Across a Star-Swept Sea fdsts-2 Page 2

  “Who are you?” she screamed as they landed in the dust. Even as she fell, Persis withdrew the mental command to her palmport, halting the app. She couldn’t afford to use it unless she had a clear shot.

  Trina was reaching for her gun, and Persis kicked and slapped, trying desperately to dislodge the soldier’s grip. The pistol thumped against the ground and slid beneath the skimmer’s lifts.

  “Stop!” Trina cried.

  “You stop!” Persis shouted back, struggling to fight the girl as they each lunged toward the gun. Where was Andrine? She could certainly use backup right now. The Reduced watched silently from the cage. She wished any of them still had a mind.

  At the same moment, both their hands closed tight around the gun barrel and they wrestled in the grass. Trina raked her nails across Persis’s face and knocked off her cap, then reeled back in surprise as hair the color of frangipani came tumbling down on them both. Persis used the opportunity to wrench the gun from the recruit’s grip.

  “You’re a girl?” Trina spluttered.

  Persis stood, gun trained on Trina. She sighed and swept her yellow and white ropes of hair out of her face with her free hand. “This surprises you? You’re a girl.”

  The girl’s face was filled with disgust. Persis shook her head and shrugged. It was disappointing, really. They were almost in agreement.

  Trina, her face contorted with rage, kicked out and swept Persis’s feet out from under her. Persis felt the girl’s fingers on her gun, and everything was a cloud of dust and hands and white and yellow hair.

  Out of nowhere, she heard a chittering, and a red streak darted between them, sinking sharp little teeth into Trina’s shoulder.

  Trina screamed and again pulled away, and Persis scrambled to her feet. “Slipstream, heel.”

  The sea mink let go of Trina, trotted obediently to Persis’s side, and wiped his whiskers with his flippery paw. His long, sleek body was damp from his latest swim, and the soldier’s blood hardly showed against his deep red fur.

  Still holding the gun on the girl, Persis caught sight of Andrine racing up, her ocean-blue hair trailing out behind her. “So good of you to show up,” Persis said to her friend.

  “Sorry for the delay.” Andrine unlocked the cage and began unloading the prisoners. “You didn’t mention you were bringing an enemy combatant.”

  “Last-minute addition,” Persis replied lightly. Trina was still crouched on the ground, holding her bleeding neck with both hands.

  “I know who you are,” she said with a sob. “You’re the Wild Poppy.”

  “What a brilliant deduction,” Andrine said as she helped the last of the victims off the truck. “Exactly how long did that take to put together?”

  Persis gave her friend a quick look. Now, now, there was no need to be smug. They were pointing a gun at the poor girl.

  “And you’re finished,” the soldier spat angrily. “You have no idea who you’re dealing with. You have no—”

  Now Andrine chuckled. “Awfully high-and-mighty for a girl who was almost a snack for a sea mink, isn’t she?”

  The soldier’s eyes were wide and wild. “I’m going to tell Citizen Aldred everything.”

  “Oh, really?” Persis said, tilting the barrel of the gun toward the girl’s face. “How do you plan to do that from beyond the grave?”

  At once she felt a hand on her elbow. At first, Persis thought it was Andrine’s, though she knew her friend had more faith than that. Persis wasn’t actually going to shoot the soldier. After all, she still had her palmport dose—she could just knock her out. She risked a glance out of the corner of her eye.

  Lord Lacan stood there, silent, an expression nearing clarity in his somber old eyes.

  Persis lowered her arm. “It appears you have made a powerful friend, little Galatean.” She sighed. “But what to do with you? You have no idea what it is you’re fighting for.”

  “Of course I do,” said Trina. “My country.”

  Persis stared at her for a moment, then laughed. “I was going to say you were very foolish, seeing how outnumbered you are. But in fact, you’re terminally brave. And that should never be snuffed. Besides, I like your style. That move with your foot there almost had me. Very well, then. I will let the Lord Lacan decide what will happen to you.”

  Trina looked baffled. “But he’s Reduced. He can’t even help himself.”

