The Faceless Old Woman Who Secretly Lives in Your Home

by Joseph Fink

  The ceremony began. It was a traditional Luftnarpian ceremony, which I found a little ostentatious even for a royal wedding. The bride played her part well, standing with a gaping mouth at the edge of the platform, making wide eyes over the crowd, oblivious to everything happening around her as her mouth fell wider and wider, more open than I had ever seen a human mouth extend. Meanwhile the King performed an off-balance and jerky jig around his bride, moaning and huffing and swinging his arms back and forth over his head. That part was actually pretty romantic. It was sweet how he hit his own stomach over and over, crying out in pain, but continuing to strike and strike and strike until he vomited a little on his own shoes. Lord Fullbright, standing at full attention next to the King, smiled at this understandable bit of mess and gestured for a servant to duck in and wipe it off. It was clear from the way Lord Fullbright gently patted the King’s back the affection he felt. Their dynamic wasn’t merely advisor and King, but old friends, and Lord Fullbright beamed beside his friend on his wedding day, even if the reason for the wedding was primarily political.

  Lady Nora did not smile, and did not seem pleased to be there. Her lips were tight, as she looked past the ceremony, staring into the depths of some private abyss. I imagined or at least hoped that the loss of her wealth was eating away at her. I thought of André’s family, their reputation ruined after generations of slowly working their way up. I thought of innocent men lying dead in a tavern in Hamburg. Of course, for me all injustices echoed the original injustice, and I thought of my father, lifeless in the grass. Let it eat at her. There would be more to come.

  The drum solo signaled that there wasn’t much left to the ceremony, and the moment in which a chicken was thrown into the air to land flightless and squawking back to earth was upon us. When the chicken’s feet met earth, by Luftnarpian tradition, the marriage had formally begun. It was time. As though in celebration, I lifted up a bright yellow handkerchief and waved it lazily through the air. From that moment, Lady Nora’s fate was sealed.

  Two events happened at once, in perfect coordination, so that from the point of view of the crowd really only one action happened. The first event was that Rebekah misted Lady Nora with the contents of the vial, after which Rebekah immediately secreted the vial within her clothes and looked disinterestedly away over the crowd. We had asked the Seagull to make the substance as odorless as possible, but in the end it contained a strong scent of, strangely, bread, and so the platform must have smelled like a bakery. No one was paying attention to the out-of-place scent though, because the spray was reacting with a chemical embedded in the dye of the Lady’s dress, and it immediately changed colors, from its pale blue into a bold dual-chromatic tone. Her left side bright green, her right side pure white. The second event was Lora, high on the second arch, releasing three banners declaring the justness and bravery of the Green and White Rebellion. The banners fell with a snap that caused the entire crowd to hush in their wedding jubilation instantly. The central banner contained a simple message that could only really have come from one person. “Surrender Strawhead.”

  The King turned in furious shock to Lady Nora, who, having not been looking down at her own dress, and with her back to the banners, had no idea of the horror that had just befallen her.

  “You,” the King said, in a quiet, pained voice.

  “Me?” she repeated back to him, a question that sounded to everyone but herself like a confession.

  9

  I went to see Edmond. It had been over a year since our last meeting, and although I was sure he had heard through the organization at least some of what I had been doing, and likely had been able to guess the rest, I felt I owed it to him to tell him myself all that had transpired.

  Barcelona in the winter is merely the Barcelona of the summer standing in the shade. It was with considerable happiness that I came across Señora Bover mending a shawl by the steps of Edmond’s home. I greeted her warmly, and she stood.

  “Ah, it has been so long,” she said. “I was wondering if our city would ever see your face again.”

  “It has been a year, Señora, but I could never go too long without making sure all was well with you.”

  Bover gestured to the shawl. “I have work. What more could I ask of God?”

  “Happiness? Wealth?”

  “Happiness and wealth. They are matters mostly out of our control. But the work, that we can choose. Go on up. Your uncle must have heard your voice by now, and I’m sure he’s pretending to be quite busy. Don’t make him stare earnestly at the same boring piece of correspondence forever, waiting for you to catch him at it. Go on up and be duly impressed.” Bover returned to her mending.

  I climbed the stairway to Edmond’s office, where, as the Señora had predicted, he was squinting at a letter with an ostentatiously serious expression. He looked up the moment I entered and let his face slide into a smile.

  “I had thought you had forgotten me.”

  “Liar.”

  We embraced, and then sat across his desk from each other, and he leaned forward.

  “You’ve been creating quite a situation,” he said. “One would think you were trying to start a war.”

  “I am not interested in influencing Europe. Only the trajectory of Lady Nora’s life.”

  “That you certainly have.”

  “She is finished,” I said, with a bitter triumph I look back at now with shame.

  “Finished,” he tilted his head. “Ah, not quite. As good as, I suppose, but her friendship with the King was a deep cushion to fall upon. My spies tell me she is living in his palace, a prisoner, but a comfortable one. Still, you are right, that it has been a long fall from her former status in the world.”

