“Whatever you say, Lady Blake.”
She paused on the path and gave him an appreciative smirk. “That was impressive, Justen. You almost sound . . . unrevolutionary.”
They ended up eating on Persis’s lanai anyway. It was a sumptuous meal of roasted taro and noodles and salads of star papaya and edible orchids, with vanilla foams for dessert. Despite the obvious care the Scintillans chef had taken, it tasted like sand to Justen. His thoughts were far away, in Galatea. He’d finally gotten a message from Remy, asking to meet him in person to talk, and he wasn’t quite sure how to tell her that would be impossible. Halfway through the meal, a second message flared up on his oblet: Vania, wondering where he was, disturbed by rumors she’d heard about him and an aristo in Albion.
Guess he wouldn’t have to tell Remy why they couldn’t meet, after all. Justen ran a hand through his hair. How could he muster a reasonable response to either of his sisters’ concerns right now, when he was exhausted and appalled and more certain than ever that he’d made the right choice in leaving Galatea? How could he even risk responding without breaking down and telling Vania everything he’d learned about what the Reduction drug was doing to its citizens, everything he’d realized about the way her father had been manipulating him? And if he’d thought Remy had reacted poorly last time, who knew what she’d say when he told her he’d defected and he wanted her to join him?
No, he wouldn’t message either of them back until he’d had some rest and could organize his thoughts.
The sun dipped low in the sky, and Justen noticed a dark streak darting toward them across the lawn. Moments later, Slipstream scurried up the steps and clawed at the hem of Persis’s gown. His fur was streaked with seawater, and droplets still glistened on his whiskers.
“Hello, sweet thing,” said Persis, and heedless of the silks she was wearing, she scooped the animal up in her arms. “Did you have a good dinner, too? Yes, you did!” Slipstream nuzzled his face into the crook of Persis’s neck and purred contentedly. Splotches and streaks of water smeared, ignored, down Persis’s gown.
Justen didn’t get it. In one breath, she acted like nothing mattered more than her precious clothes, and in the next, she let Slipstream or refugee children ruin them. He supposed it was because their obvious expense meant nothing to her. Everything was a game. Here she was, in her fine house, with her servants and her feasts and her fancy gengineered pet, and across the sea and up the road, people’s lives were scorched earth. How could he sit here with a pretty girl and eat foam and flowers while that was going on? He pushed away from the table and rose, mind whirling. Noemi wanted him to sleep, but how could he when he could barely even sit still?
Persis caught up to him, still clutching her expensive, slimy sea mink. Bits of seaweed clung to its fur. “What’s on your mind?” she asked him.
“This estate,” he said honestly. “I’m too much a reg to ever feel comfortable in a place like this.”
She blinked at him in confusion. “So then what are all the regs who call Scintillans their home?”
“Like your mother?”
She nodded. “And Fredan and his wife and children, and all the people I grew up with—”
“Your servants don’t eat like this, Persis.”
“You aren’t my servant. You’re my guest.”
“And what makes me different from them?” he asked, turning.
She shook her head, and the edge of her mouth quirked up. “Nothing. But you’re the one who’s my guest right now.”
“Because I’m a Helo.”
Persis sighed. “Honestly, Justen, it’s just a name. And it’s just a dinner. It doesn’t always have to be a political statement.”
That was easy for the socialite to say. He shrugged and took a deep breath. “That isn’t how things work in Galatea. And given that your princess is using me for her political ends right now, I wouldn’t be so sure that’s not how it works here in Albion, either.”
Persis said nothing for a few moments. She bowed her head over Slipstream, breathing in the scent of salt from his fur. Then she raised her head and smiled. “I want to show you something. It’s the perfect time.”
“What?”
She set the sea mink on the lanai and grabbed his hand in her damp one, tugging him down the steps toward the cliffs. “Come on.”
She went racing across the lawn, the sea mink cantering to keep up, its stubby legs a blur in the slanted light of the setting sun. Justen sighed and took off after them. The skirt of Persis’s dress was flying out behind her, and the meters between them only lengthened despite Justen’s attempts to keep up. For a socialite, she sure could sprint.
And as she approached the edge of the cliff, she didn’t slow down a bit.
“Persis!” he shouted, but his voice was caught by the wind and ripped away from him. Seconds later, he saw her disappear over the edge. “Persis!” He thundered up to the very edge of the cliff and stopped short. There, a few meters beneath the lip of the cliff, Persis and her sea mink lay sprawled out against a wide net of silk, swinging slightly against the breeze.
She laughed wildly and beckoned to him. “Jump. There’s plenty of room.”
Room wasn’t his concern. Toppling through the gossamer hammock swinging below his feet was closer to the truth.
“Come on,” she cried. “We have to zip-line or we’ll never get there in time.”
“Get where?” he asked. But she gave him no response, just giggled again and held up her hands as if she’d somehow be able to catch him.
He sighed. Here he was, alone at the edge of the world, an island away from everything he’d ever known, a thief, a traitor to his country and, worse, to the values he’d been taught all his life. Here he was offering to play pantomime for a foreign princess’s political benefit, to defer to the knowledge of a spoiled aristo, to deny the revolution he’d once have spilled his lifeblood to defend.
He hoped it was worth it.
All this rested on his head, had rested there since the moment he’d first boarded the Daydream. And he had no one to talk to, no one to ask for advice, for reassurance that he’d made the right choice. His only protector in this strange land was a pumice-brained, giggling girl who—
He stared down at Persis. A silly, spoiled aristo who was keeping the secret of her mother’s illness from those in her society who might use the knowledge as a weapon. A flighty, shallow young woman who steadfastly filled the weighted silence at her family dinners with meaningless chatter about fashion and court scandals. An ignorant girl who was so terrified that she might die from an inheritable disease that she took genetemps and sailed yachts and drove skimmers like a maniac and threw herself off the sides of cliffs for fun.
“Move,” Justen called down at her.
And then he jumped.
Fifteen
“EVER TRAVEL BY ZIP before?” Persis asked, fooling with some sort of contraption up near where the hammock attached to a wire.
“Can’t say I have,” he replied. “I grew up on the southwest coast of Galatea. More sandbanks, fewer cliffs.” He often wondered how much control the creators had when terraforming these islands. The explosion that had split the skin of the Earth hadn’t been designed with habitat creation in mind. The fact that there were two islands, one for the first King Albie and one for the first Queen Gala, had been a lucky accident. And so much about that time was lost to history. Maybe there were other creators who didn’t get a country of their own. Maybe they’d never meant for the nations they’d founded to develop as they had, never meant for the regime of aristo and Reduced to become the dominant society for hundreds of years.