But it wouldn’t hurt to enjoy my father’s approval before I started challenging him. Maybe it would even be easier after I proved how much I cared about the estate. How much I cared about him.
“Agreed?” he asked again.
“Agreed,” I said, and buried my face once more into his chest.
• • •
Father started my education the next morning. We drove out to our ranches in Kansas to inspect recent cyclone damage and estimate repairs. The next day, it was northern Missouri, where the river had spread flat, muddy fingers over our crops. We discussed growing heartier, more flood-resistant plants, and the costs of levees. I ate dinner at a well-to-do farmer’s house, and met his wife and children.
Once we got home, I excused myself for a solitary walk and tucked a thin roll of bills in one of the baskets that Elinor had left earlier.
The next week, Father invited me to lunch with several of the landowners, some of whom were shadowed by their own heirs, most of whom had graduated with me in May. At the table, over glasses of plum wine and bowls of shark-fin soup, the unceasing network of friendships, manipulations, and outright negotiations over marriage unfolded like a kaleidoscope of control.
Patterns emerged. Father and Arthur Lawrence were the most powerful gentry in the city; Harry Westoff was the wealthiest in terms of liquid assets; the Everlys, the Thorpes, and the Yorks were desperate to please and desperate for power, doing favors for anyone who asked in an effort to curry enough goodwill to someday ask favors of their own.
The heirs, close to coming of age, were often present at these lunches and dinners, though none of us were allowed into the inner circle of the Uprisen. That was a privilege only granted once the property passed into your hands. Until then, we all sat in parlors and watched the opium smoke curl out from closed doors down the hall. We sat quietly, our heads filled with finances and loans and the risk of planting too many drought-resistant crops when the year might bring floods, balanced against the cost of renovating estate houses in need of constant care. And of course, the cost of helping the Rootless, if you were secretly playing the part of a corseted vigilante.
I found I liked this group more than I expected. Mark Everly and Navid Thorpe were more thoughtful and intelligent than I’d given them credit for, and were pleasant company. So was Philip Wilder; he and I had something close to a friendship after our lunch at the country club—or at the very least, a mutual respect for each other.
Jane Osbourne was there, levelheaded and calm as always. Even Cara was present sometimes, although never for long. In fact, I was fairly certain she was avoiding me.
In a way, I didn’t mind. Without her, it was almost as if David never existed. No need to think of his blue eyes or his rush to protect me in the Rootless tavern. No need to think of the last letter I’d sent him, which had still received no reply, or of his mercurial moods that were impossible to understand.
The end of August brought trouble from overseas: diplomatic clashes with the Eastern Empire, and highly visible military training exercises on both sides. Most of the gentry laughed off the possibility of real war, but my father merely tightened his mouth and refused to downplay the rumors.
“The Empire claims they are defending their trading agreements, but what they truly want is an excuse to finish what they couldn’t during their last invasion,” he informed me on a car trip to visit another farm. I wondered if Father suspected that the Rootless and the Empire would partner together, but I didn’t dare bring it up lest it lead to questions I could not truthfully answer.
The days had turned into weeks and the weeks into months—months of going over ledgers with Father, of meeting farmers, charming the bankers and lenders on the wall screen into extending our credit for just another year, on the faint hope that the harvests would improve. They were all too happy to acquiesce to our requests, to keep the Landry family flush in money even though none of our farms had made a real profit in the last few years.
The months were filled with news headlines about the Empire, about our forts and our army and how strong and prepared they both were. War hovered over the mountains like a storm cloud that refused to rain. I often thought of David, waiting in the mountain fog, waiting for an enemy that he could face and fight without the doubts that beset him here.
All this time, I kept convincing myself that it would be better to wait to speak to Father about the Rootless. Once he saw me as an equal, once I’d proved my value to the estate, he’d listen to what I had to say.
Only once had my guilt turned to more than tiny tugs at my conscience, and that was at the sight of Jack and Charlie walking up our driveway. Charlie skipped and hopped, protesting loudly whenever his father asked him to stay close. I moved Morgana from her perch at the window and raised the sash, taking care to make sure I was alone in the parlor.
“Hello, Jack. Hi, Charlie.”
“Watch this, Miss Landry!” Charlie took a running start and then jumped into a flip, landing on his feet with barely a hint of a wobble. “I taught myself how last week, but before I could, I had to learn how to jump really high, so I taught that to myself and then started flipping and once I—” he did another flip “—got the hang of it, it was so easy! I can do it all the time now, look!” And again, each flip taking him farther away from the window and into the driveway.
Jack beckoned to Charlie in affectionate exasperation. “Stay near me. This is not our house; you cannot go bounding around anywhere you please. I’m already regretting taking over your brother’s duties, even if it was for him to meet with our friends in St. Louis.”
Charlie stuck out his tongue and did another flip in the driveway. Jack leveled his gaze at his son, saying nothing, and I was reminded of how quickly Smith quailed under Jack’s force of will in the tavern. Jack was used to being obeyed.
Charlie lasted less than a few seconds, and then, knowing he was beat, he shuffled to his father’s side.
