“With these new measures in place, we feel certain that the menace of the Wild Poppy will soon be apprehended.”
What nonsense. The Wild Poppy was not intimidated by guards. He’d waltzed into a heavily armed estate and tricked an officer and all his soldiers into releasing Lord Lacan and his family. She’d reviewed all the witness interviews there.
Well, all except the missing guard’s. The young one who’d apparently showed up out of nowhere then disappeared along with the Poppy. A plant? A spy? Her records were obviously faked and led nowhere. And it seemed the Poppy had done something to the surveillance records when he showed up, as the entire block of time had been erased.
Vania wasn’t giving up, though. While Gawnt attempted to unmask the Poppy with brute force, she would do it with finesse, and she would start by tracking down every person who’d ever interacted with the spy—even if that meant detoxing the idiot nanny who’d let the Ford children slip through her fingers.
“Captain Aldred?” came the voice of her assistant. “You have a visitor. It’s Citizen Helo.” As always, there was a reverent hitch in the woman’s voice as she pronounced the name. Helo. Vania wondered if her own name would hold such importance to future generations.
Also: finally! Justen hadn’t been answering her messages for a week. She knew he was devoted to his research, but this was ridiculous. “Send him in,” she called.
But the figure who came through the door wasn’t Justen. It was Remy.
“Oh.” Vania pasted a smile on her face to hide the disappointment. “You’re back from your school trip at last?”
Remy’s eyes widened and her hand went to her smooth cap of dark hair. “Yes. Glad you didn’t miss me too much.”
Vania chuckled. “Of course I missed you, squirt. Especially at dinner. You wouldn’t believe how boring it gets without you or your brother to distract from General Gawnt’s speeches.”
“You haven’t seen Justen, either?” Remy said. “He’s not at the lab, you know.”
“Oh?” Vania said, distracted. “Well, you know Justen. He’s probably sequestered in some sanitarium somewhere, mopping the brows of pathetic Darkened.”
“I don’t know. We . . . haven’t spoken in a while,” Remy pressed. “We had a fight before I left. And he hasn’t answered my message to talk in person.”
“Probably forgot his oblet somewhere.” Vania shrugged. “If ever someone needed a palmport, it’s your brother.”
Remy nodded. “He never would, though.”
Vania made a sour face. “For good reason. They’re disgusting and decadent . . . and dangerous.”
Though the combination of nanotechnology and gengineering was all the rage in Albion and was starting to catch on even among aristos in Galatea before the revolution, Citizen Aldred had held the practice up as an example of the needless, wasteful indulgences that characterized the upper class, then outlawed the technology before it became popular among regs. Vania remembered how Justen had helped her father prepare tracts that railed against the unknown ravages palmports might be doing to the body’s systems as it drained resources to power itself.
Vania had only ever seen them, dead and useless, on the palms of Reduced prisoners, but she’d watched videos of palmports in action—marvelous, spun-sugar flutternotes that carried encoded messages and applications that would generate small items, toys, or even chemicals if you’d taken the proper supplements.
Sometimes, when she ran out of neurotoxin prickers in her weapons bracelet, she wondered if some enterprising gengineer might write a palmport application for them. You know, if it wasn’t illegal. Imagine not having to carry poisons around. Imagine just being poisonous, at the press of a button and the downing of a supplement. . . .
“Vania!” Remy waved her hand before Vania’s eyes. “Are you even listening to me?”
She looked up at her little foster sister. Up—when had Remy gotten so tall? She was no longer the child who’d always tagged along behind Vania and Justen, begging to be part—any part—of their activities.
“Sorry, squirt,” she said. “I’ve just had my hands so full with the Ford siege, and now Gawnt’s got me trying to track down the Wild Poppy . . .”
“Really?” Remy said, her eyes alight with interest. “What have you found so far?”
Vania bit back a sigh. She really didn’t have time to explain this to a little girl. “Not much, but more than I’ll be reporting to General Gawnt, that’s for sure. If anyone is going to catch the Poppy, it’ll be me.”
“Can I help?”
“Maybe in a few years.”
Remy blinked, hurt, and now Vania did sigh. Justen was much better at putting his little sister off than she’d ever been. That was probably why he was working his bedside manner in a sanitarium and she was interrogating royalists as part of the military police.
“All right, squirt,” she conceded. “Here’s a way you can help. There’s this story coming out of the Lacan estate about a missing soldier—some young recruit who apparently ran off with the Poppy. But no one seems to know where she came from. I’ve got tons of military recruit records to go through. Maybe you can help track this girl down.” She handed Remy the oblet.
“Trina Delmar,” Remy read on the display. “Yes, I think this is something I can handle.”
Good. That would keep her busy, and it was doubtful Remy could cause much trouble combing through some static records. It was odd that Remy and Justen hadn’t been in contact—though sometimes Justen and Vania spent weeks without talking, Remy and her brother were much closer. At least, Vania thought they were.
Maybe she’d missed a message from him explaining his extended absence? She checked again. Nothing from Justen, but in her queue was a message from a former classmate. She clicked on it and her oblet sparked up a video from a popular gossip source.
Justen Helo, hero to the revolution, spotted getting cozy with an Albian aristo? Oh, Helo, say it isn’t so!
Jaw hanging like a fish, Vania played the video over and over in disbelief. The gossip sweeping Halahou was that Justen Helo was over in Albion romancing one of the most ridiculous aristocrats around.
The girl’s name was Persis Blake, and according to the story, she was one of the richest, prettiest, and stupidest girls on the whole island. Her father, who probably also had pumice for brains, had defied Albian tradition to name her his heir, which made her one of the most eligible bachelorettes in New Pacifica.
Vania didn’t understand. This had to be some sort of misunderstanding. Or maybe a vicious lie perpetrated by Galatean royalists. Justen wouldn’t run off to Albion without telling them first. And he certainly, certainly wouldn’t fall in love with someone as shallow as this Blake girl was.
Justen had always been uninterested in romance. Too much work to do. Hadn’t they had the conversation a hundred times, while their silly classmates got tied up in unproductive and melodramatic relationships that burned quickly and left nothing but anger and hurt feelings in their wakes? Vania had used these hurt feelings in her missions—one old classmate had been more than ready to reveal to Vania that an ex-lover was attending royalist meetings. Poor boy had been two months in his work camp, thanks in part to the bitterness born of a failed romance. Those sorts of feelings were beneath people like Justen and Vania. At least, that’s what Vania had always thought.
But even if Justen decided at last to take notice of something other than his precious research, he would never have taken up with an aristo, even if she was obviously named for his famous grandmother. Not an aristo. Not her Justen. No matter how beautiful or charming or rich this girl was. Justen didn’t care about that stuff.