“Darling, if you’d just get a palmport. They’re the only way to stay in the loop in Albion. Noemi fluttered me when she couldn’t get in contact with you.” That sounded believable. Justen knew how her countrymen depended on their palmports.
“Where are they going?” he asked. Too quickly? Maybe even frantically? Was Justen understandably upset that he hadn’t been told, or concerned that he’d given bad information to his revolutionary buddy?
“Oh”—Persis flicked her hand in the air—“somewhere inland. Such a hassle, really. You’re going to spend so much time traveling to and fro, you’ll hardly have any left to spend with me.” And she planned to keep a much closer eye on him from now on.
“I’m not here for a vacation. I have to have my work. Otherwise this is all for nothing. I can’t stand by while my countrymen keep suffering.”
“I beg to differ, Justen.” He’d stood by just fine for six months now. “As we discussed, part of your bargain with Isla was that you spend time with me—”
“I don’t expect you to understand, Persis,” he replied coldly. “Just tell me where they’re moving the lab.”
Not likely. Fake Persis may pretend she didn’t care, and real Persis might not fully understand all the intricacies of Justen’s work and the further damage he might potentially do, but both of them could unite under the banner of keeping him as far away from the refugees as humanly possible.
Fredan appeared in the doorway, his face drawn, his usual butler’s air of indifferent formality utterly absent. “Persis. You’re needed in your mother’s room.”
She took off without another word.
Outside, dusk had descended on the lawn, but the sound of evening insects gave way to screams and crashes that ricocheted across the stone and crystal columns and polished floors. Persis was relieved they’d be swept away by the wind as soon as they reached the lanai. At the door to her mother’s room, she saw the extent of the damage. Every piece of furniture was overthrown, every item of clothing ripped from the cupboards. Her mother, wild-eyed and wailing, was digging through a trunk of monsoon gear, shouting hoarsely.
“Where is it! Where did you put it! Give it back!”
In the corner stood two maids, wringing their hands and looking on in horror.
“Where’s my father?” Persis asked.
“Down in the village,” said one of the maids. “Fredan sent a flutter.”
“And the night nurse?”
“Not here yet.”
Persis swallowed and crossed to her mother, recalling the advice Noemi had given her and her father. Keep her calm, talk her back into rationality. She could do this. If there was anything she was good at, it was making people behave the way she wanted.
Heloise’s hair had escaped its clips, sending bronze spirals cascading down her back. Persis brushed one aside. “Mama?” she asked softly. “I’m here to help you. What are you looking for?”
Heloise Blake turned and her eyes went even wider, if that was possible. “You.”
“Yes, Mama—” Persis began, when her mother grabbed her by the throat and threw her against the wall.
“You!” Heloise growled, shoving her against the stone. “You stole it! Who are you?”
“Mama!” Persis said, though her voice tripped over the syllables. “It’s me, Persis.”
“You stole my face.”
Her muscles relaxed. Here was the heart of the episode. She’d seen this one before. “Yes, Mama,” she said calmly, blinking until the threatening tears subsided. “I’m your daughter. We’ve heard that all my life, remember?”
Heloise’s hands crept up to Persis’s cheeks, her fingers curved into claws. “Give me my face back.”
Persis neatly caught her mother’s wrists before she did any more damage to her inflamed face. “Mama, please. Look at me. I’m Persis.” She moved Heloise’s hand to her own face, let it caress her own cheek. “We look alike. We always have. You’re the most beautiful woman in all Albion, and I’m lucky that anyone thinks I resemble you.”
Sometimes this worked. Sometimes her mother remembered. But Heloise’s eyes were still wide, her pupils constricted to tiny points. Her nails were now raking across her own skin. And then, suddenly, she slumped against Persis. Justen stood behind her, a pricker in his hand.
“What did you do?” Persis cried as the maids rushed to help support her unconscious mother.
“Sedated her,” Justen said. “She needed it. You did your best, Persis, but—”
“You had no right to medicate my mother,” she said, her tone low and dangerous. She’d been getting there. She just needed more time. And Justen Helo was never, never allowed to give anyone she loved a drug.
She swept by him and followed her servants to the bed, where they were laying Heloise down. At the edge of the platform lay the cracked remnants of a hand mirror, its rotating lifters bent and clicking as they tried to turn. That was probably what had set the whole spell off. Sometimes her mother lost track of the passage of years and failed to recognize her own reflection. She tapped the mirror off, swallowed, and said in as steady a voice as she could muster, “You may be a medic, but you aren’t ours.”
“I have a little more experience dealing with DAR than you do,” he replied. “When they reach a certain point of confusion, they can’t be reasoned with. There’s a feedback loop that happens in their brains, and—”
“Save it for your lab reports.” The maids had wisely retreated, and Persis took her mother’s limp hand. Her parents’ bed was suspended from the ceiling on long lengths of silk, and swayed slightly as she perched on the edge. Her mother was sleeping, her face so relaxed in repose that she looked much younger than forty. She looked, indeed, like Persis herself. “You don’t know her.”
“Do you think that’s the first time a member of a patient’s family has said that to me?” he asked softly. “It’s true. I don’t know your mother. I wish I’d known her when she was well, when she was all the things she wanted to be, all the things you love about her.” His voice came from very close now, but Persis would not turn toward him. “I don’t know—I can’t know—how you and your mother feel. But I have seen people go through this before, and I do know the best ways to help.”
Her heart pounded in her chest and her skin burned from more than the chemicals she’d used to remove her genetemps facial hair. Justen’s voice was sweet and soothing. He was surely trained for that—bedside manner, they called it. He knew just how to talk to patients and their families. Just how to keep them calm.
He was a bigger liar than she was.
“You can go now,” she intoned, still focused on her mother. “My father and the night nurse will be along shortly.”
“I can stay.” She felt his hand on her shoulder, pressure and heat searing right through the silvery fabric. “This is what I’m good at, Persis. Let me help.”
She bit her lip. A day ago, that would have been all she wanted. The grandson of Persistence Helo, dedicated to the cause of helping Darkened. Ministering to her mother. Recruited into the League of the Wild Poppy. Kissing her in the star cove. But it was all a lie. Justen wasn’t here to help—he was her enemy, and he had no idea what Persis was truly capable of.
“Here,” Justen said, though she’d offered him no answer. He had a tube of ointment in his hands, and he was dabbing it on the scratches marring her mother’s perfect cheeks. He offered her another cloth. “You could use some of this on your rash, too.”
She took it, but the words “thank you” stuck in her throat, the aristocratic manners of Persis Blake warring strongly with the Wild Poppy’s need to flatten this man.