“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?”