Jack turned back to me. “Have you made any progress with those journals?”
“Well, I . . .” I fidgeted. “I’ve been busy. With the estate.”
“And Cara Westoff’s attacker?”
“It’s just been so busy here,” I said faintly.
“I see,” he said in that rumbling voice. He didn’t say anything else. He didn’t have to. The disappointment and doubt in his face said it all.
With a farewell nod, he left the window. Charlie waved enthusiastically as they walked around the house to collect our charges.
• • •
That night the Lawrences were our dinner guests, and I couldn’t help but cast an eye of renewed suspicion on my cousins, who were as rude and raucous as ever. Stuart, Tarleton, and Frank were snorting about some boxing exploit, while the two younger boys, Scott and Oliver, were busy shoving and kicking each other at the table. Arthur Lawrence was deep in conversation with Father, and Aunt Lacey was gossiping with Mother, so nobody seemed to care about their bad table manners. Which meant that nobody would overhear my conversation with the boys.
Maybe I’m not ready to throw my lot in with the Rootless, but at least I can do this. I can prove that Jack’s people didn’t hurt Cara.
I set down my napkin and turned to the older boys.
“It’s a shame they still haven’t found Cara’s attacker,” I said.
“I would find her attacker in a heartbeat,” Tarleton blustered. “Give me a day, and I’ll get the Rootless talking.”
Stuart just scowled.
“What is it?” I asked him. “You don’t think you’d be as good at catching a criminal as your brother?”
“What do you think? Use your brain. If months of ration reductions and raids haven’t unearthed the criminal, a gentry boy threatening to box them won’t either.” Stuart leaned over the table. “And no Landry sniffing around is going to help. You’d both do well to shut your mouths and let things take their course.”
“And what does that mean, Stuart? Do you have a reason for not wanting
her attacker to be found?”
His lip curled. “What are you saying, cousin?”
“I think you know exactly what I’m saying.”
“I would like to see you prove it.”
Father, finally noticing the intensity of our conversation, called down the table. “Care to involve us in your discussion?”
“We were just talking boxing,” Stuart said smoothly. Tarleton nodded.
“I see,” said Father, and turned back to Arthur.
We didn’t talk much after that, but for the rest of the night, Stuart remained defiant and scornful.
You can’t touch me. You can’t prove anything, he seemed to be saying.
And I knew he was right.
Brisk nights had turned into brisk days and the trees were shaking off their leaves when I walked down to the parlor for tea and found my parents arguing. Mother stood behind a chair, tears leaving trails of makeup down her face.
“—won’t have the entire city laughing at me,” she was saying as I walked into the room. Her voice trembled in such a way that suggested she’d spent the afternoon with a bottle of sake, which was becoming a more commonplace occurrence these days.
“No one is laughing,” my father said, not looking up from his tablet. “We have been over this. You’re being paranoid.”
“I am not being paranoid,” she hissed. “You think people don’t notice that she’s over here at all hours of the night? While I’m away? You think that no one sees you out at dinner or the casino?”
My father’s mouth pressed into its habitual line. “Maybe it’s none of their business.”
“It most certainly is my business, though. How dare you skulk around with Christine when it was my family’s money that kept your precious estate alive? My money is the reason you didn’t marry that whore and then you went and wasted it all anyway—”
“That’s enough!” Father roared, leaping out his chair. I shrank back, his rage filling the room. “This is my house, this is my estate, and it belongs to my family! You are nothing! Your money is nothing!”
The silence afterward was thick and vitriolic, punctuated with my mother’s sobs. We were frozen: my mother crying behind the chair; my father standing tensely, fists clenched; and me, back against the wall, wishing I could melt into it. Suddenly, all of our tablets chimed, screens glowing bright white and revealing a scrolling news feed.
Steps echoed throughout the marble foyer, sharp and quick, as if someone was running in heels. My mother brought her hand to her mouth to stifle her crying.
“Alexander!”
My father snapped to attention. He walked over to the entrance of the parlor just as Christine Dana tumbled in, black hair messy and tousled, like she’d just rolled out of bed.
“Oh, Alexander,” she moaned, burying her face into his chest. “It’s David. There’s been a battle at the fort and there’s no word. There’s no word from anyone, and I don’t know if he’s alive or dead.”
A moment passed where I stood completely still, circled by rushing servants as they helped Christine to a comfortable chair and fetched her tea while my father rubbed her hands. My mother stood as still as I did, but where she could only focus on Father and Christine, my thoughts flew wildly to David. My stomach clenched and unclenched, and an inescapable feeling of panic consumed me.
David. In a battle. When supposedly battles didn’t happen anymore.
It wasn’t possible that he would leave his world of ballrooms and champagne to die in the mountain mud. It wasn’t possible that someone as young as him, as eager to charm, would have his life cut short in his first term of service when everyone so firmly believed war was a thing of the past.
“I just got the notice,” a tearful Christine told Father. “It doesn’t say anything other than that there has been a battle. When will I know if he is okay? How? How long does it take for them to—to—”
She didn’t finish her sentence, but we all knew what she was thinking. How long did it take for them to sort through the bodies of the fallen?
