Elliot made a face at the pale green liquid, then took a sip and smiled, relieved. “It’s wine.”
“Kiwine.”
“Kiwi . . . wine?” She laughed. “You people have the strangest foods. The strangest everything. I thought the Cloud Fleet clothes were crazy, but this is”—she tugged at her skirt—“this is like something out of an ancient book. Marie Antoinette, maybe?”
“I was always partial to the French Revolution.” Vania swooped in on them, swiping Justen’s glass of wine right out of his hand. “They certainly knew how to deal with their aristos. Good evening, everyone. How do you like my outfit, Justen? Does it meet with your aristocratic fashion taste?”
His eyes dropped from her sly, calculating smile to her clothing. Vania still wore revolutionary black, but tonight she was dressed in a slinky, glittery gown that wouldn’t be out of place on any Albian aristo. Crisscrossed straps webbed up the bodice and down the sleeves, and there was a black cormorant-feathered cape tossed jauntily across her shoulders. The feathers shimmered with iridescence, and Justen realized how much he must have learned from his week with Albion’s most fashionable aristo. Vania had chosen a feathered outfit specifically to ruffle aristo feathers.
“Are you trying to cause an eruption?” he asked her, eyebrows raised. Even if Isla hadn’t chosen that fashion style this particular evening, feathered capes were usually reserved for royalty, in ancient tradition.
“Yes,” Vania replied. “I am a revolutionary, unlike some people I know.” She looked at the visitors. “Can I borrow him for just a moment?”
As soon as they were alone—or as alone as they could be in the crowd—Vania turned to him and took a deep breath. “I owe you an apology.”
“You owe me my sister,” he hissed at her.
“Remy is fine,” Vania said with a shrug. “You honestly think I’d do something to her? Come on, Justen. That’s what I wanted to apologize about. I was so angry at you, at the way you’d abandoned us, that I lashed out. I’m sorry.”
He breathed a sigh of relief. This was the Vania he knew. And if Remy was safe, it was all that mattered. “I’m glad to hear it.”
“Not as glad as I’ll be when you come back to Galatea with me tonight.”
He shook his head. “I can’t go back, Vania. Not ever.”
Her lips formed a scary little line. “Why, because of Persis? Justen, the clothes are nice and all, but let’s be serious. You have work to do.”
“I’ll do it here.”
“Oh, no you won’t,” she said. “That Reduced girl is going to Galatea, and she’s not coming back. You think I’d miss an opportunity like that? I saw her name all over your notes the other night. Any work you want to do with her—and I know you well enough to tell you’re just itching to start your little experiments—you can do in Galatea or not at all.”
“Please,” Justen scoffed. “Do you honestly think that the Albians are going to let you leave here with any of the visitors? They’ve learned their lesson after yesterday.”
Now it was Vania’s turn to laugh. “Please,” she mocked. “They’re already gone.”
Justen’s face drained of blood.
“Andromeda Phoenix knows aristo tricks. She couldn’t talk Kai or his aristo sweetheart into coming along, but we don’t need them anyway. The important one is the Reduced girl, and it was ever so easy to convince Captain Phoenix that these shiny, sparkly aristos do not have Tomorrow’s best interests at heart. She didn’t want that controlling princess or her stupid sidekick trying to stop us either.” Vania gave him a simpering, closed-lip smile. “We’re of such similar minds, Andromeda Phoenix and I. They’re halfway there already, and I only stayed behind to give you one last chance to come along.”
He stared at her in shock. “Vania, don’t you think Andromeda’s also smart enough to see through your ruse?”
“What ruse?” she looked mystified and a little hurt. “It’s only Albians who think things are so very bad in our country, Justen. Well, Albians and you. True Galateans are much happier now.”
“I know a lot of Galateans who would claim otherwise,” he grumbled. “And Andromeda won’t be happy at all when she hears about your plans for her friend.”
“Why not?” Vania shrugged off his concerns. “We’re not going to hurt the girl. It’s not like we need to drink her blood, right? A few genetests. Besides, at least there she’ll have friends of her own kind.”
“The victims of the drug are not Reduced,” he growled.
“Well, you’d know best. Please come,” Vania said, placing her hand on his arm. “I don’t want to be enemies with you anymore. I love you so much, Justen. You’re my best friend. Please come back. We can smooth over everything with my father and the populace. I don’t blame you for getting sidetracked here. Aristos can be . . . bewildering. And I know that Father wasn’t letting you work on the projects you really wanted to. But we can convince him together. That Reduced girl will change everything—for DAR and . . . well, for the revolution, too.”
“How so?”
Vania gave him a pitying smile. “I know how much guilt you’ve been feeling over the pinks, Justen. And, believe me, I feel the same. It’s just not right for the aristos. And it’s like you said. Seeing Tomorrow made me realize it—how perverted their form of Reduction is. It’s not real Reduction at all, is it?”
Justen nodded, relieved, and took Vania by the hands. “I felt that way, too. Oh, Vania, thank you so much. Seeing Tomorrow, seeing how she lives, the light that shines out of her—I can’t believe I was ever so crude as to call the effects of that drug Reduction.”
“Exactly. For the aristos to truly get their just desserts, it’s only right that they be really Reduced. Permanently. And now that there’s a real Reduced in Galatea, we can figure out how to make it happen.”
Justen must have dropped her hands. He must have stepped back. But he couldn’t tell. His body seemed to go numb. “No,” he whispered.
Vania looked confused, then angry.
There was a roaring in his ears. “You can’t.” He thought he said it. He must have said it, based on the rage that overtook Vania’s features.
“It’s our turn to win, Justen,” she said, her voice sounding sad and a little lost. “How can you not understand that? We’ve been punished long enough for what our ancestors did. It’s their turn for punishment now, and our turn to rule.”
One night, not long ago, Justen had floated in a starlit cove with a girl who told him, There is only one way to recover from the evil humanity does to itself: overcome it. We can only be held responsible for what we ourselves do. Bad things happen in this world, and we are judged on how we respond. Do we take part in evil, or do we fight against it with all we have?
He had to fight. But he couldn’t stop Vania on his own. There was only one man in New Pacifica who could.
The Wild Poppy.
JUSTEN GRABBED VANIA’S HAND and shouted for a guard. It had the effect of bringing at least three heads swerving in his direction, but no more. A crowd of hundreds, and dozens of flutternotes in the air above them—but not a single chance of calling for help.