  “Don’t worry, little soldier,” Persis said as something began to spin out of the golden disk set in the center of her palm. The girl’s mouth had opened again, which was remarkably convenient. “We take care of that part, too.”

  A moment later, Trina Delmar collapsed on the ground.

  Another mission accomplished.

  Two

  THE ROYAL COURT OF Albion was often likened to a riotous garden, but it buzzed with more than bees and was filled with colors never found in nature. Bougainvillea hedges encircled the public court and hibiscus topiaries lined the aisles, but no flowers could compete with the whirlwind of gowns, cloaks, leis, and most of all, the towering hairstyles of the island’s most fashionable aristocrats. Their chatter drowned out the sounds of the sea beyond, the constant hum of flutternotes zipping to and fro among the courtiers, and even the delicate tinkle of the famous Albian water organ.

  One particularly crowded corner was currently occupied by Lady Persis Blake and her retinue of admirers. This evening she wore a simple, bright yellow sarong fastened about her neck with a length of crocheted gold links, and a matching gold wristlock—the leather fingerless glove that covered the palmport on her left hand. The elegant fall of her gown could only be achieved using the finest of Galatean silk, a difficult product to come by since the revolution began, but you could count on Persis Blake to have the inside scoop on where to get the best fabrics. Its hue matched exactly the yellow tones in her hair, which had been twisted, braided, and otherwise arranged so that its upswept yellow-and-white strands resembled the frangipani flower on the Blake family crest. Her beauty stood out, even among the kaleidoscope throng of the court.

  In the six months since Princess Isla had ascended the throne as regent and brought along her old school chum as her chief lady-in-waiting, Persis had become one of the court’s most glittering and popular members. Hardly anyone remembered a time when a party or a boating trip or luau was complete without the addition of Albion’s loveliest, silliest socialite.

  Even better, almost no one at court had been at school with Persis before she’d dropped out—no one who could paint a very different picture of the girl who was gaining quite the reputation for being nothing more than stylish, sweet, and above all stupid.

  Along with her gown and her jewelry, today Persis wore a look of sheer boredom as the conversation took a turn in the direction of the revolution. The casual observer would guess it was because such an ornamental creature would find politics a tedious topic.

  The truth was, no one here had a clue what Galatea was really like these days.

  “The southerners’ civil war will spread to our shores,” said one young courtier with obvious aspirations to the Royal Council. “And when it does, we must quell any reg uprising before we find ourselves in the same predicament as the Galateans.”

  “Surely not,” Persis said. “It’s hard enough finding silk merchants in Galatea who remain open these days. I’ll simply die if the Albian shops close down, too.”

  “How like a woman.” The courtier chuckled indulgently. “Lady Blake, if there’s a revolution against the aristos in Albion, what you wear is going to be the last of your concerns.”

  “Never!” Persis replied. “I have a reputation to uphold. We mustn’t let a silly thing like war make us forget our duties.”

  There was another ripple of laughter among the young men sitting near her.

  “I’m serious!” she added, forming her mouth into a pink pout. “Even with my responsibility to Princess Isla and her royal wardrobe, my dear papa hardly ever lets me sail down to visit the shops in H
alahou anymore. He says he fears for my safety, but you’d think he’d spare just a smidge of concern for my clothes as well. If any of you fine gentlemen know the identity of the Wild Poppy, won’t you please ask him to rescue us some dressmakers on his next trip to Galatea? It’s getting old that all he’s been rescuing lately are other aristos. Honestly, they aren’t useful for anything but competition.”

  “If I knew the identity of the Poppy,” said one of the courtiers, “I’d be the most popular man on both islands. In Albion all the ladies would adore me”—several ladies tittered as proof—“and in Galatea, I’d be Citizen Aldred’s very best friend. The Poppy is Galatea’s most wanted.”

  “Then my proposal would solve everyone’s problems,” Persis argued. “Citizen Aldred probably wouldn’t mind so much the loss of a tailor or two, and I would get that meticulous Galatean attention to sartorial detail that I’ve been missing. Everyone wins!”

