GLADSTONE FELT ALL TOO COMFORTABLE SITTING in another man’s office. The dead animals on the wall didn’t seem to bother him either. They bothered Max. Max had been surrounded by enough death in his lifetime. At least Gladstone had chosen not to sit in the desk in front of the double windows. In this room, nestled on the first floor of Van der Ven’s townhouse, he instead sat in the rocking chair in the corner, wedged between the desk and the cast-iron fireplace.
The room was busy, as were most of the upper-class London homes Max had snuck into and stolen from. Standing lamps guarded the long bookshelf filled to the brim with classics. The walls were covered in paintings and family portraits framed in gold. Gladstone could have chosen any one of the velvet chairs or sofas in the room, but he’d found solace in the creaky wooden rocking chair. Max wondered if this was a sign of humility or dementia.
No, this man was as sharp as a knife. His eyes were certainly so. They never left Hiva as the god gazed at the paintings at the wall.
Gladstone settled into his chair, clasping his hands together. “Is there anyone who takes your fancy, god of death?”
Max’s lips parted in a silent gasp. “You know who he is—what he is?”
Gladstone only grinned. “I had wondered what kind of creature could decimate so many men in an instant. Parliament believed it to be some kind of special gas. Certain chemists in France have long been experimenting with sulfur components that will one day be used to fell men on the battlefield. But this was not that.”
Hiva seemed unperturbed. Gladstone watched him take in each painting while moonlight streamed through the windows.
There was one in particular that made the god stop in his tracks. It was an oil painting of a group of children in dirty rags huddled inside some kind of wooden shack. Crouched on the ground, or sitting on little stools near cobwebs, they watched an injured old crone sitting in the corner. A little hole in the wall gave them their only glimpse of the sky.
Max didn’t know much about paintings, but the kids reminded them of his youth: him, Chadwick, Hawkins, Jacob, and Cherice huddled together, trying to survive in some dirt-filled hole in the world. Hiva didn’t take his eyes off the children either. What in the world could he be thinking?
“Hiva is the cataclysm,” said Gladstone. “A being of unknown origin and untold power. With his crystal heart, he is immortal. And with his ability to sense the life within men, he can burn us all to ashes. This is according to the information I’ve been given by the others who, like myself, have recently joined the Enlightenment Committee at the behest of Madame Violet Bellerose.”
A Committee member? Max had been right to have Cherice stay on her guard.
“Don’t come to Van der Ven’s office yet,” he’d told her on the dance floor before he’d followed the old prime minister out of the ballroom. “Lucille’s on the move, which means Adam should be in the cellar by now. Gather the others and watch for Mary’s signal.”
Max placed his hands on his hips, but though he tried to keep his cool, he could feel the hairs on his arms standing on end. “Didn’t know the Enlighteners were recruiting. So? What now, old man? What do you want with Hiva? If you know how dangerous he is, shouldn’t you be shaking in your boots right now instead of calling him out for a little midnight chat?”
Max never imagined he’d be trash-talking the prime minister to his face. He’d really moved up in the world. If he ever saw Berta again, he’d make sure to tell her.
“You said you were recruiting,” Max continued, unrelenting. “For what?”
Gladstone shut his eyes, resting his elbow on his knobby knees. “The war, lad. The war.”
Max’s hands dropped from his hips. “What?”
“I want to recruit Hiva. This god of death. I want to use him as a weapon to end it.”
The prime minister’s words had stunned Max into silence. For a moment, Max couldn’t even close his lips. Recruit… Hiva? For the war effort? Was this old man bonkers? But no, Gladstone was dead serious. He could see it in those dark, cloudy eyes of his that pierced through him like a spear.
“What are you…?” Max shook his head in disbelief. “What are you on about?”
“I want Hiva to become a soldier for England.”
A short stream of laughter erupted from Max’s lips without him even realizing it. He looked behind him. Hiva had not moved from the oil painting of the huddled, frightened children. Was he even listening? Was Gladstone listening to himself?
“Soldiers fight in a war.” Max said this as if explaining it to a little child, rather than the political leader of the country. But it somehow felt apt. “Trained soldiers. Warriors.”
