“The Justen I know,” Persis said, directing her response to Remy, “wanted to help people. He knew that the revolution was never meant to torture anyone.” There was not a glimmer of recognition in the girl’s eyes. Whose side was she on? Had Vania won the girl back to the revolution? If so, it must have happened recently, since Vania seemed to have been sincerely surprised to discover the Wild Poppy’s true identity.
“Helping people? Was that what he was doing partying with a princess in Albion?” Vania asked snidely. “How exactly does that help anyone?”
“Everything she says is a lie,” Remy said now, her voice as cold as Vania’s had ever been. “She sits here and lectures us on the true meaning of revolution, and she’s as bad an aristo as any of them.”
Vania put her hand on Remy’s shoulder. “Don’t worry,” she said. “We know how to take care of aristos around here.”
Thirty-three
JUSTEN WAS NEVER, EVER, ever taking genetemps again. This was worse than three days sitting in the sun and drinking nothing but kiwine. He felt split at the seams somehow, as if the code breakdown had left his body in the wrong position and slightly out of place. How anyone found this fun was beyond his reckoning. How Persis could tolerate it regularly was inconceivable.
Slowly, the universe came back to him, and he blinked and groaned.
“Oh!” cried a voice that sounded something like his sister’s. “He’s waking up.”
His eyes began to focus, but the second he tried to move, he was overcome by waves of nausea. He rolled onto his stomach and tried to swallow, but his tongue was dry and coated with some sort of powder. He spat into the grass, a pale mark against the dark ground.
Grass. Ground. He was outside? The last thing he remembered was entering the royal lab in Halahou. He blinked again and attempted sitting. This time, it worked.
He was, in fact, on the ground. The sky was lightening all around, the soft silver blue you saw right before dawn. In front of him stood Vania and Remy along with a few guards, and . . . to his right knelt Persis Blake, tied hand and foot with nanoropes. She was wearing a dark, voluminous robe, and her yellow and white hair was tangled all over her face and neck, but her keen, amber eyes were as bright as ever. She stared at him, her expression pointed, as if there were a million or two things she’d like to say.
He knew the feeling.
“Justen!” Remy threw herself to the ground next to him and hugged him. “You’re all right. I was so scared when I saw you in the lab—I thought maybe she’d hurt you.”
“What?” he croaked. “Vania?”
“Yes?” Vania answered sweetly.
“Vania’s the only one who’d hurt me—”
“See what I mean?” Vania rolled her eyes. “Totally brainwashed. I mean, look at him, Remy. Would the Justen you know ever willingly take genetemps?”
Remy shook her head vehemently.
Justen closed his eyes in despair. “Remy, I know it looks odd, but I—”
“Enough of your lies!” Vania snapped. “I think we’re both a little sick of hearing them at this point.” From his place on the ground, Justen could see Vania’s oblet ping in her pocket. “Oh, now what?” she said, annoyed, and pulled it out.
“You took genetemps for me?” Persis whispered at him, her voice filled with awe. “You?”
“Yes,” he grumbled in reply. “And look at the good it did us, Poppy.”
“Still,” she said as she shrugged her bound arms, “I’m impressed. It’s the most romantic thing anyone has ever done for me.”
Tied up and still making flirty jokes. Apparently the Wild Poppy was not entirely different from the Persis Blake he knew.
“If we get out of this alive,” he said, “we’re going to have a long conversation.”
“Oh, yes. I look forward to hearing all about your first genetemping trip.”
“That’s not what I mean.”
Persis turned his way, all amusement vanished from her features. Her gaze was dark and piercing, and her words were even more so. “Neither do I, Justen. And let’s not assume that, even when we do get out of this alive, either of us will retain the power of speech.”
Justen felt woozy again as his brain sought to reconcile the girl he knew with the spy tied up beside him. Was this what had been lurking beneath Persis’s spoiled aristo persona all along?
He had no idea where he was anymore. Not Halahou. On a lawn outside some nondescript military installation somewhere. He could hear the sound of waves. They seemed to be coming from beyond the bluff that stood about twenty meters in front of them.
He looked at Vania reading her message on her oblet. Though he couldn’t make it out from this angle, whatever the display said made her face contort with rage.
“Listen, Remy—” he began, but Vania began to shout at her oblet.
“I don’t think so,” she snapped. “Not after everything I’ve been through.”
At his side, Persis craned her neck to see, but Justen doubted she got anything.
“All right, enough!” Vania cried. “I caught the Wild Poppy. I did it all by myself. And I don’t care what General Gawnt or even my father has to say about it.” She held her hand out toward the other two guards. “Pinks, please.”
Everything grew cold. “Vania, no—” Justen began.
“Shut up!” she screamed without moving. “You, Justen Helo, are in no position to say anything right now. You’ll be lucky if you get out of this without being Reduced yourself, at this rate.”
“But he’s right, Citizen Aldred,” said Persis in a voice Justen wasn’t sure he’d ever heard before. Or maybe he had. This was her voice in the baths at the sanitarium, her voice in the safe darkness of the star cove, her voice the night she tried to talk her mother out of madness. This was the real Persis Blake. The Wild Poppy. “You’re making a terrible mistake. That ping you just got—from one of your superiors, I’m guessing. And I bet I can guess what it says, too. My princess has made a bargain with your father. We are to be released unharmed.”
“Too late!” Vania shook her hand, though the guards seemed to hesitate. “It’s too late. Message didn’t get here in time. Oh well.” She turned toward the guards. “Pinks! Now!” she roared.
Remy flinched, as did Vania’s underlings. “Vania,” said Remy, standing and backing up until she stood right near the guards, “let’s not start a war. You’ll still win. Now that she’s been revealed, the Wild Poppy will never be able to come back to Galatea.”
“Oh, I still win,” Vania insisted. “I always win. But I will see the Wild Poppy Reduced anyway. I will watch her grovel in the muck before she goes back home. I promise you.”
“Vania,” said Justen, rising on unsteady feet. “Stop.”
“No, you stop!” She pulled her gun out of her holster and pointed it at him. “Take another step and I’ll hit you with more than a toxin pricker. You’re just digging yourself in deeper.” She glanced behind her. “And you, too, Remy. And,” she said, raising her voice, “any soldier under my command who does not follow my direct orders. Now, a pink, please.”
Remy sighed and turned toward a guard, who offered up his tin of pills. With a grim face, Remy took it then handed it off to Vania. “I still think you’re making a mistake,” she said. “We’re going to get into trouble, and it’s not like it’ll even last long.”
“No, Remy—” Justen cried. She didn’t know about the effect the pills had on regs. “No, Vania. Don’t. You have no idea what you’re doing.”