The Faceless Old Woman Who Secretly Lives in Your Home

by Joseph Fink

  Rebekah had crafted a hood, matching the Order of the Labyrinth men we had seen on countless ships in our years of pursuing higher membership. She would advance onto farms ahead of Nathan and the crew, in order to protect these innocent people. Rebekah could carry herself in a way that suggested someone tall and broad-shouldered, her voice deepening into a disaffected baritone. This mysterious pirate of the Order would advance on unsuspecting dock owners and warn them that they had to relieve all of their workers for the next day. Her associates would approach in the morning and claim a “tax” of food and merchandise. Failure to obey would lead to the abuse and possibly slaughter of many of their employees.

  André and Lora would go with The Wasp crew and try to mitigate any situations that could result in death, or uncontrolled violence. André developed a friendship with Vlad out of necessity, and a soft word from him could keep the Russian’s murderous urges at bay while Lora would offer to crush any dock owner who dared to protest the tax. Lora had exquisite control over her own body, so she could grab a man into her chest, leap, and slam him hard to the ground, an act that would appear, due to her size, to snap the man’s spine. But she would skillfully do this in a way that kept bones intact, if leaving the person unconscious and a little sore. This was the best plan we had for showing the Order we could brutalize the weak while still minimizing real harm.

  Between these stops we would occasion upon other ships of the Order with their black flags and white labyrinth emblems proudly extended in the wind. I did not know what I would do should one of these ships join us in our attack on the coastal farmers and merchants. It was one thing to fool Nathan and the Order members on The Wasp, but it would be an impossible task to con an entire brig of hooded men.

  But these ships never docked in any of our same ports. In fact, these ships never seemed to dock at all. Save for Holger, Señora Bover, and whatever crew had murdered my father, I had never heard of any members of the Order spotted on land. I had never seen them board another ship, or even engage in combat. My only knowledge of these other Order sailors was that they were all the same height, neither tall nor short, and that they wore hoods.

  By spring of 1828, my crew had wounded thousands of innocent farmers, merchants, and traders. The number of dead had to be in the dozens, and I was no closer to the inner sanctum of the Order of the Labyrinth than the day Señora Bover brought me to this ship. I had encountered at least a hundred other vessels that shared our flag, but I had never meaningfully spoken with any of their crew, let alone captains.

  We approached southern Spain, and I ordered Samuel to take us to Barcelona. When we docked, I told Nathan to give the crew a full night and next day off. No more intimidations. We would return to Ca’Savio in two days with our current bounty, which was more than enough for Holger.

  “You tell the crew to take some time to enjoy ourselves, captain,” Nathan said, “but you and your friends never join us. You should come have drinks with your men, so they do not feel you dislike them.”

  “I have a someone I must see tonight.”

  “Who is this someone?” Nathan said, a touch of suspicion in his tone.

  “It is none of your business,” I said. Then I said, “It’s my uncle,” and hoped to leave it at that. I did not want to explain my close relationship to Edmond, a longtime member of The Duke’s Own, which rivaled the Order for control of the continent. This nearly familial kinship with an enemy could do more than get me blacklisted by the Order of the Labyrinth. “Unless stories of me playing checkers as a child is information you are required to be filled in on, I believe you are done here, first mate.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said, in a polite and even tone, and we parted ways till morning.

  I called on Edmond at his home, and he welcomed me in with a long hug and a glowing smile. His face was more worn than the last time I saw him some three years before, like a parchment that had been wadded up and smoothed back out. Edmond had always felt much older to me, because I knew him as a child, but fourteen years at sea with the Order had put me in my mid-thirties. Edmond was fifty-one. He was ten years younger than my father, which did not read to me when I was a girl, but age gaps dwindle over time, and given my friendships with men even older than Edmond, I only now realized we more resembled close colleagues than a child and guardian.

  “You’re a damn captain, you are,” he said in our embrace. He pulled back, his hands on my elbows.

  “I am,” I managed.

  “You don’t seem happy about it.”

  “Let’s get some ale first.” I sat, allowing myself to feel the years of exhaustion.

  “Sounds like we need something finer than that.” He excused himself, returning a few minutes later with a bottle.

  “Svitzian wine usually tastes of fortified treacle, but this,” Edmond held up the dusty bottle with an ornate label emblazoned with a sketch of a dragon devouring a ewe, “is like black pepper and honey but with the body of a beef broth.”

  We sat at the great table adjacent to the parlor, and a servant brought us goblets, opened the wine, and poured.

  Edmond and I touched glasses, and I sipped the stolen wine—no doubt pilfered from peasants by The Duke’s Own. He was right about the taste, at first savory and thick, like soup, but as it washed over the tongue, there was a pinprick of spice underneath a sweet nectar. It wasn’t cloying, more like tea gently dabbed with sugar and blood.

  “How is Señora Bover?”

  “Who?” He looked genuinely puzzled.

