He stared back at us all like we were all mirrors, reflecting the ugliest sides of him.
“You boys never understood,” he said to Gunner now, to Donny. “Never had any idea how delicate the balance is.” All the levity in him winked out of existence. There was no spark in his eye, no flash of teeth. Only shadows. “Rebellions need fighters, and fighters need incentive. Somethin’ more than their own anger and frustration. Otherwise, they’re content to keepwhinin’over their booze.” He scratched fingers through his own beard like he might rip it right from his neck. “Kenton Hill was full of ’em. Lumps of menmoanin’ in your mother’s pub. Not a single pair of bullocks between ’em! You want men to march?” He pointed a meaty finger at his sons. “You’ve gotta give ’em somethin’ theycan’t live without. And you’ve gotta make sure you’re the only one who can give it to ’em!”
“You left your son with a target on his back,” Tess spat. “With the rest of the Union breathin’ down his neck, threatenin’ to cut off their trades and end their strikes.”
“Why do you think I went to get that fuckin’ book, eh?” John shouted. “Why do you think I took it, hat in hand, to the fuckin’ House? I meant to find a truce for us!”
“And turn your back on the Union,” Patrick added in a deadened voice. “To give up the fight.”
John looked at Patrick as though he were an insolent child. “You think this was all for the workers, son? For the miners and the factory tinkers and the orphans?” He straightened, and there was no shame there. Only cold conviction. “Everythin’ I did, the travelin’ and the tunnels and the fuckin’rebellion—it was all forus.” His arms lifted to gesture to his sons and slapped down on the table, the wood audibly cracking. “To give us a better life than the one every brink man and woman suffers. To keep you boys out of the fuckin’ mines!”
“And look at ’em, John,” Tess growled. “Look at ’em! Belowground every fuckin’ day.”
“Yeah,” John nodded manically. “So I took their Alchemist, didn’t I? And I made my son into the only fuckin’ Artisan that matters!”
“You never asked him,” Tess responded acidly. “You never asked Patrickoncewhat he wanted. You only ever did what you decided was best, and you let your sons fall in behind you.”
“Tanner couldn’t translate the book,” Patrick murmured, frowning, still untangling the pieces.
John’s expression darkened. “No. Didn’t much believe in it, either. He was more interested in where I’d put Domelius Becker. I had to let him think the man was still alive, and bein’ held hostage somewhere, or he’d gotearin’ into Kenton Hill to find him. He didn’t understand the book’s worth. Short-sightedbastard.”
“But Shop did,” Patrick finished. “He was willin’ to make a deal.”
John’s silence was confirmation enough. “I thought you’d understand the sense in it,” he said. “In what he was willin’ to give us. He came to me when the terranium crisis peaked and proposed a plan. A way for us both to move up in the world. It were only a matter of time before the bluff ran out altogether. He was offerin’ us a fair chance.”
“And all you had to do was give up the Alchemist,” Patrick said. “Only Domelius Becker was dead.”
“Yougave up Patrick’s name?” Donny asked, his foundations visibly crumbling.
John opened his mouth to speak, then closed it again, reconsidering. He looked to Tess, and with a strange intensity, said, “There weren’t nothin’ else left to do.”
Tess pressed her lips together, her eyes filming over. A line of tension spun between her and her husband.
“The terranium mines were empty,” John continued, “your ma needed bluff, and sooner or later, the House was comin’ for Kenton Hill to put a stop to the Union. Patrick would have died fightin’ while they looked for Domelius Becker. They had to know who he was. Bein’ an Alchemist guaranteed him protection.” To Donny, he said, “There’s always a bad and a worse decision to make in this business, son. I chose the one that protected my family.”
I recalled the scribbles Polly had received before the attack on Kenton Hill.The House moves to strike. Provide safest routes to the heart…
“You chose to dig graves for our fighters back home,” Patrick said. “You’re a traitor.” He sounded hollow. It frightened me.
John swallowed, averted his eyes. “It ain’t how I wanted it, son,” he said.
Gunner suddenly advanced, pulling a gun from his coat. But when he waved it, he waved it at the walls and the ceiling and everywhere but his father. Scottie wrapped his arms around his torso while he brayed andshouted at John. “YOU FUCKIN’ BASTARD!” he screamed. “WE DID EVERYTHIN’ YOU ASKED US TO DO! EVERYTHIN’!”
Donny had walked backward until he hit a wall, sliding down it so that his knees bent up around his shoulders. He cradled his hands in his lap like a child in hiding.
“Put the gun away, brother,” Patrick said, his voice sounding disconnected. Gunner went still and looked at Patrick with utter despair.
John shook his head once more. “Patty.Listen to me!We’re so close now, son. The House will see sense in bargaining with us. They need you—”
“You’ll walk out of here,” Patrick said to his father without looking at him. “And you’ll keep walkin’ in any direction that ain’t home.”
John mashed his lips together as though he held the truth of the world and we were too naïve to hear it.
“We’re almost there, Patty!” he implored, as though these revelations could all be left in the dust. “I was wrong, I know it now. I have you to thank for that. But there’s still hope left, son—”
“Walk away,” Patrick said again. “And don’t ever again entertain thoughts that I’m your son.”
In the silence that followed, John hitched up his trousers. He looked at his sons, his wife, like they were statues that might come to life at any moment.
