They stood on the street behind the clinic, he and his father. Next to a burning trashcan. His father was a hunched figure who kept coughing up blood. By then his father had been very sick.

John Crossley had a folder full of documents for his son. James had a suitcase stuffed with identity cards, certificates, incriminating photographs. Had checked John Crossley into the clinic under the name “Stephen Mormeck.” Someone they’d picked out of the phone book.

A clinic in Frankwrithe territory. Because of the rash of refugees. Because F&L had less reason to hate John Crossley.

“Is there anyone you want me to contact?” he’d asked his father.

A shake of the head, the great mane of gray hair. “No, no one. Make a clean break. For both of us.” A gruff laugh. By then, he was self-medicating with whiskey early in the day. That night next to the trashcan, John Crossley had been drunk for two days.

But his eyes were clear. His arm steady as he handed the folder to his son. “Everything you’ll need. For John Finch. Including a way to rejoin the Hoegbotton Irregulars.”

Two years before the Rising. Six months after Hoegbotton and Frankwrithe had joined forces against the gray caps. Five months since his father had been denounced as a Kalif spy and they’d had to go on the run. The posters were everywhere. One of a row of traitors.

“I didn’t do what they say I did. Not the way they say I did it. I never got anyone killed. I never…”

His father had never told James how they’d come to be betrayed. Which of the many people who had come to the house in the valley over the years. And James didn’t have a clue, because his father kept pushing him further and further away from that part of his life.

James reached down, opened the suitcase. Felt the click of the clasps against his fingers. “It’s all here. Every last document. Every last photograph.” From the old house in the valley. James had gone there earlier that night, snuck in. Returned to the clinic in an army truck, along with a few other civilians with ties to Hoegbotton’s trading arm. Wyte had stood watch for him, then gone out the back way and melted into the night. Wyte knew every street in the city. He’d have been back home with his wife before midnight.

Two in the morning now.

“What are you waiting for? Start shoveling this stuff into the fire,” his father said.

Still, he hesitated. Watched the smoky flames rising into the darkness, the sparks mimicking the flares in the distance.

“If we burn all of the photographs, I’ll forget what you look like.”

His father didn’t miss a beat. “But not who I am. And if you don’t do it, there’s no clean break, son.”