  “Except the aristos,” mumbled another of the courtiers, but no one listened to him. After all, talk of prisoners was deemed ever so dull by the Albian courtiers, and thinking about Galatean aristos they knew who might even now be imprisoned did terrible things to one’s mood.

  Just once, Persis wished she could steer the conversation in this direction instead of away from it. Would things change if more aristos started questioning the Council’s hands-off position regarding the war? Would it be worth it to try, even if it endangered her carefully wrought disguise?

  She looked up to see Tero Finch gesturing to her from the edge of the circle. As a freshly cooled member of the Royal College of Gengineers, Tero’s clothes weren’t quite as stylish as the aristos surrounding him, but his height, broad shoulders, and perfectly dyed metallic bronze hair still had several of the young ladies turning his way. “Persis,” he called, “the princess can see us now.”

  With a trilling laugh that grated even on her own ears, Persis sprang to her feet. “I must leave you, lovelies. Please make sure to have some good gossip when I return.”

  She met Tero, and together they ascended the wide marble steps to the terrace.

  “Where’s my sister?” Tero asked under his breath. “You didn’t get Andrine arrested, did you?”

  “Probably in Scintillans Village by now, safe and sound and doing her homework,” Persis reassured him as they entered the throne room of the princess regent of Albion. Tero was convinced Persis and Andrine were risking their lives with every trip to Galatea. That he was right hadn’t dissuaded them yet.

  The sunset filtered through bamboo blinds drawn over the colonnade that formed the outer wall of the room. Vases three meters high were stuffed with drooping palm fronds strung with orchid leis, and the scent of the royal flower hung heavily in the room. Princess Isla sat in the middle of the floor, heedless of the giant white cushions strewn nearby. Her wide-legged white pants were gathered in bunches in her lap, and her white cape lay forgotten on one of the chaises behind her. For a moment, Persis could imagine they were children again, playing with puzzles or building pillow volcanoes on the floor.

  Isla held her left hand out to the toddler who sat before her, a bright-eyed boy who squealed with delight at the tiny golden threads leaping around on Isla’s fingertips.

  “It works!” Tero cried, dropping to his knees at the princess’s side.

  “Another new app?” Persis asked as she gathered the trailing ends of her yellow sarong and sat down, too. Tero seemed to spend half his time at his new job in the Royal College of Gengineers developing palmport apps for Isla.

  And the other half secretly working for the League of the Wild Poppy.

  So now it was jumping threads. The week before it had been an app that would allow Isla to control the playlist on the water organ in the courtyard. And before that, Tero had cooked up some code that combined optic identification with a visual skin, which if you ran the app made Councilman Shift look like an armadingo. Anything to make Isla laugh, or even forget for a moment that she wasn’t just their schoolmate anymore. She wasn’t just Persis’s best friend. One little accident, and she’d found herself an orphan, a mother, and a ruler of a country on the brink of war.

  “What kind of supplements does it take to run it?” Persis asked, as if none of that mattered, and they could talk as they used to.

  “Intense ones,” Isla said with a sigh, “but it’s a real flare with the king.” She shrugged, and the figures crumbled into shimmering dust around the gold disk inset in the center of her palm. The baby squawked in protest, but Isla grabbed him and turned him upside down until he started laughing again.

  “The King of Albion,” Tero added with mock haughtiness, “has exquisite taste for a child who only recently began walking.” He smiled at Isla and bowed his head. “I’m glad you liked it, your Highness.”

  Your Highness. When had Tero gotten so formal? There’d been no bows ten years ago when he was crashing their slumber parties and chucking cuttle jellies at their heads.

  But a lot had changed since then.

  Isla watched Tero leave, then patted the king on his diapered bottom. “All right, Albie. Go play while your sister talks to Auntie Persis.”

  The infant King of Albion obeyed, toddling into the waiting arms of his nurse.

  “Princess,” said Persis gaily, keeping careful watch of the toddler and his keeper, “I’ve just come back from Galatea and I’ve brought you some . . . lovely silks.”

