And then what? How could Persis go on, pretending to be the perfect aristo daughter, the perfect heir to her mother’s place in court, once the truth was known? Would she even be able to keep her position? What would Isla think when she knew what kind of secret Persis had been keeping?
“How long?” he asked again.
“A year.” What was the point of lying anymore?
He gave a single nod. “If so, she’s doing well. Her symptoms are exceedingly subtle. I trained in a dementia sanitarium. I know exactly what to look for in patients. I doubt the average person would even notice yet.”
“That’s indeed a comfort,” she replied drily.
His mouth quirked up in a rueful little smile.
“What!” She pounced. “What is so funny about our situation?”
Justen sobered instantly. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. That was incredibly inappropriate of me. It’s just—all the times I’ve counseled families about a loved one with DAR—it’s never been an aristo before. You sound so haughty. ‘Indeed.’”
“You are not counseling me.” He wanted haughty? She could reduce him to a cinder. How dare he come into her house and use forbidden words and ask forbidden questions and raise forbidden concerns? Helo or no, she wouldn’t allow it.
“Has anyone been?” he pressed. “Is anyone treating her? What about you, Persis? Have you been tested?”
To what end? What good could possibly come of knowing she had twenty-five years left to live? That she could risk her life saving Reduced aristos and end up just like one herself? That every day she spent pretending she was stupid was just a prelude to the horrible, true mental incapacity she might, like her mother, be doomed to face? “None of your business.”
“Actually,” said Justen, straightening, “it is. It is, quite literally, my business. Or rather, my life’s work. That’s what I want to do, Persis. That’s why I became a medic, that’s why I trained in a sanitarium. My grandmother—she did something wonderful, something that saved so many people—but every time someone honors her for it, every time someone honors me, I remember DAR. I think about the people who are dying because of the cure. I want to stop it. Forever.”
He went to his bedside table and pulled out several oblets. They were old and their surfaces were scratched and dull with age, like scuffed stones. He held them out.
“These were Persistence Helo’s. They contain all her work. At the end of her life, she devoted every resource she could to trying to find a cure for the curse she’d unwittingly unleashed upon humanity.”
Persis touched the oblets with a tentative hand. So the old medic Helo had been working on a solution, just as Persis had suspected. Just as she’d hoped. And here it was. In Scintillans! “How did you get these? I thought Persistence Helo left all her research to the Galatean Royal Laboratory.”
“Which is—thanks to the revolution—under the control of Citizen Aldred. He gave me access to them, back when we were on better terms. I never gave them back.”
“You stole them?” Persis dragged her gaze up from the precious oblets to Justen’s face, afraid to even contemplate what this might mean. Yesterday, Justen Helo had saved her life. Today, he was promising to save her mother’s.
“I had to. Unc— Citizen Aldred isn’t interested in DAR. I’m beginning to wonder if he’s even interested in helping the regs in general. Right now, the whole revolution is focused on one thing and one thing only—punishing the aristos.”
And anyone else who got in Aldred’s way, Persis wanted to point out.
“I can’t do the work I need to do there. That’s why I’ve come here.”
“With stolen oblets.”
“No one will notice they’re gone, trust me,” said Justen. “No one thinks they’re even of use, except me. I’m the only person on the lab staff who even cares about this stuff. And if I could have done the research back home, I would have stayed in Galatea.”
So he hadn’t told them the entire truth. He wasn’t seeking asylum because of some vague philosophical objections to the shape of the revolution.
“Galatea,” said Persis, heedless of her tone. This was not the time to play flake. She needed answers from him. All the answers. “Where you told my princess that you no longer believe in what they’re doing? Tell me, Citizen Helo, is it the torture you disagree with, or the fact that they aren’t giving your research sufficient attention?”
His eyes met hers, keen and so intense that Persis felt the instinct to toss her hair or bat her eyes or do something to deflect the impression she was getting that Justen Helo was seeing her—really seeing her—for the first time.
And worse, she almost wanted him to.
But he said nothing for a long moment. “It’s both,” he whispered at last. He tore his eyes away from hers, and faced the bed. His grip on the oblets was so strong his knuckles had gone pale. “It’s all . . . mixed up together.”
Persis frowned, an expression she rarely indulged in outside of missions. If what he was saying was true, he could be holding in his hands the key to helping her mother. To helping her. If what he was saying was true, then Justen Helo was no ordinary refugee. He wasn’t even a simple celebrity refugee. He was a spy, with the potential to save even more people than the Wild Poppy.
Even if he didn’t know it yet.
WHEN JUSTEN HAD FIRST set off for Albion, his grandmother’s oblets concealed in his pockets, he knew he’d have to share the secrets to be found within. With Princess Isla perhaps, or more than likely, one of her science advisers. If he hoped to be put to work in the research labs of Albion, he’d certainly be forced to tell the scientists there what he was working on.
But he hadn’t expected the first person he’d confide in would be an empty-headed aristo he was supposed to be having a relationship with. Then again, he was no longer entirely sure that Persis Blake was empty-headed. Shallow, sure, and woefully ignorant about every weighty topic affecting both her nation and his own—but she wasn’t an idiot. She knew her way around the court. She knew where her loyalties lay. And despite the ridiculous head-in-the-sand approach her family seemed to be taking to Lady Heloise’s illness, she wasn’t stupid about DAR, either.
There was an unmistakable hunger in the way Persis had asked him for information. It made sense, especially if her family was just trying to ignore the problem, as if that would make it go away. Persis might be flighty, but she was no fool. Her mother was sick, and Persis wanted to do anything possible to help her.
Which meant she might help him as well.
And he had a lot less to fear from Persis than he might from actual scientists. Actual scientists who might start reading more into the research than she would, who would start putting two and two together and figuring out the real reason he’d been forced to flee Galatea. Justen still hadn’t quite worked out what would happen if the Albians figured that part out.
He was even afraid to face it himself.
“You really think the information in here will help?” she asked now, still examining the oblets.
He nodded. “I do. I think my grandmother was close to a breakthrough when she died. And we’ve collected so much more data in the last two generations about DAR.”
But Persis looked skeptical. “If she was so close, then why wasn’t anyone in Galatea able to solve the problem before now?” She shook her head, a furrow appearing on her brow. “I mean, I’m sure you’re very smart, Justen, but there are other scientists in your country who have been treating DAR for decades.”
“Until the revolution,” said Justen, “no one had access to these oblets. They were kept under lock and key by the royal house of Galatea.”