PERISCOPE ON PORT BOW!”
“Throw out a smoke screen! Hide the ship from the enemy!”
There hadn’t been this many men on deck the last time Max was on the high seas, but this British transport ship was different. Once an enemy ship had appeared, hundreds of sailors rushed to release the black smoke from the cannons that stretched over the water. Who was the enemy? Russian? German? Max couldn’t bring himself to care. The smoke screen worked, at least. But a successful mission wasn’t enough for these military rats.
“Hey, you!” One of the sailors grabbed Max by the collar. Thankfully Max wasn’t in the same uniform. He’d lost a bit of his mind, yes, but not quite enough to wear the same silly hat upon his head.
Max stood out from them in his heavy brown jacket, vest, and turtleneck. Gladstone had given him permission to go to France’s shore along with his own special rank. Everyone here knew it. But he wasn’t one of them. He never would be.
“Where’s your pet?” the sailor demanded. “We were promised an easy voyage to the war front! This look easy to you?”
This boy was his age, and he was new. Max could tell. Curled blond hair and piercing blue eyes that hadn’t yet witnessed the horrors Max had in his lifetime. Well, he would soon enough. Nothing like a little bit of violence to shatter that alpha-male arrogance. Max would know.
“You don’t really believe that shite the general said, do you?” said a dark-skinned boy, older and with ears bigger than his hands. “That ‘top secret’ bunk. Trust me, if the government has some kind of secret weapon, it’s not going to be some gloomy bastard, I can tell you that.”
“We’ll see, won’t we?” The blond sailor pushed Max so hard, Max almost stumbled over his feet. “Bring him up here, and bring him up here fast. Let’s see if this so-called great destroyer can get rid of enemy ships.”
There was a time Max would have killed any sailor who dared speak to him with anything less than fear and awe. But that him didn’t exist anymore. Max nodded and went down to the lower decks. He didn’t dare speak. He’d barely spoken in days. Not since abandoning Hawkins and Jacob, still paralyzed with grief. Not since meeting with Gladstone. Not since boarding the transport ship with Hiva in tow.
Not since Cherice’s death.
“Go find Berta,” Max had told Hawkins and Jacob before leaving Lily Giralt’s London brothel. “She should still be in West Africa. Go to Ajashe—Porto-Novo—whatever you want to call the damn city. Make sure she’s okay. Take care of her in my place.”
It was all he could do for her. Time no longer mattered in Max’s world. His decision had been made hastily in the moment, but it hadn’t been made without purpose.
He wanted to die.
He was a murderer who’d killed friends, betrayed them, and failed them in equal measure. How long could he live with this putrid self-hatred pumping through his veins like a toxin? He didn’t want to. But he didn’t want his death to be meaningless either.
Max had thought Hiva would revert to being an emotionless murderer after the attack at the ball. But to his surprise, Hiva went along with Gladstone’s wishes. He was here to fight in the war. To end it. To prove that he was better than his sister. None of that had changed. Hiva didn’t even seem to care at all that Max had orchestrated his maiming.
Well, good. For Iris’s and Cherice’s sakes, Max would keep it that way. He’d use Hiva to put an end to this senseless war, before it grew big enough to envelop the whole world and the ones he loved. He trusted his friends to put an end to Hiva when it was all over.
“Whatever you do, make sure you forge that sword.” It was the last thing Max had told Jacob and Hawkins before leaving the brothel. Lily had at least placed the arm they’d taken from Hiva on ice. It would take some work to carve flesh from bone. Nasty business. “If anything goes wrong, it’ll be our only chance.”
He trusted his friends to be the one to do it, because he didn’t expect to return to England from the war front alive. He didn’t want to.
The transport ship carried weapons Max had never seen before among the cargo. But each crate had something in common.
“ ‘Bosch Guns and Ammunitions,’ ” Max whispered with a smirk, reading the big black letters on one wooden container. “No matter what I do, where I go, or who I kill, I just can’t seem to escape the Enlighteners, can I?”
They had their tendrils in everything—even his attempt to die.
He wondered what kind of fate had befallen Mary, Henry, and Lucille after Bellerose’s ball. The three had really pulled the rug out from under him. Traitors. He hoped they all died in bloody ways.
The only bit of hope Max could hold on to was the fact that his sister was still out there somewhere, alive. Rin may have hated him. She should hate him. But she wouldn’t kill Berta out of revenge. Would she?
As frustration built up inside of him, Max slammed his foot against the floor. He felt so bloody helpless. It was more than he could stand.
In times like these, his mother would pray. But the years had not been kind to his faith. The only god Max believed in was the one he could see. And that god had to be dealt with very, very carefully.
Max tapped open the door to Hiva’s room, specially prepared for him on Gladstone’s orders. “Hiva?”
It was a simple room with a flat wooden bed and mattress, and a chair by the table against the far wall. Barely any room for a dance. Still, it was more than Hiva deserved. They were both reckless murderers. Perhaps their partnership made the most sense.
Hiva, his body fully healed and newly whole, had been given the uniform of a British soldier. Lucky for him, he also wore no ridiculous hat. His hair was free to spill over his body, the flowers twisting and shuddering, as Hiva turned to Max with a strangely focused expression that disturbed him.
“They’re calling you,” Max told him, shifting uncomfortably on his feet. “The navy men. They spotted some enemy ship. It’s still far off, and they’ve cloaked the transport ship well enough, but they still want you to prove your worth.”
Hiva did not move. The way he searched Max’s face made his stomach curdle like he’d bitten into a rotten potato. When had Hiva become so familiar with him? So comfortable? So… so human? He almost missed the killer automaton.
