On the terrace, my father stood among a row of his Uprisen friends and—shockingly, heartbreakingly—Jude. To his credit, Jude looked unhappy, keeping his normally confident gaze on his shoes and twisting his hands behind his back. I hoped that he didn’t feel he had to be here in order to gain Father’s approval and secure my hand.
Behind Father was the gibbet—a post with a wooden bar across the top. From the wooden bar hung a cylindrical metal cage, much like a birdcage, save for the crudely thick metal bands and large bolts. Charlie was huddled underneath the gibbet in handcuffs, tear tracks plain on his now-dirty face. A black polymer case rested next to him, containing the radioactive waste he would swallow later. The gibbet food.
Father stepped forward to the edge of the terrace, holding his tablet in his hand. The tablet sent his voice to the speakers set up around the park. “My friends, I have asked you here today to share some troubling news. For generations, we have coexisted peacefully, each playing our part to keep this great nation stable. And most of us are content in these roles.” The snow gave his speech a muffled quality and made the scene feel distant. Surreal.
The Rootless crowd looked blankly back at him. I couldn’t see Jack or Ewan anywhere. But Smith was in the very front row, and even from this distance, I could see the tense set of his body, the shoulder-width spread of his legs, as if he were an animal about to pounce.
“It’s no secret to the Uprisen that there has been a—shall we say—restiveness among the Rootless as of late. Anger and fear and revolt are infecting our happy lives like a cancer, mutating and growing, poisoning everything we have worked so hard to accomplish. And although we have done as much as we can to be your benefactors—to feed you, and clothe you, and put you in a position of usefulness that your ancestors rejected—the time for altruism is over. The time for discipline has begun.”
Charlie started crying, a pathetic sound that shattered me. I moved forward, but a hand clamped around my mouth.
I moved my eyes to see David, his eyes determinedly on the platform. He held a finger to his lips, and I nodded. He moved his hand.
“Stay here,” he whispered.
“I have to do something,” I whispered back. “I can’t just watch.”
“I know.” Against the snow, I could see the barest trace of gold in his hair. “Stay here for now. I am going to try and get Charlie. When the moment is right, I will need a distraction. Can you do it?”
“David, if they catch you—my father will not hesitate to put you in that thing.” I didn’t mention that if he got caught—if we failed—then a similar fate would await me. My father would never forgive me abetting open defiance, for undermining his power in front of the Uprisen and the Rootless. But it was as if my soul had turned to glass in the frozen morning. I couldn’t feel anything for my father anymore, least of all a desire for his forgiveness. Not after this.
David tore his eyes off the terrace and reached out to brush a gloved thumb across my cheek, sending chills skittering across my skin, chills that had nothing to do with the snow.
“You are so brave,” he said.
“You are, too.”
“Not like you.”
I had the paralyzing premonition that this was good-bye, that David would be seized the moment he emerged from the snow and that these would be the last words we shared as free people.
“Be careful,” I begged him.
“If I don’t come back . . .”
He took a step closer. Clouds of steam from our breath mingled between us. I could see the violet streaks in his eyes.
“Then I’ll go with you,” I vowed. Even to the gibbet. I would not stand by as David sacrificed everything; I too would finally play my part.
“Madeline . . .”
His hands were on my waist. I felt everything fade away to snow and white fire; my inhibitions, my fears, my revolutions—gone at his touch. I slid my hands up his arms, up to his neck, and put my fingers in his hair. It was as silky and as fine and as light as it had been in my daydreams, like holding sunlight between my fingertips.
“I want to kiss you,” he said, his mouth very close to mine now.
That white fire was dancing from his hair to my hands to my chest to my stomach to my lips—
“I’ve wanted you to kiss me again for a long time,” I whispered.
“Then I shall.” And he did. His lips were on mine, warm and spicy and smoky. Something needy and hot pulled at my stomach, and I pulled him closer, kissed him harder, breathed him in deeper and deeper until I saw stars and static at the edges of my eyes.
His hands slid under my coat, and his lips found my neck and my hair, and now there were galaxies, a million infinitesimal stars pricking at my eyelids.
“I love you,” he said breathlessly. Then, without warning, he was off. He crouched, moving from tree to tree, edging closer to the stage.
I pressed a hand against my hammering chest, the other to my mouth. I had to wait now, even though my pulse pounded and my heart thrummed with adrenaline and something lighter, something that could pull me up into the clouds if I let it. Up to the sun.
He’d said he loved me.
I had to wait.
The Rootless waited, too. There were no hisses or shouts from their ranks. They stood still, shoulder to shoulder, making no sound save for shuffling feet and ragged breaths in the cold.
“We do not take punishment lightly. I would not have built this gibbet and brought you all here if I was not convinced of the absolute danger of this anger you have harbored against us.” Father flung an arm back at Charlie. “I found this boy under my daughter’s bed, on what was supposed to be the merriest of holidays, the celebration of light against darkness.” At that, the sun finally glinted between the skyscrapers of downtown, sending shafts of blinding light dancing across the glazed trees.