Mother cleared her throat, as if hesitant to speak. “It might be on the news . . .” she ventured.
Christine leaped out of her chair. “Where is the closest wall screen?”
Father led the way, and I trailed behind, wrapped in my own misery. In my mind, I could already see David’s blond hair, caked with grime and blood, and the wide-open blue eyes, staring blankly into the East.
Father flung open the door to the viewing room and gestured to a nearby servant, who scurried over to a control panel. Velvet curtains swept back, revealing a matte white wall made of pure marble. There was a slight hum as the nuclear charges kicked on, sending power through the system, energizing the very particles of the stone. Soon, a picture appeared, a field reporter yelling into her microphone as choppers buzzed overhead.
There was a tense moment as we strained to make sense of the noise, struggling to hear the reporter’s voice over the din. “We don’t know much,” I finally heard her say. “But we do know that the brave soldiers here routed the Easterners, and that the government is considering this a victory.”
A collective sigh of relief.
“But why would the Empire attack?” I asked. “After centuries of peace?”
“Peace is just another word for preparation,” Father answered.
Remembering the Rootless alliance with the Empire, I felt numb. Was this part of the plan? Had Jack known about it? Had David?
“We’re told that the true heroes of the battle were two young men,” she was saying, looking down at her notes, fluttering in the wind from the helicopters. “David Dana, who is a new officer here—” A chopper landing nearby cut off the rest of her sentence.
Christine slumped back in her chair. “He’s alive,” she whispered.
He’s alive.
“He’s a hero,” Father said, a little wonderingly. I don’t think he thought David had it in him.
I rested my head against the wall, letting the cool stone flush out the fervor. He’s alive, he’s alive. David is alive. I closed my eyes, his face flitting across my eyelids, hearing his quick intense voice in my ears. I might have stayed inside myself that way for hours, but Christine’s gasp pulled me from my mirage.
“Is everything all right?” my father asked, brow furrowed in concern.
Christine stared at the screen, now filled with the image of a handsome young man with short dark hair and large eyes. It was a military graduation photo and in it, he stared ahead seriously, as if staring at all the problems in the world he planned to fix. He had broad shoulders and a squared jaw and the sort of regal bearing a prince might have.
The back of my neck tingled. I knew I’d never seen him before, but why did he look so familiar?
“I know that boy,” Christine said quietly, hands curled around the arm of the chair. “I was friends with his parents.”
“Captain Jude MacAvery was the real hero today,” the reporter yelled. “He was the first to know that the Easterners had invaded the valley next to the fort, and he rallied every soldier to fight, leading the charge himself, on foot.”
The camera abruptly panned to a nervous-looking soldier standing in front of the fort. A black haze of smoke hung over the scene. Steam and other mists of war rose from the holes blasted through the thick concrete walls, and from bomb craters pocking the dark soil around the compound. The soldier explained how this Captain MacAvery had stopped an Easterner from shooting him, how he’d saved many others with his quick thinking and his quick gun.
Father gestured to a valet standing against the wall. “Arrange for a call to the other Uprisen men.”
“Yes, sir.” The valet left with a bow.
“With the Rootless in a state of unrest, we need to establish a plan. I don’t want the Empire to provide any opportunity for them to revolt,” Father explained to me.
I shivered, grateful he couldn’t read my thoughts.
“But surely this is the end of it,” Christine said, he
r eyes still on the screen. “They would not be stupid enough to attack us when we’ve just beat back the largest power in the world.”
“They very well might. They’re fools.”
“David is coming home for the Solstice!” Christine cheered, scrolling through messages on her tablet at the dinner table. “We should throw a big party for him—to celebrate his victory.”
I did my best not to glance at her. I focused instead on tracing the Landry Crest on my plate with a gleaming fish fork. I wasn’t going to think about David, who had never responded to my letter, or his soft lips. And I certainly wasn’t going to stare at his mother, hungry for any resemblance to her son that would feed that sharp ache I nursed in my chest.
“We could have it at the Lodge,” Christine suggested. “Nothing will be more beautiful than the country and the river in all this snow and ice.”
My father smiled benignly. “But we would miss all the city festivities.”
“Then let’s invite the city to the Lodge. Throw a string of balls and feast and hunting parties that no one could refuse.”
“Things are uneasy here. If we left our houses unattended, who knows—”
“Stop fretting,” Christine said, sliding her long fingers over his. “The Empire has announced a cease-fire and they say negotiations could start any day now. The Rootless haven’t made a peep since this summer. Your security systems are impenetrable and the gentry could even hire extra guards. Wouldn’t it be nice to spend one night without worrying about the Rootless and the Empire?”
I reflexively wiped away the twinge of guilt that came of thinking about the Rootless. I didn’t know what to think after witnessing the battle and all the carnage. I still tucked the extra food into the boxes, but found myself hesitating at the extra cash; the thought of funding something like what I had seen on the wall screen made me sick.
“Come, Alexander. When was the last time the Landrys threw an event that put everyone else to shame? And for a war hero, no less.”
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