Bethany Hagen - Landry Park

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.”

Father paled. “You can’t be serious.”

“Oh, I am quite serious, little brother. I have restrained myself during your despotism for years, thinking the route I had chosen was the only way. But I can’t wait another day for our allies to swoop in and liberate us. It is time for humanity to return to Landry Park.”

“You can’t,” Father said, and struggled against Smith’s grip. “Landry Park is mine. And it will be Madeline’s after me.”

“I think you will find the legalities are on my side. And if not, then my people will help fill any loopholes.” Smith and Ewan both looked very eager to fill any loopholes in question. “My friends in the East will be delighted to witness this transition. They are very invested in what happens to the gentry.”