IT WAS A LATE NIGHT IN London when Adam Temple clinked wineglasses with Lord Salisbury inside a rumbling carriage. The member of Parliament wiped drips of liquid from his wild beard, an ironic echo to Adam’s messy black mop, before throwing his head back and laughing.
The debate in the House of Commons had concluded by noon.
“And so Britain goes to war,” the Marquess said, for though he had attended the Congo Conference hoping to avoid confrontation with other European powers, he knew all too well the importance of demonstrating England’s imperial might. More delicious than their territorial gains in Africa would be his political gains earned by the bloodshed of soldiers on the battlefield.
“And so Britain goes to war,” Adam echoed, raising his glass. And not just Britain. Her colonies. Soon the United States would follow. And the world.
The two men laughed as horses pulled their carriage across London Bridge.
Despite this victory, Adam’s mind lingered on the Alhambra Theatre, his thoughts still straining to peer behind the stage curtains for the figure who had laid waste to Vesta Tilley’s audience. Only a god could do such a thing. Or had the massacre been the result of some kind of weapon Adam didn’t know about? Now that the war was in motion, never-before-seen weapons produced by Bosch Guns and Ammunitions were being distributed onto the battlefield.
The battlefield. Not a music hall, Adam admonished himself. No, Hiva had been the perpetrator. It had to have been Hiva.
But which Hiva?
In the nights following the deaths of his sister and brother, Adam had lain awake in his bed and imagined himself as the God of Israel. In his waking dreams, he would tell his siblings just as He had once told Joshua: “Be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee whithersoever thou goest.” He would tell them this before utterly smiting their murderers. If he had the power of gods, he would use it freely.
And yet, for all his wealth and genius, he was only human.
He needed her. He needed her to understand the gift she’d been born with. The gift she had the obligation to use, for the sake of that poor boy who deserved it.
A gift he himself would kill for.
Iris. His heart ached as his body cried out her name. Where are you?
Hell on earth. It was a tiny wish. Just when would it be granted?
A heavy thump atop the carriage roof spooked the horses into a frenzied swerve. As the driver yelled, trying to pull them back into order, the force tugged Adam back and forth inside the carriage. Another thump. Then another. Adam crashed against the left door and fell off his seat as the carriage came to a halt.
“Who the bloody hell are you cretins?” Adam heard Salisbury scream.
A crisp gunshot silenced him permanently.
With his heartbeat pounding in his ears, Adam slipped his hands against the door as he tried to regain his footing. Another gunshot and the cabby slumped to the ground.
Before Adam could scramble out, the door opened, and a gloved hand gripped his collar, tugged him outside, and threw him onto the bridge with needless cruelty. His shoulder hit the pavement hard, the force almost pulling it out of joint. He gasped for breath, and as the sting shuddered through his body, he looked up.
Fool.
No, two Fools. Two Fools in the moonlight.
Three.
No, they were all here. One stood tall upon the carriage roof, his back straight, his gloved hands behind his back. The Pompous Fool. Adam could tell because he’d studied each Fool carefully once they had come under the employ of the Committee—their mannerisms, their handwriting, even the inflections in their voices. The one crouched next to him was the Desperate Fool, his head tilted inhumanely to the side, swaying a little like an excited child as he watched him with interest, his cape billowing in the wind. The Impulsive Fool was murmuring to himself, his words muffled by the black-and-white harlequin mask that covered his face. Adam didn’t need the mask removed to know that this Fool regretted killing the cabby. He’d dropped his smoking gun to the ground and was pulling the dead man off his seat, mumbling, “Oh dear, oh dear,” as he laid the corpse upon the bridge.
“No sense in regretting it now, you fool,” said the one who’d pulled Adam out of the carriage so roughly. The Spiteful Fool. Of course he was there. He was often sent by the Committee to complete their dirtiest jobs. Cracking his neck and then his knuckles, he kicked Adam for good measure. The Broken Fool stood behind the carriage and watched—frightened, perhaps, of making the wrong move in front of his Others. It was what Adam would expect. He was at his least confident when surrounded by the stronger emotions.
Were they emotions? Desires? Or defects? What were the ingredients of a murderer?
Adam dragged himself to his feet. “How unexpected, seeing all of you here at once,” he said, dusting off his shoulders. Tears and skid marks on such an expensive jacket. What a waste. “Although you could afford to be a little gentler.”
“We owe you nothing, Temple,” the Spiteful Fool shot back, and if he could have spat on the floor from behind his mask, he would have. The Desperate Fool was laughing.
The Pompous Fool clicked his heels like a soldier in a muster. “The Committee sends for you,” he said, his head held high.
