“Better every minute,” she replied tersely.
As he worked, he glanced up at Persis and Vania, who were still locked together. Somehow, Persis had ripped off Vania’s pricker bracelet, and Justen had no idea where the gun had gone.
This was no Reduction he’d ever seen. How was it possible?
Andrine’s ropes came loose and she jumped up and started to sprint for Persis and Vania. Remy smiled, which was when one of the guards went for her, while the other ran toward the building for reinforcements.
“I’ll get him. Help your sister!” Andrine shouted, and changed course to chase the runaway guard.
Justen rushed over to where Remy and the guard were wrestling for the gun, doing his best to stay out the line of fire. He grabbed the guard by his hair and yanked him off his little sister’s body, and then, almost before he knew what he was doing, rammed his fist straight into the man’s nose. The guard went down, flat.
Remy sat up and stared at him with her mouth open. “Justen! I didn’t know you had it in you!” Then she very smoothly reached out and wound a nanorope around the guard’s wrist and ankles and pulled it taut.
“Some other time,” he said to her, eyes wide, “we’re going to talk about what kind of secrets you’ve been keeping yourself.”
She shrugged, then said, “Yeah. We should probably do that.”
Justen took a deep breath. “Let’s go help Persis. A Reduced is no match for Vania.”
Remy laughed. “Justen, she’s not Reduced.”
“What?” Justen turned back to the fight, mouth agape.
Persis and Vania were still locked in a death grip. Somehow, Persis had tangled her long cloak around Vania’s legs, preventing her from kicking out. Their hair was flying everywhere, and as they whirled, black and white and yellow strands whipping in the morning wind, Justen could just make out a flash of red blood. He thought it was coming from Vania, but he couldn’t be sure. They were still grappling with each other, stumbling in a wide arc halfway across the lawn.
Justen and Remy started running toward them as Vania reached up and grabbed Persis by her hair, yanking back as hard as she could. The taller girl lost her balance and went careening backward, pulling Vania with her, all limbs and cloaks and hair against the dawn sky.
Then they plummeted off the side of the bluff and out of sight.
Thirty-four
JUSTEN RACED FORWARD, SCREAMING Persis’s name. Distantly, he noticed the evidence of the struggle on the lawn—Vania’s lost bracelet, a lock of Persis’s yellow and white hair, a smear of blood on a blade of grass. . . . How high was this bluff? How rocky the beach? How far had they fallen?
Time seemed to pass slowly; he seemed to be running through molasses. He couldn’t see. He couldn’t tell. Were they all right down there? What was happening?
As they neared, a hand came up over the edge. It was followed by an elbow and then, at last, a face. Smeared with black sand and blood, exhausted and sweaty and beautiful.
Justen had never seen anything so beautiful.
“Persis!” He reached out and grabbed her, pulling her to safety. She collapsed into his arms, and he thought he’d never felt anything so wonderful either. She was here. She was Persis. How was it possible?
“Guess what?” she gasped, pointing vaguely into the harbor below. “Someone brought me my yacht.”
VANIA ALDRED WAS GOING to be fine. That was the diagnosis that floated up from the cabin of the Daydream as it sped back to Albion through the cool morning light.
Persis wasn’t sure what to think. Of course, it would be far better politically to hold captive and hostage and healthy the daughter of Galatea’s military dictator than otherwise, but Persis wouldn’t mind terribly if Vania had sustained a few serious injuries in her tumble from the cliff. After all, the girl had tried to Reduce her. A minor head injury and a few scrapes from the rocks didn’t seem like significant retribution.
She sat on the prow of the Daydream, Slipstream cuddled in her lap and a palmport supplement forgotten in her hand, and stared out at the sea as the dawn turned the surface to molten gold.
Andrine was below, helping Justen with his three charges. Persis’s friend had found the visitors inside a cell in the outpost’s building after neutralizing the guard. Andromeda had some bruises on her face but looked all right, and Tomorrow was frightened but otherwise unharmed. Persis was certain the guilt the foreign captain probably felt over her choice to go with Vania far surpassed any superficial injuries she might have received as soon as she realized what her host’s true intent was. She’d put up a fight, though, if the bruises were anything to go by. They still didn’t know if the Galateans had gotten their genetic sample from Tomorrow, though Persis imagined they must have. There was almost certainly something of the Reduced girl’s left behind in that cell. Perhaps Justen would know what they intended to do with it and how they might be stopped.
But that wasn’t her problem any longer.
Tero was at the helm, showing Remy how to work the controls. From time to time they waved at Persis and she waved back, forcing a smile. Remy was so proud of herself. She’d been quite eager to explain everything to Persis—so eager that Tero had a tough time holding the girl still long enough to bandage the small wounds she’d received in the fight with the guard. Persis, however, had been a captive audience while Tero administered medicines and wraps to all her various cuts and scrapes. She’d sat and listened as Remy told her exactly how she’d switched the guard’s Reduction pills for whatever it was that Justen had been carrying when she’d found him passed out in the lab.
Which meant Remy hadn’t known what she’d given Persis, other than that it wasn’t a Reduction pill. Persis hadn’t had the heart to point out the danger to her. Not when Remy was acting so apologetic about having ever doubted Persis, and about turning Justen over to Vania, and about . . . well, whatever else the girl had been chattering on about. Persis hadn’t been paying quite close enough attention, because unlike Remy, Persis had instantly known exactly what Justen had gone to the Galatean royal lab to collect.
So now she’d taken the Helo Cure. Tero had confirmed that was what he and Justen had been after when they came to Galatea, though Tero, unlike Justen, didn’t realize the danger regs were in from Reduction. Justen did, though. She’d never forget the look in his eyes when she rose from the ground, covered in foam and almost as confused as a real Reduced. He looked like he’d killed her, and in a way, he’d thought he had.
But Persis had felt fine. Felt like nothing at all had happened, which had momentarily scared her more than anything. When you lose your mind, do you even know that it’s gone? One day, when she Darkened, would she even miss the person she’d been?
Very quickly, however, she realized that whatever had happened to her, it wasn’t Reduction. And then she put on the performance of a lifetime. Persis Blake may have spent six months acting dumb, but it hardly prepared her for six minutes acting Reduced.
Remy had even admitted that for a moment, she was afraid her switch hadn’t made any difference. “I thought you were Reduced,” the girl had told her sheepishly. “I thought I’d messed up again.”
But Persis had taken the cure. And now she would never be in danger of Reduction, just in time for the Wild Poppy to disappear forever.
There was no way Isla would ever allow Persis to go on a mission again. Isla or Persis’s parents, actually. She was about to be grounded for life. And it didn’t matter anyway. Her secret was blown sky-high. The guards knew who she was, and Vania would have to be returned to Galatea eventually. The Wild Poppy was dead.