by Joseph Fink
I had teased him years earlier that writing down everything we do in such detail could get us arrested if not outright executed.
“It could, couldn’t it?” he had said, and kept writing. I can only presume he wrote our conversations verbatim. Nathan paid close attention to minor details like uniformity of clothing and careful cleaning. He noticed missed spots on seemingly pristine galley counters, or the pale tongue of a partially tucked shirt. If Señora Bover had been the Order’s spy on the ground, Nathan looked to be their spy on the sea. I was meticulously careful around him.
The crew had grown a touch restless while we were gone, and Nathan had prevented them from spending too much time on land so that they would not waste all of their money and mental acuity on drink. Upon my return, a few pointed out local fishing ships that could be quick jobs with easy pay. I surveyed the port, but most appeared to be small fishing operations, not worth the effort, and more importantly run by honest families I did not want to harm. As when I was a child, I had taken to memorizing familiar ships in familiar ports. We had stopped in Venice enough that these same little fishing boats had become regular sights for me: The Vineyard, The Wanderer, The Pelican, and so on. Knowing the names of these boats personalized them to me. I grew attached.
There was only one vessel that day that I did not recognize. It was a larger brig circling the port. Atop its mainsail, a black flag with white labyrinth emblem. We would certainly not engage this ship, although I longed to. A ship that large surely must carry men of great significance in the organization. Someday I will captain that ship, I thought, and I will sail it directly into the black heart of the Order.
Before heading back to Ca’Savio, I went to my quarters to lie down and clear my head, but really I only cluttered it more, thinking about what I had done to the constable and his family, how thankful I was for Rebekah’s cleverness in getting them out of town. I made up a story that the constable was a vile man, that he had a mistress, that he took bribes from the wealthy to keep their kids free from the law, that he murdered the homeless and pinned it on his enemies.
Since I did not know a thing about him, he could be any kind of man. He was simultaneously good and evil, deserving of salvation and of damnation. In my head I chose the latter and thus solidified my moral obligation to deliver justice. The constable, after all, used deadly force to subdue a petty crook. A good lawman would arrest such a derelict, but he attacked this boy, using the boy’s own knife against him, crippling Max forever.
“This kind of excessive power cannot be tolerated,” my thoughts became daydreams, “and I am happy to have helped the people of Augsburg out from under the boot of this madman. My vengeance, though, remains my own. Avenging others’ ills is not something I have time for. I do others’ work to learn how to do my own.”
I had the determination to find my father’s killer and not only claim what is owed, but also collect interest on the debt. I did not know yet my method of revenge. Slicing the throat of those responsible for the Order would feel wonderful in the moment, but I am certain I would regret their lack of prolonged pain and torment.
I could try to ruin the leaders the way I did Lady Nora. Her elaborate embarrassment and death were a huge professional satisfaction for me. But the Order of the Labyrinth is a much more powerful organization than a single wealthy noblewoman, and far more elusive at that. Plus, it would be hard to ruin the reputation of the most notorious (and mysterious) pirates in the world, if such pirates even existed. Perhaps, like the Duke of The Duke’s Own, the leadership of the Order was only a story, and each part of the Order acted on its own accord. How would I ever take revenge against something so amorphous?
No, I would have to believe there was some single man, the decision maker behind every crime the Order perpetrated. Chopping off his hands would be good. Straightforward mutilation is always a good start if pain is what you’re after. Maybe cut out his tongue. I could cook it and feed it to him. Or slice open his gut and let him watch as his innards uncoil from his belly. How ghoulish. That wouldn’t do, either.
Planning was important, but it could certainly lead to disappointment. My opportunity may be brief. I might not even have time to tell him my name and his crimes before I pierce his heart. I needed to prepare myself for all possibilities. Would I be okay with his death if he did not know why he died? No, I thought. The revenge wasn’t in the death, but the moment of dawning realization just before death.
Who even was my mark? Perhaps if I were to someday join the inner circle of the Order, I could find the man who destroyed my family. And that man would know his sins. He would know me. He would hear my name, my story, and my victory. He would bleed out along with the whole Order of the Labyrinth.
With my eyes closed I could see him. I could not make out his face, nor discern his voice. Yet I knew that this evil man was waiting for me. Perhaps the future lives inside the eyelids as well. But how to get to that unknown man, if he existed as a single person, was still unclear. At this point, I was lying flat on my back in my narrow cot and cramped berth where I had lain each night for nearly a decade.
And as focused as I was on destroying this imaginary man, this leader I had conjured for the Order, I could not reach him. Even in my own daydream, I could not say anything that he could hear. He watched me struggle to act, and he laughed. I gritted my teeth and I could taste the metallic salt of my own blood. I could not wake myself up. I could only listen to the laughter grow louder.
3
I heard a soft rapping at the door, and opened my eyes. For a few moments I could not move. My mind had awoken from its failed dream, but my body had not. Another gentle tap on the door. A soft voice, “Captain? Are you in there, ma’am?”
My legs finally twitched. I arose and opened the door.