David was almost to the terrace now. No one seemed to have seen him. Then Jude looked up to the sky, as if pleading with the dawning sun and still-visible moon to send him back to the mountains, where the morality was as clearly drawn as a line on a map. He lowered his gaze and his eyes widened as he saw David.
I felt a thrill of panic. Jude was a soldier, loyal to his government and to the gentry. He was here of his own free will, willing to watch Charlie killed in a barbarous method that hadn’t been used in two hundred years, yet I knew he was a good person and David’s best friend.
David and Jude locked eyes, and I could see Jude wrestling with himself. After a second that lasted hours, Jude gave the slightest of nods, then deliberately turned his head away.
My father continued. “We cannot tolerate the cold-blooded murder of our own. And so, here with a representative from our noble army”—he indicated Jude—“and the circle of the Uprisen, we are determined to crush this insolence once and for all. What happens to this boy this morning will happen to each and every one of you if you do not find it in your hearts to serve.”
He turned, nodding to the constables, and then David turned, looking at me. He was at the side stairs to the terrace, squatting behind a row of shrubs. The next move he made would be seen by everyone in the crowd, including the police.
It had to be done, Charlie had to be saved, but I granted myself a moment to say good-bye to the university, to my father’s affection, to my freedom. When my father saw the scarlet-coated girl emerge from the snow, it would not be his daughter, but someone who had permanently cast her lot with his enemies.
I squeezed my hands into fists and willed myself forward.
“I will not serve!” I yelled. My voice carried across the snow and ice, and bounced off the stone and concrete of the memorial, reverberating back to me in a fractured chorus. Thousands of Rootless eyes turned to me. My father’s hand dropped to his side, and for once, he looked completely at a loss for words. Of all the contingencies he’d planned for, he’d probably never considered that his daughter would come tramping through the snow in her debut dress, shouting at him.
“I will not
obey you,” I shouted. I moved my feet forward, toward my father step by slippery step. “And if your own child will not listen to you, how can you expect them to?” I was almost to the front of the crowd. All eyes were on me as David crept up another stair. His head was visible now.
“Charlie is innocent. All of these people are innocent. All they want is to be free and to be healthy, just like we are.”
“Madeline,” Father said, the shock in his face slowly changing into stone. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Don’t I?” I held up the journal I’d put in my coat pocket. “I know all about Jacob Landry exploiting the people displaced by the Empire’s conquest. I know that he invented a war to justify enslaving those people into handling the charges for free. I know that everything I have been told about the nobility of the gentry is a lie.”
Behind me, the Rootless grew restless. Murmurs and whispers swelled through the crowd, and I heard the constables grunt as the crowd pressed forward. Smith actually shoved one of the men holding him back.
For a moment, Father said nothing, his steel eyes locked onto mine.
“I have sent the pages of the journals to everyone I know. To the press.”
“The Uprisen own the press,” my father scoffed. “You can do no damage there.”
“Maybe, but some people will see the truth for what it is. And now that I know the truth, I can’t go back. I can’t pretend it away. What we are doing is wrong, and I won’t do it any-more.”
His expression hardened. “Then you will be punished along with everybody else.” He came to the front of the terrace and knelt so that his face was very close to mine. The Uprisen and the police around Charlie all leaned forward to hear my father speak.
“I never wanted to be like my father, Madeline, but you have given me no choice. It broke my heart to see my mother locked in the house like a bird in a cage, and it will break my heart to do the same to you. You could have been such an asset to our family.” He shook his head, as if saddened by the waste. “All I have ever wanted was to see you ready to rule over Landry Park. Why can you not see that this is what you are made for? To be my heir? To lead the gentry and to take your place among the Uprisen?”
My throat constricted and I looked down. Maybe I wasn’t made of glass after all. Disappointing Father was almost more than I could bear.
Charlie, I told myself. Think of Charlie.
Seizing the moment of my father’s inattention, David darted forward and took the steps three at a time, pushing past a constable and grabbing another’s arm while he fumbled with the constable’s belt for the keys to Charlie’s handcuffs.
This was all that the crowd needed to stir from their empty silence. With a roar from Smith and a surge from the very back of the crowd, they pushed forward, and then the line of police holding them broke. Several constables fell down, and more starting throwing canisters into the crowd. I heard the loud, quick pops of a gun, but there was no way to tell where it was fired.
David quickly dispatched another constable coming toward him, and then moved to unlock Charlie’s cuffs. More constables came behind him, and I cringed, thinking this was the end of David’s rescue, but a crimson army uniform moved into the navy and brass swarm. Soon Jude was fighting the police, and David had Charlie in his arms. David was right about Jude’s fighting ability—even in his stiff uniform, he easily dodged and blocked strikes. Once he even laughed out loud at a constable throwing wild haymakers in his direction and then sent the man flying with one shiny-shoed kick.
Only a handful of constables remained in front of the Rootless, firing guns and swinging clubs, but the crowd moved forward like an inexorable tide. Shots rang out and people fell, but still they kept coming, improbably, impossibly, fearless in the face of bullets and beatings.
