally brainwashed. I mean, look at him, Remy. Would the Justen you know ever willingly take genetemps?”

Remy shook her head vehemently.

Justen closed his eyes in despair. “Remy, I know it looks odd, but I—”

“Enough of your lies!” Vania snapped. “I think we’re both a little sick of hearing them at this point.” From his place on the ground, Justen could see Vania’s oblet ping in her pocket. “Oh, now what?” she said, annoyed, and pulled it out.

“You took genetemps for me?” Persis whispered at him, her voice filled with awe. “You?”

“Yes,” he grumbled in reply. “And look at the good it did us, Poppy.”

“Still,” she said as she shrugged her bound arms, “I’m impressed. It’s the most romantic thing anyone has ever done for me.”

Tied up and still making flirty jokes. Apparently the Wild Poppy was not entirely different from the Persis Blake he knew.

“If we get out of this alive,” he said, “we’re going to have a long conversation.”

“Oh, yes. I look forward to hearing all about your first genetemping trip.”

“That’s not what I mean.”

Persis turned his way, all amusement vanished from her features. Her gaze was dark and piercing, and her words were even more so. “Neither do I, Justen. And let’s not assume that, even when we do get out of this alive, either of us will retain the power of speech.”

Justen felt woozy again as his brain sought to reconcile the girl he knew with the spy tied up beside him. Was this what had been lurking beneath Persis’s spoiled aristo persona all along?

He had no idea where he was anymore. Not Halahou. On a lawn outside some nondescript military installation somewhere. He could hear the sound of waves. They seemed to be coming from beyond the bluff that stood about twenty meters in front of them.

He looked at Vania reading her message on her oblet. Though he couldn’t make it out from this angle, whatever the display said made her face contort with rage.

“Listen, Remy—” he began, but Vania began to shout at her oblet.

“I don’t think so,” she snapped. “Not after everything I’ve been through.”

At his side, Persis craned her neck to see, but Justen doubted she got anything.

“All right, enough!” Vania cried. “I caught the Wild Poppy. I did it all by myself. And I don’t care what General Gawnt or even my father has to say about it.” She held her hand out toward the other two guards. “Pinks, please.”

Everything grew cold. “Vania, no—” Justen began.

“Shut up!” she screamed without moving. “You, Justen Helo, are in no position to say anything right now. You’ll be lucky if you get out of this without being Reduced yourself, at this rate.”

“But he’s right, Citizen Aldred,” said Persis in a voice Justen wasn’t sure he’d ever heard before. Or maybe he had. This was her voice in the baths at the sanitarium, her voice in the safe darkness of the star cove, her voice the night she tried to talk her mother out of madness. This was the real Persis Blake. The Wild Poppy. “You’re making a terrible mistake. That ping you just got—from one of your superiors, I’m guessing. And I bet I can guess