“Young man,” Gladstone said, without moving an inch in his seat. “Thanks to the mayhem at the Berlin Conference, a dozen nations across Europe have declared war on one another, and more will follow. New weapons are being produced and shipped out to the war front, and each shows startling advancement in the technologies of destruction. New strategies of warfare are killing men by the dozens. One day, boy, history will see this as the war to end all wars—the greatest and most vicious among all we’ve fought. The Enlighteners want Hiva to travel to Africa, to power their expedition into another world. I want Hiva to travel to the front in Germany and use his skills in this world. The greatest war to ever begin needs the greatest soldier to end it.”
And what better soldier than a god? Hiva could decimate enemy soldiers in seconds and force countries to their knees. But was that what Hiva wanted? Was it possible to change the mind of a monster who could never see humanity along national lines?
“Hiva…”
Max’s words died in his throat as he looked upon the god, still gazing at the children of Van der Ven’s oil painting. And whatever Max was going to say next drowned underneath the trickle of tears that now slid down Hiva’s golden cheeks.
Hiva was crying.
Children had once given him joy. Hadn’t Hiva told them that himself?
Hey, Maxey, you really think Hiva’s actually going to learn something profound at a stuck-up, hoity-toity event like this?
The memory of Cherice’s words numbed Max’s hands.
“Hiva…,” he whispered, while Gladstone looked on silently from his chair.
“She started with the children,” Hiva said, and though his voice did not shake, Max could hear the pain in it, clear as a bell.
And when Hiva turned, Max saw both of his golden eyes. No longer empty voids, they shimmered, dripping with tears.
“The children I so loved. The children who played on the green hills overlooking the ocean. Who plucked the flowers from my hair and danced.” Hiva’s eyes lost focus as he remembered them. “I begged her. ‘Even the children, sister?’ I had asked her in anguish. ‘Even the children?’ And she told me this: ‘You misunderstand everything. There is no love and no hate. Only what needs to be done.’ ” He looked down at his trembling hands. “The truth is as it shall always be.”
Months ago, in the Basement, Max had seen parts of Iris’s former lives as Hiva. He’d seen her fell nations. Even though they were only glimpses of the past, they’d shocked him to the core—enough for him to betray Iris’s newly unearthed secret to the other Fanciful Freaks. Enough to turn her into an enemy.
The Iris that Hiva had described was cold and unfeeling. But the Iris that Max had known was anything but. Somehow, in the midst of their bloody struggles and painful history, the two gods had swapped places. It was as if Hiva was slowly coming to terms with just what had been stolen from him. And that became clear as Hiva moved his stiff fingers, flexing and unflexing them, as if he’d just noticed them now for the first time.
“Is there another way? I don’t know. Sister wouldn’t tell me…. And now I am alone. All I loved, I loved alone. Because of the demon in my view…”
And Hiva fell to his knees.
“No one wants to be alone, Hiva.” Gladstone. His eyes sparked with the opportunity wrapped up and dropped into his lap by the gods of fortune. He’d clearly realized what Max had much earlier: that a god could have weaknesses. “You can save many more children if you end the war. You will save them all through your service on the war front.”
“Save them?” Hiva laid his head back and stared up at the dark oak ceiling. “It’s something sister never would have done.”
“Then be better than her,” Gladstone said. “You don’t have to be a god of death.”
Max glared at him, a flush of heat rising through his body as he watched the man talk of a “sister” he knew nothing about. How like a politician.
But then…
But then if Gladstone succeeded…
“I had asked my sister once on those rolling hills,” said Hiva. “Isn’t there another way for us to live? Lifetimes of traveling. Lifetimes of killing. I just wanted another way….”
“I’m giving you one now.” Gladstone’s stone face never moved. “It’s your right to choose, Hiva. Choose life.”
“Choose life…,” Max and Hiva whispered at the same time.
And then Max remembered Cherice’s teasing grin on the ballroom floor.
I mean, it would be nice and all if he had a change of heart…
“Cherice.” Max’s heart began banging against his rib cage. If Gladstone succeeded, then Hiva could end two wars in an instant: the one made by men and the one of his own doing. Max had wondered, on the night of the music hall massacre, if he could direct Hiva’s powers. Maybe this was the way to do it.
That bloody Gladstone… What if that old bag was the miracle Max had been praying for?
“What say you, Hiva?” the prime minister asked.
Hiva remained silent for so long, Max started to wonder. The god in front of him was transforming in front of his eyes.
Finally Hiva answered. “Yes. I will,” Hiva said. “I’ll do as you say. I’ll see… if there’s another way for humanity—for me—to live.”