“And who is the Committee, exactly?” Adam folded his arms. “Half are dead or on the run. Bosch is in Africa. Bellerose—”
“It is precisely Bellerose, my lord, who has called,” the Pompous Fool replied. “She believed it prudent to send all of us in order to express the… gravity of this issue.”
He pulled a letter from his jacket, and while he began to unfold it, the Desperate Fool beside him suddenly clung to Adam’s leg, rubbing his cheek against his black breeches.
“I’ve done well in coming, haven’t I? Even though Hiva—”
“And what does the letter say?” Adam said loudly, cutting him off in case he said anything unnecessary. Adam pulled his leg out of the Fool’s grip. Though all the Fools worked for the Committee, it hadn’t taken too much effort to twist two of them to his side. But while the Desperate Fool was as loyal as his broken twin, his reckless abandon and twisted need for validation were sometimes cause for concern. Adam had sent him overseas for a reason.
“It asks you to ‘join her in her newly purchased home for a meeting with the newly re-formed Enlightenment Committee,’ ” he read as the Impulsive Fool began frantically apologizing to the corpse of the carriage driver. “The ones who will lead the future into the New World.”
A new Enlightenment Committee? Adam quickly glanced at the Broken Fool, who, with a start, hid more thoroughly behind the carriage. What is that woman up to?
“Tomorrow night at precisely seven in the evening.” The Spiteful Fool purposefully bumped into him as he walked past, shoving Adam against the carriage, before turning and looking over his shoulder. “At Eight Grandage View. Don’t be late. Madame Bellerose and the new Committee trust you only as far as you prove yourself trustworthy.”
“Eight Grandage View?” Adam repeated as each Fool jumped off the bridge and into the sky, disappearing into the night with their capes flapping behind them.
Gerolt Van der Ven’s home?
“This feels familiar,” Adam muttered as he stepped into Van der Ven’s abandoned townhouse on Eight Grandage View. Except this time it was Pierre, Madame Bellerose’s dreary, balding puppet of a servant, standing hunched on the blue Persian rug, welcoming him into the drawing room.
“This way, Lord Temple,” Pierre said, the gray-faced man always looking half-dead. He led Adam past the roaring fireplace and arched windows. The wall of swords kept noble and pristine behind a glass case made Adam chuckle, because he knew how much pride a military man like Van der Ven had for his toys. Only dire circumstances would have ripped him away from them.
That Adam was behind framing him as an assassin—he wondered if Van der Ven had figured it out by now.
Pierre opened the double doors to the dining hall, a grand offering fit for a military man of Van der Ven’s standing.
But the men sitting at the grand table represented those of a much higher status.
Adam almost let out a laugh, his eyes wide as he stared at the congregation. He’d never seen so many businessmen, politicians, and representatives of monarchs gathered in one spot. From all over the world too: England, Romania, Spain, and Bulgaria. Germany, Sweden, Belgium, and even the Principality of Liechtenstein. Each sat behind a flickering candle, with one at the center of the table in a bronze candlestick—the candle towering like a white pillar over a man’s cracked skull. The calling sign of the Enlightenment Committee. The dagger in the skull’s mouth was just the same too. Their meetings on the sixth floor of Club Uriel had been similarly set up to look just as dramatic and morbid—fitting, Adam supposed, for a death cult.
One by one the men turned over their hands, each bearing the pink scars drawn as a sword through a skull: the Oath Maker. The symbol of one’s membership in a once-exclusive Committee.
And at the head of the table, grinning with the pride of a serpent, was Madame Bellerose, decked in red from her crochet shawl to her bell-shaped skirt. Prestigious men and women of the most powerful standing in Europe had to go through terrible trials created by agreement of the Committee to earn a seat at their table. Adam himself, despite his family’s founding status, had had to kill a family friend or two. What had these men done, Adam wondered, to earn their seats here, at this new pathetic mockery of the Enlightenment Committee that Bellerose had made?
But Adam knew: it was more about what they could give one another.
“Why, there’s the guest of honor.” Madame Bellerose leaned forward with her elbows on the mahogany table. “Didn’t I say he was punctual?” And while the others murmured, she gestured to the empty seat next to her. “Come sit, my boy.”
The mounted heads of boars and tigers on the wall told him to run in a silent scream. With a sigh, Adam took his seat next to Bellerose.
“Prince Albert of Monaco. How very nice to see you again.” Adam bowed his head to his father’s old friend, who wrinkled his mustache. “I trust we’ll be seeing more of your scientific collections at the next exhibition in Paris. And Stanley, why, what a surprise it is to see you in London. I thought King Leopold had you stationed by now in the Congo, ready to terrorize the local people for their rubber.”
