Jubilee Manor by Hagen Bethany

Author:Hagen, Bethany
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Young Readers Group
Published: 2015-08-10T16:00:00+00:00

During the night, another raid happened. And this time, there were no arrests, no canisters of tear gas, no rubber bullets. This time, the constables set every single Rootless home alight and burned the entire ghetto to the ground.

I woke up to several messages on my tablet—from David and from Jamie mostly—and a wall screen rife with images of crying, soot-covered children, and firefighters grimly hosing down the smoldering remains of the homes.

And in my own house, I could hear the yelling all the way from upstairs.

Elinor had been in to bring up a carafe of coffee, but had already left, so I pinned up my hair in a simple twist, pulled on a dress of flowing silk jersey, and then hurried downstairs.

“You can’t tell me that the Uprisen had nothing to do with this,” Jack’s voice boomed up the stairs.

I heard Father’s voice retort, “I am not denying it. I’m only pointing out that I personally had nothing to do with it.”

“Olivia told me you spoke with them yesterday on the wall screen.”

“Yes, to invite them to the blasted ball! Not to advise them on handling the Rootless.”

I followed their voices down the first floor hall. They were in the morning room, but either everyone else had elected to take breakfast in their rooms or else they’d come down and then cleared out as soon as Father and Jack started fighting, because they were the only two people in there. The day was extraordinarily sunny and unseasonably warm; clumps of snow were sliding wetly from the roof and the icicles dripped in merry drops in front of the many windows.

“You have to admit that if they had not bombed the station—and our house—this would not have happened.”

“It should not have happened anyway! Where is justice? Where is due course? Where—” Jack saw me in the doorway and paused, his chest heaving.

“Good morning,” I said, although I couldn’t look Father in the eyes. Last night had been a parade of nightmares from my stolen year, my year of sickness. My year of the serum. I couldn’t shake the feeling of being lied to, of being purposefully hurt.

“Good morning, Madeline,” Father and Jack said together, and then shot each other resentful looks, as if one had robbed the other of the chance to greet me. Or perhaps resentment at the reminder that inside, they were so much the same, down to the very timing and inflection of their words.

I pushed my anger down, tried to focus on today, on only today. “Are you talking about the fire last night?”

Father leveled his gaze at me. “You know full well we are.”

I poured myself a small glass of pomegranate juice and took a croissant from a tray. Neither of them said a word as I took my seat.

“Will the Rootless come to stay here?” I inquired.

“Many of them,” Jack said. His voice was still stained with anger, but there was something else in there, a ragged unhappiness, and I remembered how tenuous his

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