It was just for a moment. Hiva turned and continued his thousand-yard stare, his gaze burrowing a hole in the wall.
“They want you up there, so…” Max waved his hands toward the outside of the door.
Silence. The automaton god did not move.
“Maximo,” Hiva said after a time, startling him. “May I ask you a question?”
Max squirmed. Here it comes. “I thought it was weird you didn’t ask earlier. Let me guess: you want to know why I helped hack off your arm a few days ago.”
“No. It’s of no matter to me.”
Max blinked, shocked. “What?”
“You were frightened of me. You had tried to kill me once before. It’s not surprising that you would try to do so again. You may still yet.”
It was as if Hiva had made peace with it. Like he’d made peace with everything. Max didn’t quite know how to take it.
“Then what do you want to ask me?”
And then Hiva posed a question that made Max’s breath tight in his chest. “What is the meaning of life?” With all sincerity, and without a hint of jest or irony.
Silence. Max let the question hang in the air for just a moment.
Before bursting out laughing.
“What’s the meaning of—what? What did you just ask?” Max held his stomach and laughed so hard, he could feel the muscles twinging in his back as he bent it. “Did you seriously just ask—what is this, a university lecture? I knew I shouldn’t have let you read Marx.”
But Max’s laughter didn’t seem to affect Hiva in any way. The god looked at his red palms with eyes as hollow as his voice.
“I am born to bring about death for the sake of life. Then why must I kill?”
Max’s laughter died in his throat, and silence stretched between them. Looking at Hiva reminded Max of Iris struggling with the same questions. Desperate to find her own answer—dying before he’d given her a chance to.
“Funny. You looked like you knew it all when I first saw you in the Coral Temple,” said Max, letting a bitter tinge slip into his voice as he leaned against the doorframe. “Now you’re questioning everything.”
“I have questioned before. For eons. I came to her for the answer.” Hiva turned toward him. “To my sister. But her answer was as merciless as she was: humanity is evil and shall always be. And there will always come a day when they must be destroyed in order to start anew.”
Death and rebirth. A cycle with no end. Max gave him a wry smile. “Well, what can I say? We’re bastards. We take one another’s lands and enslave one another. We conquer and kill. We wage war and pillage. We stuff our stomachs while others starve. It’s just… how we are.”
“Is it?” As Hiva pressed, the flowers in his hair trembled, almost as if mirroring Hiva’s inner turmoil. “Can humanity ever change? Can we imagine another way to live in this world?”
Imagine another way to live? Well, Max supposed changing things would take a little bit of imagination—and daring. This world hadn’t happened by accident. Hundreds of years ago, a bunch of mad folks somewhere had decided that societies should be structured this way. That some should have everything, while others had nothing. That power belonged only in the hands of the few. And over the decades and centuries, people just kept it up, following the same script until you had beggars on the street fighting for a piece of bread, mothers in zoos, slaves on cotton fields, and dead kids mauled in the mines. Max had always assumed that this was just how things were and had to be. In the end, they were all just living in someone’s imagination. Definitely not his.
But could humanity ever change?
“Iris wanted to change, and I didn’t give her a chance to,” Max said, folding his arms over his chest and holding down the wave of despair suddenly threatening to drown him. When he thought of Iris, he thought of Cherice. And when he thought of Cherice, he thought of the cruelty of this world that wasted life so easily. Even if he hunted down Adam for revenge, it wouldn’t change anything. It wouldn’t give Cherice another chance. It wouldn’t erase his sins….
“I just want a chance. A chance to be reborn,” Max whispered, his lips quivering as tears threatened to form. “To start everything anew…”
“As did I, once,” said Hiva. “But sister would not allow me. She did not believe in change. Only justice—and the inevitable. I wonder…” Hiva gazed up thoughtfully at the ceiling. “What does she believe now? Sister. Have you changed?”
Now? Max frowned, studying Hiva carefully, not knowing whether the god was still speaking his usual nonsense or…
Or…?
“What are you talking about?” Max asked slowly, boosting himself off the doorframe. “Iris is dead. What does it matter to you what she believed?”
Hiva didn’t speak for a time; his silence leeched the warmth from Max’s skin, as if he were naked and alone in the cold. Suddenly a wild thought gripped Max, but he shook his head—because Hiva couldn’t have been implying what Max, in that mad second, had thought he was implying. No, it was impossible. What was done was done.
By Max’s own hands.
Hiva didn’t confirm his fleeting suspicions one way or another, but the curious expression on Hiva’s face had Max worried, and he couldn’t articulate why. Hiva raised his head and breathed in and out, in and out, in a calm, steady rhythm. As if he were waiting for something. Listening. Feeling.
Feeling what?
Feeling who?
What did Hiva know that Max didn’t?
“Some fates are inevitable,” Hiva said—certainly not to Max, because he couldn’t understand a whit of what he meant. “This isn’t my earth. Two Hivas do not belong in the same space. I transgressed in coming here. When the rules are broken, a correction must be made. Is that what you’re trying to tell me?”
Max gave him an incredulous look. “Who are you talking to?”
“The One who created her,” Hiva answered, with a serenity that spooked Max. “The One who decides whether she lives or dies.”
“She?” The ghost flashing in Max’s mind momentarily filled him with terror. But Max swallowed his fear, his wild speculations. He shook his head, because he knew what he’d done.
Finally Hiva turned to him. When he spoke, it was with a tinge of sadness. With the faint brush of regret. “If some fates are inevitable,” he said, “then should I accept mine?”
Max didn’t answer as Hiva walked out of the room.