Henry Stanley, that toad-looking American, hid a snarl behind his pasty face.
Then Adam tipped his hat. “Gladstone.”
England’s prime minister, who had just very reluctantly agreed to send his country to war, acknowledged him with barely a nod, but he kept his thin lips shut. Bellerose was the leader of this gathering. It was she who spoke.
“You’re all too casual, boy, with those who’ll lead humanity in the New World,” she said.
Adam tilted his head in amusement. “I thought that was supposed to be us?”
Bellerose matched his cordial defiance. “That the Enlightenment Committee will guide the world after its end has always been our creed.”
“Yes, well, the Enlightenment Committee used to be a little more exclusive with who they gave membership to. No offense,” Adam added to Stanley, who scoffed. “Tell me, Bellerose. Who gave you permission to create a Committee of your own making?”
“We did,” said Cecil Rhodes, a British mining magnate that Adam’s father had used to call a sore loser, whenever he would lose in a heated game of poker in their drawing room. The cleft-chinned, square-faced man straightened his jacket over his vest and folded his arms. “When we offered Bellerose our support and in turn gained a seat on this Ark you’ve built in Africa.”
That Bellerose had indeed sold Committee secrets to become the queen of the New World was not surprising.
Adam grinned. “So you’ve all bought your tickets, then.”
“A great war has begun across Europe,” said Hiram Stevens Maxim, an inventor in competition with Bosch to create automatic guns and aircraft that would no doubt one day find themselves on the war front. “It’s shaping up to be one the likes we’ve never seen.”
“A business opportunity for you, then?” Adam rested his cheek upon his hand and gave him a sidelong look.
“Well, of course, boy.” Maxim’s great white beard trembled as he laughed. “But with the current turbulence of the global economy, we believe it’s best to hurry up the exploration and conquest of the unknown territories—the New World. They’ll come in handy in our postwar reconstruction efforts. Especially with the displaced populations and the ruined cities we anticipate.”
Adam kept his smile congenial, but the longer he sat next to these immoral death-mongers, the more his irritation threatened to seep out. With all the trouble Adam had gone through in starting this war, he’d known how most of the elites would react, but it still irked him to no end. Death was meant to be a spiritual release. A purging of the soul. Not a moneymaking scheme.
“The Ark is yet still incomplete, is it not?” Adam asked. “Without the Moon Skeleton as a power source—”
“Bosch’s leading weapons developer has been steadily working on creating a suitable power source in light of our inability to procure the necessary device,” Bellerose said, cutting him off quickly. “We have plenty of options. It isn’t a problem.”
Other than the Moon Skeleton, only a Hiva’s crystal heart could power a flying ship of the Ark’s magnitude. Neither Hiva was in the Committee’s possession, so no, Adam highly doubted they had any options at this point. Bellerose was just bluffing to keep her illustrious financial and political backers from running.
“Right.” Adam sighed. “If that isn’t the problem, then what is?”
“The problem is Van der Ven.” Madame Bellerose’s burgundy hair fell down her chest in ringlets. As she stroked her porcelain white cheek with the back of her black-gloved hand, Adam remembered just how that cheek had tasted in the Atakora Mountains—not particularly sweet, with a sour aftertaste. “We all know he won’t stay hidden for long. Van der Ven’s pride won’t allow it. He’ll show up soon to prove his innocence—even if it means exposing the Committee’s secrets to the public.”
“And how are you so sure he’s innocent?” Adam asked just as innocently.
Bellerose only looked at him with that knife-sharp red smile. “At any rate, we of the new Enlightenment Committee won’t allow that paranoid, rabid dog to ruin things at such a crucial moment. We wish to draw him out.”
Adam narrowed his eyes. “Draw him out where? When?”
“Right here, in his own abode. This Saturday. And the ball will start promptly at six, thank you very much.”
When Bellerose snapped her fingers, Pierre came scuttling up to her. On her command, he handed Adam a golden invitation. He stared at it in disbelief.
“A costume ball?”
“Grander than even the one Alva Vanderbilt threw two years ago. I should know; I was there.” When she giggled, some of the new Committee members followed suit. Lemmings. “I’ve already taken care of the champagne, costumes, and catering. Which leaves the murder of Gerolt Van der Ven to you, my dear Adam. Think of it as your test to see if you’re fit for the revived and improved Enlightenment Committee, soon to reign in two worlds.”
