Across a Star-Swept Sea (20 page)

“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 in 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

“E
VER 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 Galatea, 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.

All thoughts instantly fled, however, as Persis pulled a release cord, and they dropped toward the sea. Justen felt his stomach leap into his throat. He clutched at the silk hugging him from all sides, its thin weave seeming too insubstantial to hold him. Near his feet, the sea mink lay calmly, and Persis squealed with delight as they zipped down, down, down, gliding through the air, silk billowing out behind them like the sail on a ship. The water rushed toward them, deep blue and closer than he would have liked, until he was almost sure he could reach down and touch it, then the line leveled and they flew across the water like a sea bird skimming for fish.

“Hang on,” said Persis a tad breathless. “There’s a bit of a jolt at the end.”

“What?” Justen asked, then was thrown violently forward as the hammock caught on a block at the end of the wire, The bottom swung up, throwing him back again, right into Persis’s lap. Slipstream squeaked in protest.

“Well, hello there,” she said coyly, brushing her bare fingers through the bristly strands of his hair. Her smile was broad and inviting, and his left arm had somehow gotten entangled all the way under her skirt. He scrambled up and tumbled out of the hammock, apologizing while inwardly berating himself for not hanging on a little tighter while Persis dropped him off a cliff face.

“You didn’t hurt me, darling.” She shot him a grin and slid out of the folds of silk herself, as Justen looked around, trying desperately to silence the parts of his brain engaged in deducing which particular swath of her leg he’d been pressed up against. They were standing on a tiny patch of moss and sand that looked to be the only real land on the length of the narrow, rocky tide breaker leading out from the cliffs. Nearby was a stone shack. The cliffs rose over them, huge and nearly vertical. He followed the line of rocks back to where it met the mainland and spotted a minuscule, steep set of stairs carved into the rock.

“Is that how we’re supposed to get back?” He nodded to the path.

She chuckled. “Don’t be silly. I’ll call for a boat.” She peeled off her wristlock and, moments later, a flutternote flitted off her palm and was caught by the wind. “I told them to come in an hour. That’ll give us plenty of time.”

“For what?”

Persis grabbed his hand. “For me to show you why they call it Scintillans.”

She pulled him along the narrow path to the shack, then disappeared inside. A moment later, she tossed a pair of dark blue swim trunks at him. “If you go around the shack to the east side, you’re less likely to be seen from the fishing village. But,” she said, wiggling her eyebrows, “I can’t make any promises.”

He looked at the dark blue trunks in his hands. “We’re going swimming?”

Persis poked her head out of the shack. From what he could see, she was no longer dressed. “Please tell me they haven’t outlawed that in Galatea, too.”

“I can swim.”

“Good.” Back in she went.

Perhaps a swim would help clear his mind. He’d been envying Slipstream in the sanitarium bath. By the time Justen had changed his clothes, Persis was lounging on a rock, basking in the coral glow of the setting sun. Her suit, also dark blue, was two pieces—a simple band knotted over her breasts and a brief bottom covered with a translucent blue scarf. It was the plainest thing he’d ever seen her wear. Justen wondered idly whose bathing trunks he was wearing, or if the Blake family kept a stash of blue suits in their shack—just in case.

As soon as she saw him, she popped up and onto the sand. Her hair was still mostly down, the mass of yellow and white curls and braids and locks twisted in a loose knot at the nape of her neck. For a moment, he could pretend she was like any other girl he’d known growing up. Her skin practically glowed in the slanted sunlight. She must know what a tempting sight she made, there on the rock. She must know it, because she had never concerned herself with anything more important in all her silly, shallow life. It was vital to keep such things in mind, before he totally forgot the real nature of their relationship. It was fake. All fake.

She held out her bare hand, and he saw the flash of gold from her palmport.

That should help some.

“Hurry!” she called. “We’ve got to get there before the sun sets.” And again she took off, down the rocks to a tiny, shockingly clear-bottomed cove nestled at the base of the cliff. She plunged into the water and Justen followed her to the shoreline, bracing himself for the cold sea.

But he was surprised, for the water was as warm as a bath. The cove must be a natural geothermal pool. He sunk into the water up to his chest, sighing in pleasure. Though both islands were largely powered by the geothermal energy derived from the volcano, and Justen knew of several thermal pools inland in Galatea, it was rare to find a natural sea cove such as this—protected enough from the tides for the water to seem warmer where it emerged from the heated earth.

Persis paddled across the cove, and he followed her, noting how the sun must be very close to the horizon now, as the surface of the sea had turned to molten gold. Persis had reached the edge of the cliff now and had situated herself on a ledge that seemed to have been carved out of the rock wall. A moment later he joined her, settling into the seat and letting his arms float before him in the warm water.

“I could sleep right here,” he said, surprised to find it was the truth. Perhaps his all-nighter was finally catching up to him.

“It is tempting,” Persis agreed, waving her hands through the water and watching the golden water drip off her fingers. “Of course, you’d drown. And wouldn’t
that
be a tragedy? A celebrated young medic, a darling of Galatea, young, clever, handsome—struck down before his time.…”

More like struck down before he could ruin any more lives. He grimaced. What right did he have to relax in a geothermal pool while the refugees suffered in the sanitarium, while prisoners were tortured in Galatea? There was a rule that medics had abided by since time immemorial: first, do no harm.

He needed to fix his mistake. There was nothing more important than that right now. He’d sleep for a few hours, then head back to the lab.

Ahead of them, to the west, the sun melted into the sea, and already, the dusk had gathered here in the shadows on either side of the cove cliffs. “So why do they call it Scintillans?” he asked, more to change the subject than anything else.

“Wait.”

He waited. It wasn’t difficult to do, snug on the rocks with the warm seawater all around him. Persis didn’t speak for once, and when he looked, she wasn’t consulting her palmport, either, just sitting and watching the sun set, her expression devoid of its usual false cheer. Her hair was wet and plastered to her head, making her look like an actual mortal for once, as well as the two years younger than Justen that she actually was. He wondered what she might have been like had she not been born an aristo in Albion. Like his sister Remy, perhaps. She wasn’t stupid, just unconcerned with any weighty matters.

Then he thought of what she’d be like had she’d been born an aristo in Galatea. How she’d probably even now be Reduced, imprisoned, working herself to death in a field, her silly giggle extinguished like the mischievous spark in her cinnamon eyes.

And it would be his fault.

He was staring. He stopped, and returned his attention to the sun. Persis Blake was beautiful, but she wasn’t a sunset.

A moment later, the sun sank below the surface. Justen made a hissing sound before he could catch himself.

But Persis was already giggling. “What was that?”

He shrugged, sending the water into eddies around his shoulders. “Something my sister and I always do, ever since we were kids. When the ocean puts out the sun, it hisses, like water on a hot pan.”

“I like it.” Persis nodded, as if giving him permission to hiss in her cove. “You must miss her.”

“Remy’s the only family I have left. Of course I miss her.” Missed her and wanted to take back everything he’d said the last time he’d seen her. Remy was just a kid. Of course she wouldn’t take kindly to his doubts about the revolution. Of course she would be shocked to learn that he was trying to undo the damage he’d caused.