  “More of the usual?” asked Isla, lying back against the cushions and flicking a few locks of her silver hair behind her shoulders. Unlike Persis’s hair, Isla’s color was natural. Everyone knew the hair of Albian royals went white in their teens—it was such a genetic signature of the dynasty that even if Isla still had the dark Polynesian hair of their youth, she would have had the color removed. It was hard enough gaining recognition as the island’s rightful ruler.

  Persis giggled. Loudly. “Are you telling me you’re bored by my efforts to bring you the best Galatea has to offer?”

  “Not at all,” Isla replied, darting another glance at the king’s nursemaid, “but I find myself more curious about another Albian smuggling Galatean goods to my shore. I’ve heard rumors the Wild Poppy has just concluded another raid today.”

  “I’ve heard so, too,” replied Persis, taking care that her tone was every bit as gossipy. “Apparently, he rescued Lord Lacan and all his family.”

  “Even the children?”

  Persis nodded.

  Isla could not contain her smile. She immediately sobered, however. “But that’s only six. I heard the Poppy made off with ten refugees.”

  “Goodness, Princess!” Persis exclaimed. “You can’t expect me to know anything about that!”

  “Persis . . .” Isla could look very royal indeed, when she chose.

  “A few regs who ran afoul of revolutionary principles . . .” Persis confessed, “most likely.”

  “Most likely,” Isla repeated, pursing her lips, “knowing what a soft sell the Wild Poppy is. I wonder whatever he thinks I’ll do with all the reg refugees he crowds onto my shores.”

  Persis gave her friend a hopeful smile. “He probably thinks you’ll do right by them, given what a benevolent despot you are.” She’d been teasing Isla with the title for years, ever since they’d learned it in ancient history classes. But school was out now, for both of them. Isla was the de facto ruler of the island, and Persis—well, Persis had other activities to keep her occupied.

  “And give my Council members yet another reason to suspect I know his identity?” Isla asked. Albie’s nursemaids were maintaining a respectful distance, but you never could tell.

  “Surely they don’t think that?” said Persis, looking skeptical. “I thought everyone in Albion knows you care for nothing but competing with me for being the prettiest dressed woman on the island. You’re regent in name only, and you intend to let the Council decide the direction of the country until the king comes of age.”

  Isla stared at Persis, a warning blazing in her
dark eyes. Persis stared at Isla, a twinkle in her amber ones.

  “Fine,” said the princess at last, giving her friend an indulgent smile.

  Inwardly, Persis breathed a sigh of relief. Isla might be the most regular-friendly ruler Albion had ever known, but she felt no particular obligation to the regs from Galatea, especially since it had been their revolution that had torn the country asunder.

  Yet Persis couldn’t help but pity the poor regs she’d rescued while on the Lacan mission. They’d been trying to lead simple lives, untouched by the perverted aims of the revolution, and had been Reduced merely for standing in support of the innocent Lacans.

  This war was a travesty. If only she could save them all.

  If only Albion would. But Persis knew Isla’s hands were tied. And while her friend focused on the needs of her nation, Persis did what she could to provide the assistance both girls wished the country would.

  “What do you think the Council would say to the Wild Poppy, if it had the chance?” she asked the princess.

  “‘Stop bringing us poor people?’” Isla suggested.

  Persis snorted with derision. “Even the Galatean aristos are poor when they get here. They’ve been stripped of their estates and all their worldly possessions.”

  “Not to mention their brains.”

  Persis rolled her eyes. “Thankfully, that wears off.” Detoxing from the Reduction drug wasn’t a pleasant process, but it was better than the alternative.

  And until the Galateans stopped punishing their regs along with their aristos, the Wild Poppy would be an equal-opportunity rescuer. Persis was a Blake, and an aristo, too, but her mother was a reg. And, more important, suffering was suffering. No one should have their mental capabilities stolen from them. Ever.

  The nursemaids herded King Albie off for his nap. Isla watched them until they’d left the room. “With any luck, this revolution will wear off, too, and the Galateans flooding our shores will regain their fortunes and find a way to pay us back for our kindness.” Isla shook her head. “I was not supposed to rule, let alone to do so in such interesting times.”