“And how are you so sure Gerolt will come?” Adam asked with a dark grin, but he already knew the answer. Pride. It was what defined the man. He was smart enough to know that only another Enlightener could have pulled off framing him for assassination. Bosch was too profit-focused and Benini too incompetent to pull it off. The only two culprits who made sense would be at the ball. Hearing of his home being taken over by one of his possible betrayers, and for a gaudy society ball, no less? He would come for certain. He’d confront them head-on.
“My spies have reason to believe he isn’t far from London. Trap and catch Gerolt Van der Ven at the ball. Only then will we accept your loyalty,” said Bellerose, curling a lock of hair around her finger as she sat back into her chair.
“And a seat on the Ark, I presume,” Adam said.
“Why so skeptical?” Bellerose must have caught a hint of it in his voice, despite his best efforts to conceal it. “It is still the Committee’s plan to use the Ark to conquer the New World, is it not? It’s an inevitability.”
His thoughts drifted to the Alhambra Theatre—to the men and women turned to ash right in front of his eyes. A tingle of excitement shuddered through him.
“An inevitability,” Adam said with a cordial bow.
Adam hated having new guests in the basement of his London home. Firstly, it was starting to agitate the languid Dr. Heidegger, stricken nearly comatose the day of the South Kensington fair explosion. Adam kept that husk of a body fed and cleaned in his red blazer and yellow vest. But Adam suspected that with his new company, some part of the doctor was starting to awaken. At times, his beak-like nose would twitch and his thin brows would furrow while he mumbled; then Adam would assume he was simply doing what he always did: channeling one of his personas—one of the Fools. It was how Adam kept track of them.
But then the old Harlequin Slasher’s dark beady eyes would twitch toward little Henry Whittle, fourteen or maybe fifteen now, shackled to the wall. Or Lucille, tied up on the other side of the grand portrait of Adam himself, painted after his graduation from Eton. She was asleep. These days, when she wasn’t under his command, she’d taken to wearing the face of her favorite opera singer, the “Swedish Nightingale,” Jenny Lind: all rosy cheeks, bright blue eyes, and supple lips, just as Lucille liked them on her women. Perhaps it comforted her. Adam smirked. The things you learned from the people you kidnapped and imprisoned.
Heidegger’s eyes rested on Mary the most, curled up in the corner of the basement on a pile of hay—so sick, frail, and tiny, Adam hadn’t the heart to be unnecessarily cruel to her. At least that was what he had thought. Perhaps it had been a mistake.
They’d done well helping him frame Van der Ven at the Berlin Conference to begin the war. They’d done a fine job too at the Alhambra Theatre. But there were a few questions Adam needed answered. The arrival of Hiva at that moment had been a little too perfectly timed.
“Stop that!” Henry still had a little life in him. The grandson of the great toymaker Mr. Whittle battled against his shackles as Adam yanked his maid up by her frilly white collar. Mary grunted in a voice that belied her inner strength.
It had certainly taken a kind of inner strength to betray him to Maximo.
“Did you think I wouldn’t find out that you went to that street rat?” Adam raised his eyebrows in amusement as he gazed upon her frightened expression. She was the only one he didn’t lock up like an animal. Her cherubic face, which he cradled now in his hand, reminded her too much of his sister, Eva’s. Perhaps this was what Eva would have looked like too, had she not been murdered.
Mary had taken advantage of his kindness.
“What exactly was the plan? You tell him where I am, and he tries to kill me?” Adam smirked. “He can’t still be holding a grudge, can he? That fool.”
“It was me!” Henry’s hair had grown even more unruly than Adam’s own. He had to shake his brown locks out of his eyes to glare at him. “It was my plan. I had Mary do everything. Please don’t—don’t hurt her.”
As he choked on those last few words, Adam loosened his grip around Mary’s collar and looked upon the boy. His pained expression and watery eyes were more or less the look of a young boy in love. For a moment Adam thought of his Iris, and his chest swelled with an unbearable emotion that made him grit his teeth.
Bending down to grip both of Mary’s shoulders, Adam pressed her against the cold stone wall and waited until her eyes locked with his.
“Maximo’s assassination attempt ended in the poor, poor patrons of the musical hall being reduced to ashes. It wasn’t my doing, Mary. It was yours.”
Mary twitched and looked away, her lips pursed as she held back tears.
“The House of Commons concluded the massacre to be a result of German warfare. Spies had used some class of weaponry we’ve yet to hear of. You could say it helped speed up their decision to go to war. But you and I know better, Mary.”
Adam drew his lips to her ear as he whispered, “It was Hiva.”
“Stay away from her, you bloody bastard!” Henry growled, but Adam wasn’t about to be frightened by a besotted boy.
He stood up, straightening his back before placing his hands behind them, like a gentleman. “Which Hiva? Which Hiva did Maximo use to try to have me killed?”