It was clever, sweet Samuel.
“We have some wine left. You want a glass?” he asked.
I invited him in and offered him the chair at my desk, seating myself on the edge of my cot. He poured us two glasses of wine and spoke while staring into his own. “I have a friend, a cook on an Order ship in the east. He came to see me when we returned to The Wasp, and he brought me highly interesting news. There’s an envoy of spice ships moving out of Persia, toward Spain. My friend tells me that his ship is one of many that the Order is sending against it.”
“Against it?”
“A heist, but also a war. The Order isn’t in the business of stealing spices. They’re in the business of stealing businesses. They’re going to lock down the Mediterranean and control the entire spice market.”
I grunted. Samuel studied me. “Bad dreams? Drink your wine, captain.”
I did. All of it. It was tart and dry. My mouth felt full of fur, and my throat swollen. My head felt lighter, though, like someone had removed my heavy skull from my tender neck. My shoulders loosened and my back straightened. I wished I had cold water instead of this fetid wine, but for all the discomfort my mouth was in, the rest of my body was grateful.
He filled my glass again.
“I’m not built for combat,” he continued. He was honest in his assessment. Samuel had a thin frame, but more importantly his expression was one of kindness, or maybe it was a kind veneer covering a firm sense of self-preservation. I couldn’t imagine him plunging a blade into another young man or being forcibly enlisted into battle to protect the wealthy from the desperate.
“But combat is not the totality of war,” he said. “I know you want to play a larger part in the Order of the Labyrinth. You’re ambitious.” He leaned toward me, dropping his voice although we were alone in the cabin. “I am too.”
I studied his face closely. I could see the ambition in his eyes, or perhaps it was the drink that had loosened him up. I wanted desperately to join this war, to be noticed by the highest command of the Order, but they don’t tend to send gilded invitations to join in their deadly festivities.
“Samuel, what led you to join the Order?”
He hesitated to ans
wer, sipping his wine and looking at his delicate hands.
“I always knew that I was smart enough to be part of great things. But where I am from, there are no great things. There are the crops and the animals. There is feeding yourself and your family. That is the limit of the horizon. I couldn’t accept that limit. A man came to my village, passing through on his way to the coast. He stopped at the inn and he asked me to take care of his horse. We started talking, and I suppose he saw something in me. He asked me to join him. The next day I rode out of town on the back of his horse. I haven’t seen my family since, but I have seen so much that I would not have otherwise seen.”
“Ambition has a deep price,” I agreed.
“But ambition has a vast reward. What of this news I bring you?”
“It will take some consideration,” I said.
“More wine?” he asked, with a conspiratorial wink. I accepted, and we turned our talk to lighter subjects, the weather in the nearby sea, the frantic eagerness of our newer deckhands freshly picked up from the ports of Europe.
We returned to Ca’Savio. Vlad was cradling the satchel of fingers in his palms and smiling. I almost thought I heard him singing to himself, or worse, singing to the fingers. He was reluctant to hand over the bag to Holger, but with a sad nod, he did.
Holger winced like a person who had just had a blood-stained bag full of body parts thrust at him. He accepted them, opened up the bag and counted the fingers.
“The constable really did have a family,” Holger said, surprised. “My god.”
“Holger, The Wasp is your best crew. We have successfully—and easily, I must add—plundered, swindled, and killed for the Order. My crew and I could do so much more.”
“I’m sure you can,” Holger said, not looking the least intrigued as to where I was going with this conversation.
“I hear the Order of the Labyrinth has engaged in a full-scale war on the Persian spice traders.” I had rehearsed this speech so many times I could have given it while napping. “This conflict could mean complete control of all Mediterranean shipping routes for the Order. The Wasp offers its excellent service to this cause.”
Holger didn’t say anything. I wished I had let the silence linger, had let him finish his thoughts, but my impatience compelled me to continue.
“You challenge us with bigger and bigger jobs, and every time we not only achieve your expectations but exceed them. We have yet to meet anyone in the Order except you. We cannot improve our status, unless we join our brethren in their endeavors.”
Holger considered me for another moment and then said, “If we’re going to undermine the trade ships coming from the east, we need to undermine the markets in the west. Livestock and vegetable farmers, dock owners, all the way down to small produce markets who buy from the wrong people. No more banks or casinos or large shipping conglomerates. We must remove the weeds so the flowers can grow.”
I did not like where this was headed.
“You and your crew will stay close to the coast. Intimidate people,” he said, “until we know they’ll buy our spices. Kill them if you have to. Kill them even if you don’t.”
Vlad clapped his hands vigorously at this.
I was crushed. My victims were moving down the hierarchy, not up. For the sake of the bigger picture, I agreed. I tried to picture my father’s face, but the memory was less clear every year, and I couldn’t quite recall it as it was.
“Report back to me,” Holger said. “Bring proof of what you’ve done.”
“More fingers,” Vlad interjected with delight.
“Fingers, legs, ears. Whatever,” Holger said, clearly regretting having asked for more severed body parts to be dropped in his lap. “But take their goods too. Think of it as a tax for the Order.”