  I felt a spike of pain in my stomach. “I would have thought treason would be reason enough for execution.”

  “Ordinarily yes, but the nobility is not ordinary by definition. This was my mistake. Oh, what am I saying? We should be toasting your triumph. You have set out to achieve the extraordinary, and you did so. Please forget I said anything.”

  “Of course. Yes. To my triumph,” I said. I wanted badly to mean my words, but they tasted like nothing in my mouth. We ate dinner and took a slow walk through the city, and the entire time it felt like there was a ringing in my ears, a sound that I hated and that I needed to get rid of. Early the next morning, before Edmond had awoke, I was already gone.

  From Barcelona I spent a slow winter making my way to Krakow, where the rest of the crew had stashed themselves. We met in a small river house, loomed over by the walls of Wawel Castle. I took stock of my people, and I wondered if I was still the leader they should be following. I thought the answer was probably no.

  “What is my next role?” said Rebekah.

  “It’s time to get back to simple plunder and thievery,” said Lora. Even André, for all the fury over his family, seemed to energize at the thought of stealing, rather than all the worry and fuss of ruining someone’s life.

  “There will always be a next job,” I said vaguely, but I had no idea what it would be. I knew that I wasn’t done with the job we had been working on, but also that I no longer needed them in order to do it. “But first, I’ll need to leave for a while.”

  Rebekah studied me with concern. As it was the heart of her own skill, she had a sharp eye for the ways that people lie, and she read me carefully. “You’re not done with Lady Nora,” she concluded.

  André groaned. “Enough with revenge, please let us do a dishonest day’s work.”

  “I’m with them,” said Lora. “Give me a target. Let me loose.” Her broad body seemed caged in this little house in this little city.

  “Soon,” I said. “I have one more errand, and then I’ll be back, and then we’ll work.” I was lying even to myself.

  10

  The giddiness and shock of the wedding feast had passed and now a businesslike solemnity lay heavy over the royal castle of Luftnarp. No one could believe the speed at which Lady Nora had fallen, th
e depth of her betrayal. The King had seethed, entirely putting off his new bride, who had moved her retinue back to Svitz to await a more welcoming situation perhaps in a year or two. This placed the King in a strange position of not living with his queen while simultaneously hosting the woman who, as far as he knew, had betrayed him. All in all, the partnership between Svitz and Luftnarp was going poorly, and the one person who no one knew was at blame for that was creeping secretly down the hallways of their home. I had come to finish what I had started. Perhaps Lora was right. Perhaps we had already done enough. But I didn’t want to do enough. I wanted to do so much that I could not possibly be denied.

  And so I crept down the halls, the sheathed dagger on my belt chafing against my legs. Above me, banners had the coat of arms for each of the sovereigns who had once held absolute power in this ancient kingdom. One coat of arms depicted a man holding an orange up to the sky, with a single ray of light striking the orange. A second was a human eye looking sharply to the right. Another took the form of a five-headed dragon, each head a different color. I studied this one with interest. No one had seen a dragon in hundreds of years, but it appeared that perhaps one had held the kingship of Luftnarp. A dragon would make a terrible leader, I decided, as it was well known that their many heads could never agree on anything.

  I was alone in these halls. I did not want any of my friends to bear the responsibility of what I had to do next. They had come with me so far, and would likely have come even farther, but I could not ask that of them. As I had traveled to Luftnarp, I had kept an eye out for anyone following me. Our actions had created waves within the politics of Europe, and I knew that the attention of the Order of the Labyrinth must be on me. I was in every way a promising recruit. But try as I might, I could never catch any of their scouts. No matter. I knew they were listening, and I would give them something to hear.

  I counted the doors. Rebekah had given me the information without knowing. I had asked her several disparate questions about the King’s household, so that she would not be able to tell which item was pertinent. I didn’t want her to guess my plans, partly because I didn’t want her to try to help but mostly because I was ashamed. I could have asked Edmond to tap into his ring of spies, and he might have even helped me, but for the same reason I didn’t want him to know I was in any way involved with this. What is the word for shame felt for an act that hasn’t yet happened? What is the word for guilt felt for what has not yet occurred? The act could still be avoided. In the moment of putting my hand on the door handle, I thought about how easy it would be to just not pass through the doorway. And in thinking that, I entered.

  The room was simple. A bed in one corner with a straw mattress. Windows with their shutters thrown wide open along one wall. A noble person’s room, but a noble person in no position to show wealth. It would be unbefitting, given their situation. And now here I was, in that room. I drew the dagger and considered it. With this, I would end a life. It was not enough that Lady Nora be disgraced. She must die. And I had come to see that it would be done. It could be no other hand but my own. My hand was shaking. The weight of necessity lay heavy against it.

  Even then there was a moment where I could have turned and left the room. I hadn’t gone too far. Then I heard footsteps coming from the garden. I went to the window and peered down.

