by Lisa Maxwell
Distantly, she heard the soft snoring of the people in the small berth with her. North, propped awkwardly in a chair, and Maggie in the bunk above her. She remembered lying down next to Harte. The power he carried within him was quiet as she nestled next to him, trying to warm him and waiting for him to wake as she fought her own exhaustion.
But now the bed was cold and empty beside her.
She pulled herself up and looked around the small Pullman compartment, but there was no sign of Harte. After what had happened in the rotunda, North hadn’t trusted Harte not to do something rash. He’d lashed Harte to the post of the bunk, but the rope North had used was now hanging empty.
Worse, her cuff—the one that held Ishtar’s Key—was gone. In its place was a simple bracelet made of beads: the one he’d bought that first day at the fair. She reached for it, about to tear it from her wrist, but the moment she touched it, a jumble of images rose in her mind, and she felt an impulse so sure and clear that she knew it was a message he’d left for her, deep in her unconscious mind. He’d used his affinity on her, she realized. Rather than leave a note that could have been found or read by prying eyes, he left her a hope and a plea that only she could know.
He hadn’t left her completely, then. But he also hadn’t trusted himself enough to take her with him.
Cursing Harte for his heavy-handedness and herself for falling asleep, Esta stepped outside into the passage and then out onto the platform, where the prairie grass extended as far as the eye could see.
Harte was gone, but she wasn’t alone. There was a long, unknown road ahead of them, one that led to another ocean, a distant shore. She would do what Harte had asked of her, and then, when she found him, she would make sure he regretted leaving her behind.
There was work left to do. A demigod to destroy. There were still stones to gather, a future to make.
And on the inside of her wrist was a scar—a single word in the Latin she’d learned as a child. A command calling her back, to New York and to the past.
Redi.
DISCEDO
1904—St. Louis
As the train marched along the landscape he’d only ever thought to see in dreams, Harte Darrigan watched the horizon turn from the impenetrable blanket of night to a soft lavender glow as the stars disappeared one by one in the creeping light of dawn. He’d dreamed of this his whole life, the impossible open plains and the shadow of the mountains in the distance and the freedom of it all. But now that it was his, he was every bit as trapped—as imprisoned—as he’d ever been, only this time it was a prison he carried with him.
He’d woken in the dead of night when the other train shuddered to a stop at some unknown station. Esta had been curled next to him, her arm thrown over him in the narrow bunk and her face still tense despite being deeply asleep. He could hear the soft, steady breathing of others close by, and for a moment he didn’t know where he was or what had happened. Inside, the voice he carried was silent, but he could feel her there, breathing and licking her wounds.
And waiting.
It would have been easier, perhaps, to allow his eyes to close again, to allow sleep to pull him under. It certainly would have been more pleasant to stay there, close to Esta’s warmth, breathing in her familiar scent. Letting himself lean on her. But even at the thought of it, the power within him started to rouse itself.
For a moment he allowed himself to nuzzle against Esta’s neck and breathe. For a moment he allowed himself to wonder what it could have been like to stay with her like this, as though they were two ordinary people with their lives ahead of them and their whole future as a possibility. But though Harte was a liar and a con, he wasn’t good enough to fool himself.
If he stayed, Seshat would do everything she could to take Esta.
If he stayed, Esta would give herself to try to save him.
He couldn’t stay. But he would do what he could to save her. To save all of them.
REDITE
1904—New York
James Lorcan held the telegram between his fingertips and read it again, just to be sure of its meaning. Around him, the Aether bunched and shifted, the future remaking itself into the pattern of his design.
His agent in the West had two of the artifacts in their possession, and best of all, they had the girl. It was only a matter of time before everything fell into place.
He lit a match with one hand and ignited the corner of the telegram, watching it combust and transform into a pile of ash. Then he turned himself to the business of the day before him—the business of leading the Antistasi.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
A book this big doesn’t happen without help from a lot of people.
First and foremost, to my brilliant editor at Simon Pulse, Sarah McCabe, who dealt with missed deadlines and more unfinished drafts than any person should have to read. Her patience and confidence made this book possible, and her keen insights made this book immeasurably better. Thanks for pushing me and for always having the answer. I’m so glad your brain works better than mine.