A wave of emotion battered Max from the inside, causing him to sway on his feet. Joy and relief. Apprehension. Confusion. Humanity’s one year to live. Weeks of watching senseless destruction. Was it all over? Just like that?
Had humanity won?
But Hiva looked at Max. He looked at him with the innocence and sadness of a lost child.
“Come with me,” he said, with a strange tenderness that made Max suddenly too aware of himself. “Come with me.” He repeated it again. “I never wanted to be alone.”
The door opened with a creak. A little pink marble rolled inside and then sparked with white smoke. The tiniest explosion. Mary’s signal. That was when Max remembered the plan.
Oh no.
Gladstone stood up from his chair. “What is the meaning of this?”
If he had a change of heart…
Oh God, no.
“Wait!” Max cried, but his pleas were drowned underneath the sound of window glass shattering. Hawkins, Jacob, and Cherice came through the window, ready for battle.
Max ran now, but Jacob moved quickly. Using the blowgun Henry had made in preparation for the plan, he shot Hiva precisely with two darts: one in the forehead, the other in his neck.
“Now!” Cherice cried, wielding a sharp blade Henry had cobbled together. “Get that bastard!”
Hawkins and Jacob didn’t need telling twice. Why would they? The Hiva they knew had forced them to be willing audiences to his murder spree. In the blink of an eye, they ambushed a stunned Hiva, now drugged with the poison Henry had placed in each needle.
The plan was supposed to take place in the cellar where Lucille would lure Adam to. Max would manipulate Hiva into burning Adam to ashes, and while he was distracted, they’d take his arm using the “toys” Henry had made. Adam would die, and they’d escape with the weapon to truly put an end to Hiva.
The location might have changed, thanks to Gladstone, but nonetheless everything was going according to plan—
Except Hiva himself.
Hawkins and Jacob pinned him against the oil painting, not noticing the tears he shed.
“No!” The door burst open once more. Fables. He was wearing a servant’s outfit. So it had been him Max had noticed in the ballroom downstairs, cleaning up after Temple. How had he managed to sneak in? It didn’t matter. Everything was happening so fast. Fables cried as he lunged toward Hiva’s attackers with a kitchen knife in hand.
Unfortunately for Fables, Cherice had the bigger blade.
Max couldn’t move, couldn’t think. He could only watch helplessly, clenching his fists as the window of hope that had opened slammed shut just as suddenly.
“Wait!” And Max lifted his head to the sky. “I said wait, goddamn you!”
Cherice cut off Hiva’s arm, blood spurting as far as the office desk. Hiva lost consciousness.
“No! No!” Fables grabbed Hiva just as he slid to the ground, howling as if his own limb had been cut. “My king!”
“What’re you standing around for? Hurry and take his arm!” Cherice ordered Jacob, who nodded and picked up the bloody limb off the floor.
All the while, Gladstone stared at the bloody scene, his hand clutching his chest. “What is this barbarity?” His coarse voice breathed out uneven breaths.
“Who’s this grandpa?” Hawkins said, scrunching up his face as he finally noticed the prime minister.
But Max didn’t have time to answer. As Hawkins readied his blue vortex to escape, Fables dropped Hiva and rushed forward, his knife in hand.
A blue marble found Fables’s stomach before his own knife could reach Hawkins’s neck. The explosion opened up the American boy’s flesh.
“Oh God!” Jacob nearly dropped Hiva’s arm as Fables slumped to the ground, holding his insides. And as Hawkins backed closer toward his blue void, Jacob faced the open office door. “Mary! What did you do?”
Max hadn’t noticed the mousy girl behind the door. In her hands was some kind of wooden box filled with marbles. Creating, in mere moments, toys that exceeded the imagination was Henry’s power. Max had come up against it before. But never had he seen Henry’s power used so ruthlessly. And by Mary, of all people. The girl whose powers were to heal.
She didn’t bother healing Fables.
“Go now!” Mary barked at the others, for their plan was now complete. The only thing that could kill Hiva was Hiva’s own self. If a sword made from Iris’s bones could kill Iris, then they now had the means to get rid of Hiva. This was good. This is what they’d hoped for.
So why did the sight of Hiva gushing blood all over Van der Ven’s floor disturb Max so? The tears on Hiva’s face hadn’t yet dried.
Hawkins tugged the back of Jacob’s vest. “Let’s go,” he said. “Cherice!”