He hated that his voice twinged as he spoke, because it could have betrayed the desperation he felt squeezing his throat. He wanted it to be Iris. If it were Iris, then that would mean he could find her. Retrieve her. But if it were Iris, then that would mean she was working with Maximo to kill him….
He shook his head. Even if that were the case, he’d just have to sway her back to his side.
“It wasn’t her, if that’s what you’re thinking,” Mary whispered. “It was the other one. The golden man.”
Adam stared at her through slitted eyes. “And how can I be sure you’re telling the truth?”
“I am!” Mary said desperately, clasping her hands while she scurried to her knees. “I am. It wasn’t Iris. It wasn’t.”
“Iris…,” Dr. Heidegger whispered, and the sound of his delirious mumble strangely set Adam off. More irritating than her name being sullied by the lips of a serial killer was the prospect of Iris still being lost somewhere out there.
Clenching his fists, Adam took a letter opener he kept in his left breast pocket for situations such as these and promptly slashed Henry’s left wrist.
“No!” Mary screamed as Henry gasped in pain. “Mr. Whittle! Henry!”
Mary jumped to her feet and ran to him, but Adam hooked her neck with his elbow and hugged her against his chest. “I won’t let you heal him until you tell me the truth. And if you don’t tell me the truth soon, your precious Henry will bleed out and die right here in my basement.”
He wasn’t a monster. The sound of Mary’s whimpering moved him somewhat. Under normal circumstances, he wouldn’t murder a child or force another to watch him die. But these were pressing times. The end times.
“I swear it wasn’t Iris. Max, Cherice, Hawkins, and Jacob are being held captive by the other Hiva. I don’t know why he won’t let them go. But it’s not Iris. Iris is—”
Her eyes widened suddenly, her lips snapping shut. Adam pressed his face against her cheek so closely, his nose nuzzled against her skin.
“Iris is what?” he asked in a whisper, trying to keep his voice calm, though his heart was beating harder inside his chest. “Iris is what, Miss White?”
“No…,” Henry mumbled, blood dripping from his lips. “Don’t tell him….”
“Don’t tell me what?!” Adam yelled so ferociously, he wondered if the servants above had heard him. Mary yelped, her knees buckling. Only his grip held her up.
“Iris is dead.”
Dr. Heidegger had whispered it. The cold basement fell silent.
Letting Mary drop to the floor, Adam carefully strode over to the doctor slumped on the ground and lifted his drooping head with both hands. Adam didn’t care that Mary immediately ran to Henry, healing him with a soft glow. Only he had the key to the boy’s metal binds, so she wouldn’t be able to free him even if she tried. He focused on the doctor.
“What did you say, Arthur?” Adam asked, his voice hollow as he tried to get the doctor’s directionless eyes to settle on him.
He must have heard wrong. Dr. Heidegger couldn’t follow conversations. The only words that spilled from his lips were those of the Fools, his personas spread out across England and wherever else the Committee sent them. He was a glorified transmitter locking on to frequencies, sometimes with such precision that it would make Hertz give up on his research in jealousy.
“Iris is dead.” The words, spoken again, made Adam’s blood run cold. But this time it wasn’t Heidegger who spoke.
Lucille’s borrowed face, still drooping downward as her hands twitched above her in shackles, twisted into a fatigued but defiant grin. “Max told Mary. Iris is dead. She died in Africa.”
“Iris is a goddess,” Adam whispered after a time.
“Well,” mocked Lucille, “looks like your little goddess wasn’t infallible after all.”
Stepping back quickly, Adam turned his back to them all.
Iris was not dead.
No. Iris was a god. Iris was a god, and he was a man. And so Iris wasn’t dead.
Because if she were less than a god, then he was less than a man.
That he could not accept.
While his heartbeat sped up and his arms trembled, he swallowed carefully, trying to stay the rise and fall of his chest. “Either you are lying to me now,” he said with measured breaths, “or he was lying to you then. Well, I suppose we’ll find out soon enough, won’t we?”
Bellerose’s costume ball. A way to murder Van der Ven and find out the truth behind Iris’s disappearance. Why not kill two birds with one particularly dull stone?
Adam looked at his three Fanciful Freaks. “I have a task for you, Mary. You’ll go and meet Max again tomorrow night. You managed to escape once more without me knowing. A blind spot, taken advantage of, if you will.”
She curled up closer to Henry as he approached like an animal stalking its prey.
“Tell him that if he wishes to get rid of me and free you all, his last opportunity will come this Saturday. Don’t try to tell him anything off script this time. A Fool or two will be watching.” He grinned. “Oh, and tell him to bring a costume.”