I thanked him and we turned to leave. When I was nearly to the door, Holger shouted after me, “I made it up.”
“Excuse me?” I said, turning back.
“I visited Augsburg a few years back and met that constable at a tavern,” Holger said. “Nice man. Didn’t have a thing against him. Just someone I remembered. Poor fellow. Did you burn his house down? Members of the Order just love burning down houses.”
I could taste the bitterness of lemons again in my throat.
“The Order is pleased to know you’re willing to kill,” Holger said. “You’ve passed the test. But you can keep these.”
Holger lobbed the fingers back. Vlad cackled as he lunged forward to nestle the falling bag in his thick, dirty palms.
“I’ll make a necklace,” he squealed.
I didn’t speak as we returned to the ship. What were words against what I had done against an innocent man and his family? Searching for some excuse to think about anything else, I invited Vlad to my cabin and asked him a question that had been plaguing me for some years now. Vlad truly loved murder and I wanted to know why.
He cocked his head. The question “Why do you like to murder?” was to Vlad as the question “Why do you eat food?” was to any other person.
I decide to start with something simpler. “Vlad, have you ever been in love?”
“Azra,” Vlad said, a sudden smile across his sun-wrought face. The thick lines about his eyes and cheeks disappeared, as his face brightened. “She is in Chișinău.”
“Is that where you were born? Is that your home?”
“Those are two very different questions,” Vlad said, sadness drawing over his face like curtains at the end of an opera.
Vlad and Azra were both born in Chișinău. Vlad’s father had been a cobbler in Kursk, but a devastating fire shortly before Vlad was born sent the family south to find work. They had heard of a thriving city in Moldavia, and they moved to Chișinău. The Greek governance in Chișinău was friendly to Russians, for a while. But by the turn of the century, when Vlad was a teenager, political tensions grew between the Ottoman and Russian Empires.
He saw his father begin to struggle to find work. Vlad’s Greek, French, and Turkish friends began to shun him and his family. The only exception was Azra, the daughter of a wealthy Turkish banker. Vlad first saw Azra in a park, sketching swans and flowers. He noted that her pictures were not realistic, as was the classical fashion. She drew absurdly long necks on the birds, and silly faces that sometimes placed the beak above the eyes or trees in the background with human-like arms.
Azra’s pictures made Vlad laugh, and Vlad’s laughter made Azra feel understood. Azra’s father hated that she “did not take art seriously.” Vlad did not understand the history of classical painting. He only knew what he saw, and what he saw was funny and compelling. He loved her for it. And Azra loved Vlad for his honest admiration of her.
But a push by the Russian Empire to secure their land against the west led to a confrontation across Moldavia. Vlad, fifteen years old, and thus a grown man, was pressed into military service.
He fought the Turks, pushing as far south as Bucharest, quickly gaining the reputation of a madman, a fierce warrior who would not relent until all enemies were vanquished. The other soldiers in his unit encouraged his behavior by telling him to make earrings out of teeth or small bags out of scalps. He even tattooed tick marks for every soldier he killed, using a white-hot knife on his arm. His unit was the first time that anyone outside of his family, except Azra, showed him friendliness and acceptance. The more vicious he became, the more well liked he was by his comrades.
When the war ended in 1812, he returned home. Azra’s family remained in Chișinău, but the city was divided into Ottoman and Russian sides, and she was no longer allowed to speak to Vlad. He tried visiting her home and knocking on the door, but he was turned away by servants, never getting the chance to plead his love. He tried calling to her from below her window, but was arrested by Turkish police and sent back to the eastern, Russian part of the city with a stern warning of unmarked cells in unnamed prisons if he was found loitering again.
After a year back in Chișinău, he could not stand it anymore. He missed the wa
r, but there was no war, so he left for the Mediterranean, where he heard shipping conglomerates were looking for security against pirates. He found plenty of work, but it was dull. Eventually he met people from the Order of the Labyrinth, who recruited him, using the promise of constant adventure and violence as incentive.
I thought about my childhood friend Albert, who I had never made any attempt to contact. This wasn’t for my sake but for his. I didn’t want to intrude on the peace of his life. And it made me feel a little more stable, imagining that somewhere there was someone who had once been a part of my life who got to live in simple happiness, where no one was killed, where nothing was stolen. Still, I asked Vlad, “Have you ever written to Azra?”
He looked down at his hands.
“Do you know how to write or read, Vlad?”
An almost imperceptible shake of his head “no.”
“Vlad.” I placed my hand on his hands, folded meekly in his lap. “I will help you write a letter to Azra.”
“I want to write it in my own hand, my own words,” he said.
“And you will,” I said, and his rough hands squeezed mine in agreement.
4
So another three tedious years stopping in ports, doing Holger’s busy work, as the great war over the spice trade was fought somewhere else.
At each town, I would send Rebekah inland ahead of the crew, whom I had told to take an evening to get some drink and some rest before beginning the intimidation of mostly poor farm and dock workers the next day. I needed to give Rebekah time to do her work.