To the entire team at Simon Pulse, who have been so amazing and shown this series (and me) so much support: Mara Anastas, Chriscynethia Floyd, Liesa Abrams, Katherine Devendorf, Chelsea Morgan, Sara Berko, Julie Doebler, and Bernadette Flinn. Many thanks to Tricia Lin, who read early drafts; and to Penina Lopez, Valerie Shea, Elizabeth Mims, and Kayley Hoffman, whose astute copyedits, proofread, and cold reads made the sentences shine. My heartfelt gratitude to Audrey Gibbons, Lauren Hoffman, Caitlin Sweeny, Alissa Nigro, Anna Jarzab, Christian Vega, Michelle Leo and her team, Nicole Russo, Vanessa DeJesus, and Christina Pecorale and the rest of the S&S sales and marketing teams, who’ve done so much for the success of this series. Thanks to Russell Gordon and Mike Rosamilia for making the book beautiful, inside and out. And special thanks to Craig Howell, who somehow managed to create art for the cover that outdid his previous work on The Last Magician.
I’m grateful to have Kathleen Rushall in my corner. She’s a rock star of an agent, and her unwavering support made the whole process of writing this book almost bearable. Thank you for the check-in emails and pep talks. I’m so lucky that I get to work with her and all the wonderful agents at Andrea Brown.
Many thanks to all the wonderful readers, reviewers, bloggers, booksellers, and librarians who put The Last Magician on the New York Times list last year and who kept me going with their excitement and questions about this sequel. Special thanks go out to the Devil’s Own, especially Joy Konarske, Cody Smith-Candelaria, Agustina Zanelli, Patrick Peek, Kim McCarty, Jennifer Donsky, Kim Mackay, Rachel Barckhaus, Ashley Martinez, and Alyssa Caayao, who went above and beyond to spread their love for the series. Thank you for helping to make TLM a success!
Writer friends are the best type of friends. Thanks to all my favorites, especially the amazing women who listened to me complain about not writing and then complain about writing, who read drafts or helped me brainstorm my way out of corners, and who make the world better with their beautiful words: Olivia Hinebaugh, Danielle Stinson, Kristen Lippert-Martin, Helene Dunbar, Flavia Brunetti, Christina June, Sarah Raasch, Jaye Robin Brown, Shanna Beasley, Shannon Doleski, Peternelle van Arsdale, Julie Dao, Angele McQuade, Risikat Okedeyi, and Janet Taylor.
And last but never least, my family. This book was a beast to finish, and my guys put up with me basically being not present in their lives for three entire months. I know how hard my working so much was on them, but they gave me the time and space and support I can’t possibly deserve (but I’ll gladly take anyway). To X and H, who are light and joy, and to J, who is everything. Thank you.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
LISA MAXWELL is the author of The Last Magician and Unhooked. She grew up in Akron, Ohio, and has a PhD in English. She’s worked as a teacher, scholar, bookseller, editor, and writer. When she’s not writing books, she’s a professor at a local college. She now lives near Washington, DC, with her husband and two sons. You can follow her on Twitter @LisaMaxwellYA and Insta
gram @LisaMaxwell13 or learn more about her upcoming books at Lisa-Maxwell.com.
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AUTHOR’S NOTE
I’ve tried to depict the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition as accurately as possible in this book. With the exception of the fictitious Nile River ride, everything from the statue on the top of the Festival Hall to the exhibits and layout of the Pike is based on historical maps, original guidebooks, and pictures I found during my research. While the Nile River ride is an invention of my own, I based it on the research I did, especially about the problematic ways the fair represented race and culture. Because the 1904 characters experiencing the fair can’t possibly be aware of the future repercussions of the event, I wanted to give readers a better understanding of the Exposition’s complexities and contradictions and how they still remain with us today.
The fair had an enormous impact on St. Louis, the Midwest, and the country as a whole. Between April 30 and December 1 of 1904 nearly twenty million people visited the 1,200-acre fairgrounds, which included seventy-five miles of roads and walkways, fifteen hundred buildings, and exhibits from more than fifty countries and forty-three states. A visitor to the fair could have experienced wireless telegraphy, observed fragile infants being kept alive by incubators, watched the first public dirigible flight, or perused 140 different models of personal automobile. Theodore Roosevelt visited, Helen Keller gave a lecture, Scott Joplin wrote a song, and John Philip Sousa’s band performed.
From its sheer size, the fair billed itself as the largest and most impressive display of man’s greatest achievements. But as I showed in the story, alongside some of the most astounding scientific and technological breakthroughs of the age, the fair also displayed people. In doing so, the fair became part of the larger history of race, culture, and social evolution in America. This was not accidental. The planning committee curated anthropological displays that worked specifically in the service of imperialism and Western exceptionalism.
It’s important to note that in 1904 most Americans didn’t have access to foreign travel. The Exposition presented a solution—an opportunity to experience the world in miniature. However, the fair presented a very specific version of the world, one seen through the lens of the West. The organizers of the fair did try to separate the serious and “educational” exhibits that were brought by individual nations from the more scintillating and exotic “entertainment” attractions on the Pike, but the average fairgoer regularly confused the two. The effect was that the fair presented a world in which ethnicity and exoticism became a form of entertainment. People and cultures became objects to consume.