Cherice glanced at Max, parting her lips, but Max put up a hand to stop whatever words were about to slip from them. “You go ahead. I’ll find you at the meeting place,” he told them.
As Cherice reluctantly followed Hawkins and Jacob into the void, Maximo wasn’t sure what he was doing. He wasn’t sure why he turned to Gladstone while Mary stood awkwardly at the door.
“That servant over there. His name is Fables. He needs medical attention. Can you get it for him? I’ll let you have Hiva in return.”
Let him? What was he thinking?
“Can you do that, boy?” Gladstone’s question echoed Max’s own.
“Hiva doesn’t need medical attention. He’ll heal on his own. But in terms of your war—he’ll only listen to me. So if you want to have him, you’ve got to try to save Fables first.”
“I’ll call my men to take them,” Gladstone assured him while Max’s mind spun in disarray. “For now, you should escape. I won’t be able to explain your part in all this.”
Max’s thoughts were jumbled, his joints stiff, as he and Mary jumped out the window. As the two ran to the back of the building, he couldn’t meet her eyes.
“I thought the plan after cutting off his arm was to take his body and bury him,” Mary said as they stood behind the brown brick of Van der Ven’s majestic townhouse. “We bury him until we can sharpen his bones and then kill him!”
A stake through the heart, like a vampire. Max really had read too many of those penny bloods in his youth, but it had been the best he could come up with at the time. But things had changed. What if their attack had rekindled Hiva’s hatred against humanity—what would they do? Should he have left Hiva in Gladstone’s care? All to save Fables?
What the hell was he bloody thinking?
“I’m sorry.” Max shut his eyes and gripped both sides of his head. “I don’t know. I just… it was all the blood. It was all the blood, I suppose.”
Blood he hadn’t expected. There was already too much of it on his hands. Maybe he just couldn’t take it anymore.
“I’m sorry too,” Mary whispered in that angelic, gentle voice of hers, and Max felt her soft hand upon his shoulder. “I know what it’s like to be confused. To hate yourself. To not trust your own decisions.”
For a moment she was quiet.
“I was going to take the money for myself, you know. The money from the Tournament of Freaks. If Henry, Lucille, and I had won, I was going to take the money and run away.”
Max lowered his hands from his ears, fearing he’d heard wrong. “W-what?”
“Mr. Henry needed the money to get his family out of debt, and I said I would help. We would have split it with Lucille. He thanked me so much. He thanked me with tears in his eyes. Me. A servant.”
She shook her head against the memories, her hands trembling as she gripped the wooden toy box before hiding it behind her back.
“I don’t know what came over me, but that was when I decided that I was going to take all the money for myself and run. I’m horrid. I know.” Mary shut her eyes and bit her lip, her hands still behind her back. “I didn’t want to die a maid like my mother. Why should I? The Whittle family’s been good to me, sure. They took me and my mum in, but that doesn’t mean they own me.”
Mary gazed at him with shimmering wet blue eyes, her lips curved into a smile of self-hatred Max knew all too well. He saw it every time he looked in the mirror.
“I know how you must feel, killing Iris. After everything Henry did for me, I was going to betray him like that. I was going to take everything away from him.”
Max hung his head. “I thought it was fine to betray Iris because I was doing it for someone I loved. My sister, Berta.”
Mary raised her eyebrows. “Sister?”
“We were separated in London when she was a child, and she was taken to America. She’s in Africa now, in some port city—Ajashe. If anything ever happened to her…” Max shook his head. “At least that’s how I justified it to myself.”
“I’m sure if you could go back in time, you’d change things, right?” Mary asked.
Yes. Yes, he would. He would change everything. All his ridiculous assumptions. All his paranoid imaginings. All the lives he’d taken. Every terrible thought he’d ever had toward the few people who’d only ever trusted him. Max pressed his hands against his eyes, squeezing his face as the agony of his bad decisions tormented him.
“I thought about it,” Mary said, “and I don’t want to end up like you. I won’t betray Henry. I’m sorry, Max. This plan’s changed.”
What?
Max lowered his hands from his face, his blood still pumping in his ears. That was likely why he didn’t notice the poison dart Mary had taken out of the wooden box. It was already in his neck before he could blink.
“Just how many of those things did that strange lad make?” he wondered aloud, swaying on his feet until he collapsed, unconscious.