  “The old woman—your neighbor—always out on the stoop, outside your home.”

  “Ah,” he said. “Yes. I’m sorry. I don’t think I ever spoke a word to her. She was an old woman, wasn’t she? I fear in the many years you have been gone, she may have passed.”

  I was certain she was neither dead, nor an old woman. I told Edmond as such. I filled him in on Señora Bover and The Wasp. He set down his wine in astonishment.

  “I certainly knew you had joined the Order. You have written me about your many adventures, but I had no idea I had been living over a spy. A spymaster who cannot spot spies at his own doorstep is a poor spymaster indeed.”

  “Edmond, I’m worried that the Order already knows about my relationship with you. Señora Bover watched your work for years. My first mate, who was assigned to me by the Order, fills journal after journal with the details of every day at sea, and, I think, the details of my every move. If they knew you were . . .”

  “Sshhh,” he said. “I am your uncle, child. I am your guardian. My work has nothing to do with yours, and we will not talk about business here.”

  Suddenly aware of how many corners a person could hide in within a room that big, I nodded and sat completely silent.

  Edmond laughed and said, “Oh, just keep your voice down and tell me what you have been up to.”

  I told Edmond about our adventures, and about Holger. I then told him (quietly) what I heard from Samuel about the war the Order was waging on Persian spice ships out east. I told him how desperately I wanted to join this war.

  “Your little ship doesn’t sound like it could handle being that far out at sea,” he said, “let alone engage in full-on naval battles. My spies tell me the fighting has been vicious. Neither side is willing to relent even a little.”

  “Edmond,” I leaned in and whispered carefully, “you know what I want. I need to move up in the ranks. This organization is as shadowed as the faces of their sailors. For fourteen years, I have not had my position brighten at all. I have tried to impress Holger, to communicate with the other vessels of the Order, but nothing is different. I have grown wealthier but angrier, and I am no closer to my true purpose.”

  “A job that brings you wealth is nothing to be ashamed of.” As he said this, he snapped his fingers and the servant returned to pour us more wine.

  He was attempting to mollify me and change the conversation, but this only made me more determined. “I’m torn because of Nathan, my first mate,” I continu
ed, still in a low voice. “I must impress him, as I am certain his journals are being sent off to those above Holger, but he does not want me to deviate from the small jobs assigned to us, even though it was my initiative in bringing down Lady Nora that earned my role in the Order in the first place.”

  The wine had gone to my temper instead of my stomach.

  Edmond placed his hand on the table in front of me. “Do you remember what I told you about the art of persuasion?”

  “When I was a child,” I said. “You told me that if you made me go to bed, I’d rebel. But if you could manipulate the situation so that I believed the idea to go to bed was my own, then I would happily go.”

  He nodded. “A first mate, a spouse, a friend, anyone in this world, is no different than a child in this matter. You must not tell Nathan what to do. Nothing must ever be your idea.”

  “I must make him arrive at the idea on his own.”

  Edmond raised his glass to me. “You were always the bright one. Now can we talk about something else? I’m tired of whispering.”

  We talked about smaller things. Edmond had taken up poetry. I told him about Rebekah teaching me how to sew, which I think was just Rebekah’s ploy to get me to mend Lora’s clothes, a task too much for any one person. As we were finishing our meal and last drinks, I thought about asking Edmond if he remembered Albert, but save for those few final moments as we left the estate, Edmond would never have met Albert.

  I spent the rest of my life thankful that I did not bring up Albert in that beautiful room, over those glasses of beautiful wine.

  “It’s late. I must get some rest,” he said, the lines in his face deepened by the candlelight below us. “Stay here tonight. I’ll have a room readied for you.”

  I agreed, and that night, on the largest, softest bed I had experienced in decades, I dreamed.

  My crew and I were boarding rival pirate ships, taking their gold and executing each sailor, one by one. I walked down the line of men, each one on their knees, hands tied behind their back, and I looked them in their eyes. I told them my name and that they should remember my face in whatever world was next. And I cut their throats. One after another I repeated this.

  Then I came upon one man. He looked up at me and he had Albert’s face. Not whatever Albert looked like as an adult, but the young face of the boy I knew and loved from childhood. I stopped. Vlad yelled, “Execute them all!” He was floating several feet in the air, his red-lined eyes matching the ruby blood pouring from his mouth. He wore a necklace of fingers and each finger squirmed, beckoning me upward to Vlad’s strange place in the sky.

  I could not execute the man before me. Albert’s face was so innocent, I could not kill this beautiful sailor. I said, “Albert.” Not a question, a confirmation.

  “Albert,” I said again. “Remember when we swam together in the cove?”

  But he did not respond.

  André put his hand on my shoulder. He looked like Lora, in every way he was Lora, but in the dream I knew it was André. “He is not who you think,” André said.

  I looked back at the sailor with the face of Albert. The face seemed to be melting, it looked fake. Just then I realized he was wearing a hood. He was neither tall nor short.