Father stood, assessing the situation. The Rootless were moving to the terrace, their faces enraged. Jude and David were making easy work of the police fighting them for Charlie. The Uprisen were backing away slowly, discreetly using tablets to summon cars as they crept off the terrace.
Father jumped off the terrace with an ease that I wouldn’t have thought possible and grabbed me by the upper arm. “We are going home,” he said between clenched teeth. “Now.”
“No!” I said, wrestling. “No!” But he was too strong for me. He jerked me down the hill, and I slipped and fell in the snow.
“Come on!” he yelled, yanking me up. Behind us, the Rootless came like a wave of embodied fury.
We lurched down the hill where our car waited on the street.
“Please,” I said, out of breath. “You’re hurting me.”
“Would you rather be dead? You think that mob cares whether or not you support them? They will rip you to pieces just for being born gentry.”
“Such anger, Alexander,” a familiar voice said. “Shame to see that you have not grown out of it.”
It was Jack, shuffling painfully between us and the car. He stopped and leaned on his cane, considering us. Ewan prowled behind him, looking like he was ready for any excuse to tackle my father to the ground.
To my surprise, Father stopped and stared, and all the anger and determination in his body evanesced away like ice under the sun.
“Stephen?” His words trembled. His hands trembled. “Stephen?”
Jack squinted at him, putting both hands on his cane. “Yes.”
“Brother . . .” Father breathed.
I peered into Jack’s face, mentally comparing it to the serious-eyed man in the hallway of Landry Park. The little hair he had was white, not red, but the eyes were the same. The long, solemn features, though covered in sores and burst capillaries and sagged with age, were identical. In fact, underneath the layer of disease and exhaustion, he looked a lot like Father. “You are my uncle Stephen?” I asked.
Jack kept his eyes on Father. “Stephen Landry was the name I was born with. It’s a name I’ve since left behind, just as I have left Landry Park.”
“How?” Father asked, searching Jack’s face. “And why?”
I remembered the reason for Father’s haste, and looked back to see the Rootless only a few feet away from us. At the terrace, Jude was holding Charlie’s hand while David used his scarf to dab at the blood pouring freely from his own nose.
“But you died! They killed you! We found your coat bloodied and buried!” Father was panting in short, uneven breaths now. The bright sunlight illuminated a sheen of sweat on his forehead. And then the mob reached us. Jack held up a hand and a few men stepped out from the crowd and seized Father by the arms. Smith wrapped an arm around his neck.
Father didn’t even try to resist.
“You found poorly hidden evidence of my new life,” Jack explained. “When I left Landry Park, I left in the middle of the night, from my bedroom window. I fell into the thorn bushes below, and bled the whole way across town. I hoped you would never find that coat. I hoped you would assume that I ran away.”
“Stephen, why?” Father squirmed a little to peer into Jack’s face. “Father was never the same after he thought you died. He never could forgive himself for not keeping you safe, for not protecting Landry blood. I know that is why he died so soon after you left. Do you have any idea how hard we searched for you? What we did?”
Jack frowned. “I know that you tortured my friends, trying to extract a confession from them. I know that you raided my new home, burning houses and beating women and children to try to find my body. But I made sure you would never find me. Almost nobody within the Rootless knew who I truly was, and the few who did know would have rather died than give me away. Because they are stronger than the gentry, Alexander. You still do not understand that, do you?”
Father’s eyes flitted around. There were no constables in sight and the last of the Uprisen cars were speeding away from the park. He was alone and in the hands of the Rootless.
“You were about to put my youngest son—your own nephew and the son of an eldest child, a Landry heir more
central to the line than your own daughter—in the gibbet cage and watch him die. For what? Did you think that would stop us?” Jack limped forward and I realized that he was even taller than my father, his figure naturally broader, even after the ravages of radiation. “On the contrary. If you would have succeeded in killing Charlie, I would have killed you myself.”
Father opened and closed his mouth. “Stephen—”
“You’re lucky that your daughter and young David were here to stop you. Had I not a tablet in my possession and had David not contacted me to tell me he planned to spirit Charlie away from his execution, I would have asked my people to unleash their strength upon you and your fellow Uprisen. I would have done so a week ago when you took my son had David not relayed your promise to Madeline that you would let him go. I decided to bide my time, in hopes that you would act on your word. You did not.”
“I—”
Jack’s voice trembled with fury. “I would have burned everything you love to the ground before I would have let you kill my son.” Jack closed his eyes, breathing noisy, chesty breaths. “You must answer for it, Alexander. You must answer for it all now. But your daughter does not need to see you die.”
Ewan, still prowling, looked like he disagreed.
“And it is for my dear niece’s sake that we will pursue a more elegant solution, which perhaps for you will be worse than death,” Jack said. “Our laws dictate that the eldest child of a family controls the estate, even after a lengthy absence. Perhaps even after a supposed death. And as I am still the eldest, I will claim my birthright today.”
Landry Park Page 24