As I show in the story, the representation of different nationalities on the Pike was highly problematic, but the rest of the fair wasn’t much better. The educational exhibits were purposely selected by the planners as scientific evidence of the natural progress of human history. Fairgoers could understand the superiority of their own culture in contrast to the so-called “primitivism” of foreign cultures. In 1904, anthropology was still a fledgling discipline of study, but the Exposition and other world’s fairs like it demonstrated anthropology’s usefulness in ordering people. Specifically, the fair helped to justify the dominance of the West and the usefulness of imperialism in scientific terms.
For example, the large Igorot Village exhibit was the direct product of America’s recent victory—and acquisition of territories—in the Spanish-American War. Fair organizers brought people from the Philippine archipelago and displayed them as a sort of human zoo. Fashionably dressed fairgoers who observed the villagers’ dress and customs saw the Igorots as less modern—and therefore inferior.
Another example of anthropology used in the service of Western imperialism was the appearance of Native Americans and First Nations peoples as exhibits at the fair. The fair itself was a celebration of the Louisiana Purchase, the very event that permitted westward expansion and spurred on the ideals of manifest destiny that led to the slaughter and decimation of Native peoples. Harte and Esta see the Cliff Dwellers concession, but those weren’t the only Native Americans at the fair. Apache, Cocopah, Pueblo, and Tlingit peoples were also present as attractions. Attendees could purchase an autographed photo from Geronimo himself, who was then still the American government’s prisoner of war, or view an operational model Indian School, where children maintained a routine for the viewing pleasure of tourists.
While the fair provided some, like Geronimo, a chance to be entrepreneurs, it also exploited them with unsanitary living conditions and poor compensation. Moreover, the Exposition’s display of Native peoples depended on nostalgia and perpetuated the stereotype of a once-heroic and noble people, now defeated and dying. These stereotypes have persisted to this day and continue to cause harm to Native peoples.
Finally, it’s also important to note that while the fair displayed diverse people, it was primarily attended by white Americans. When a planned Negro Day to celebrate emancipation was canceled, the chair of the local committee revoked Booker T. Washington’s invitation and told him that “the negro is not wanted at the world’s fair.” W. E. B. DuBois, whose landmark book, The Souls of Black Folk, had been published to critical acclaim the year before, was not invited. The Eighth Illinois Regiment, an African American regiment, made an encampment at the fair but were prohibited from using the commissary by white soldiers, who refused to share. In short, the fairgrounds were not a welcoming space for people of color.
Perhaps it shouldn’t be a surprise that the Exposition had such a problematic and often offensive relationship to race and culture. It was a product of its time, after all, but it was also a product of larger social forces. Eleven of the twelve committee members who organized and planned the fair were members of the Veiled Prophet Society, including the president of the committee, David Francis. As I reveal in the story, the VP Society’s formation was a reaction to the Great Railroad Strike of 1877, a strike that involved large numbers of African Americans and immigrants. The creation of the VP Society and parade was a direct attempt by white city fathers to reclaim racial and class superiority in the city, and much of the design and experience of the fair—both historically and in my book—echoes that same agenda.
For all it might have done to bring technological advances and exposure to foreign nations, at its heart the Louisiana Purchase Exposition cannot be seen outside the larger system of white supremacy and Western imperialism that it helped to perpetuate. It wasn’t alone in this project, however. The Exposition and other fairs like it were common around the turn of the century. Their mixture of exoticism as entertainment and cultural exploitation taught white Americans a version of the world steeped in Western superiority. That understanding had far-reaching effects that continue to impact Americans’ understanding of race and culture even today.
For further reading:
Whose Fair? Experience, Memory, and the History of the Great St. Louis Exposition by James Gilbert
From the Palaces to the Pike: Visions of the 1904 World’s Fair by Timothy J. Fox and Duane R. Sneddeker
“ ‘The Overlord of the Savage World’: Anthropology, the Media, and the American Indian Experience at the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition” by John William Troutman
A World on Display: Photographs from the St. Louis World’s Fair, 1904 by Eric Breitbart
ALSO BY LISA MAXWELL
The Last Magician
Unhooked
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
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First Simon Pulse hardcover edition October 2018
Text copyright © 2018 by Lisa Maxwell
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Map illustrations copyright © 2017 (pages vi-vii) and 2018 (pages viii-ix) by Drew Willis
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Maxwell, Lisa, 1979- author.