  The sun was at its highest, and the garden was brilliantly lit. Despite the beauty of the spring weather, the garden was entirely empty except for a single figure. A man, hunched stiffly, and lurching his way down the garden path. I nearly dropped the dagger, seeing that figure that had haunted me throughout my entire life. I could hear the shuffle of the mysterious man’s feet upon the pebbles, and for the first time I could hear the dry crack of his voice. “Why?” he was asking the empty afternoon. “Why?”

  Behind me I heard a different sound. A door scraping open, and the shuffle of velvet shoes upon stone floor.

  “Who are you, and what are you doing in my bed chambers?”

  I turned and came eye to eye with the man who I had come to murder. Lord Fullbright, the conscience of the King. The wisest and kindest man in Luftnarp.

  Lord Fullbright had survived in politics for a long time, and he eyed me appraisingly, trying to understand what I meant. He understood that while I looked like a person, I might be a political moment, and it was his task to determine what kind.

  “Who sent you?” he asked.

  The man was about to die, so I decided to tell him the truth.

  “No one,” I said. “I am here because I need something from you.”

  “Well,” he said, smiling carefully, and taking a seat in a chair that, I noticed, was a few easy steps from the door. “Certainly my life’s mission is to serve, but there are better methods of inquiry than sneaking into my bed chamber.”

  I found a chair that was close to his, but not so close that he would immediately flee, and I sat too, crossing my legs and matching his smile. The dagger was hidden against my thigh, but he would correctly assume I was armed. The joints of the chair grumbled as I shifted. “I wish there were a better way to make this particular request, but unfortunately I am not so wise as you,” I said. “This is all I could come up with.”

  “I suppose shouting for guards would do no good.”

  “Your guards are alive,” I said, answering two questions for the price of one. “But why shorten your life?”

  He breathed out slowly through his nose, a soft hiss in a quiet room. “A man doesn’t enter a palace like this without knowing how he may someday leave it,” he said. “But I always thought if a moment like this came, I would know why. I’ve guided our king toward mercy and justice. Always I’ve consoled him that his is a position of service. We serve the people, not the other way around.” He waved his hand. “And ah, perhaps he doesn’t always hear me. Certainly the Green and White Rebellion and his wrongheaded decision that led to it is proof enough. But that can hardly be laid at my feet.”

  “You have done nothing wrong,” I said. I knew he was a good advisor, but I hadn’t counted on liking him as a person, and I tried not to.

  “Circumstances would seem to speak differently.” He dipped his eyes to my poorly-hidden blade.

  I stood, and he stood. The act hadn’t happened yet, but it was going to. There was no way down from here for either of us, and in that way we were bonded. We were standing atop something larger than ourselves, and both of us would have to jump. I thought of my childhood friend Albert, and wondered, as I often did, what he was doing. Living a good life, I hoped, free of pain. Free of vengeance. The kind of life that anyone should be able to live, if the world were a different place.

  “You’re a good man, Lord Fullbright,” I said.

  “As the hymn says ‘Try, try your whole life to be righteous and be good,’” he said.

  “I’ve tried,” I said. “I’ve tried.”

  Even before I finished speaking, I pulled the dagger from my belt and without letting myself stop, afraid that if I paused for even a moment my hand would tremble away into inaction, I pushed the full length of the blade through his heart.

  I let go of the handle, now sticking out from his chest, and he stepped back.

  His mouth opened, maybe to curse me or maybe only to ask me a question, and either way I had no answer. And then he fell.

  The sound of his body landing was softer than I thought it would be, like a falling of cloth. I stepped over him, leaving the dagger where it lay. It was a bejeweled ornamental dagger that Lady Nora was highly proud of. She had showed it around the palace for so many years that even the man scrubbing pans in the depths of the kitchens could have attested it was hers. As I went, I pressed a thin strip of fabric into the frame of the door, as though torn away in the hurry of flight. From one of the Lady’s dresses, of course.

  And once it was clear that Lady Nora, in revenge for her imprisonment, had murdered the King’s favorite advisor, best friend, and the most popular man in the kingdom, I slipped away, ho
ping no one in the palace would remember my face.

  11

  In the end, after all her years of lording her power over those below her, Lady Nora wept as they carted her to the gallows. We all do, I suppose, in the end. Everything we build in our clumsy, teetering lives is a bulwark against this moment, and when that bulwark finally fails, what is there left but tears?

  I didn’t cry, even though I felt I could have. What point was there at that juncture? I had already come so far. Even as I could hear Lord Fullbright’s final words repeating in my head, everything that I did was already done, and no weeping from me would change it. So I watched dry-eyed as Lady Nora was carried yowling from the cart to the platform. This is the sound we all make when we see that edge coming.

  André stood next to me, as solemn and placid as I was. Here was the woman who had torn apart his family, and so he would face her fate with open eyes. He would see it through to the end. Rebekah was also calm. Here was the woman whose guards beheaded one in three sailors before her eyes. Lora, for all of her immense physical strength, did not take it as well.

  “Do we have to stay and watch?”

  “You don’t,” I said. “But when I start something, I see it through.”

  “You’ve seen it through.”