  Vlad, in the air, was changing, and I realized it was not Vlad but Rebekah disguised as Vlad. The fingers moved obscenely on her necklace. “It’s not him,” she called. “He’s not who you think he is.”

  When I looked again at Albert, I could no longer see his face. I tried to move back, but found I was paralyzed. The man with no face who was not tall and was not short watched me struggle to move and laughed. I knew that laughter. I had heard it before.

  Then Rebekah as Vlad swooped down, opening her mouth and screeching like a bird, and grabbed me. I flopped awake. I was alone in my bed in Edmond’s Barcelona home, listening to the screeching of birds outside. It sounded a little like laughter.

  Not able to return to sleep, I cleaned and dressed myself in the lavender glow of predawn.

  I wrote Edmond a note thanking him for his kindness, but before I left, I went to his study, only two doors down from my room on the second floor. I lit a lantern and looked at the hundreds of leather-bound books I saw along the walls. There were histories of empires, most of which began with a rise, and ended with a fall, although some ended with a transformation. There were Greek classics of reason, logic, and philosophy. There were Christian Bibles written in dozens of languages. There were odes to something called the Brown Stone Spire written in archaic language and with what appeared to be blood instead of ink.

  I had no particular book I was looking for. I was a woman with questions, and no answers. Books can help with that, but only if you know what it is you seek. I wanted only to learn something, anything, about the Order of the Labyrinth. For an organization as large as theirs, there must certainly be books, histories, something written on them, but I found very little. In a book about the history of pirates of North Africa, I found a mention of ships bearing a Labyrinth emblem, but it read as rumor or conspiracy. The ships had no history of combat, only that they were often seen along the coasts.

  Another book about the Turkish textile trade, I found the phrase “the labyrinth flag.” The book referred to the group of ships which bore the labyrinth flag as a peaceful private business. “It is uncertain what goods this organization brings across shipping routes, only that they carry unmarked crates that seem to radiate light,” the book said.

  I could not even find the phrase “The Order of the Labyrinth,” only passing mention, and unattributed lore about boats that share a fondness for glowing crates and black flags. People feared and fled from these ships, but I found no accounts of interactions, nor a single name of anyone who had ever been aboard one of these ships. I despaired at the thought that I might never penetrate this organization, that my life would run out without ever getting to see the face of my father’s killer. I could not keep following Holger. In fourteen years, I had moved no higher than when I first set foot on The Wasp. I had to get Nathan to convince himself to join the Order’s war on Persian spice traders. It was the only chance I had.

  I left Edmond’s and hired a carriage to take me to the port. Along the way, I saw a small vegetable stand burned to the ground. A hundred feet on, a market with all of its windows shattered. Inside I saw a woman hunched over a body, her face pressed into her blood-stained hands, as she heaved great gulping sobs.

  A crowd had gathered, each person talking quickly and loudly, trying to piece together every account of the violence on this street. I began to slow the carriage, so I could help in some way, or find out what happened. On the rooftop above the scene, I saw a man lurching, stumbling and clutching his chest. It was the man, the phantom, who had followed me my entire life. His eyes bulged obscenely from their sockets, only a slight tilt of the head away from falling out completely. He clutched his blood-soaked chest as he mouthed silently, “Why?” No one in the concerned crowd noticed him. I did not know who this man was, or what he wanted from me, but he had become as natural a part of my life as the passing of years. And like the passing of years, I feared him terribly. I told the driver to hurry, and I left.

  There were more destroyed shops and vendors at the port. I reached The Wasp as dawn became day to find our whole crew cleaning the deck. Nathan, in his finest silk shirt and perfectly polished boots, saw me and smiled.

  “You are up early, captain,” he said. “The crew and I were too, so we got some work done.”

  “What have you done?” I said, my voice breathy and desperate.

  “You don’t look happy? Why would a captain not be happy with an overachieving crew?”

  I looked around for André, Rebekah, and Lora.

  “Your friends are in the galley. For some reason, they seem disappointed too. Have I not done a good job, captain? I could send our men out to do more, to really pave the way for the Order. I know you would like to impress the Order of the Labyrinth.” I wanted to punch
him, but I needed to keep him and his journals reflecting my best intentions for the Order if I were ever to lift my status higher than captain of The Wasp.

  “First mate, I ordered rest and relaxation. You deliberately disobeyed me,” I said loud enough for the crew to hear. “Your work, and the work of this crew, is of the highest quality. I thank you all for your dedication. But when I give an order you follow it. Is that clear?”

  Nathan smirked. “Yes, captain.”

  I went below deck to my cabin and talked to Rebekah, André, and Lora. They were caught unaware by Nathan’s early morning attack on the workers of Barcelona, and they had done nothing to prepare the people of this city.

  I called for our navigator, Samuel, and he joined us shortly.

  “Nathan smells weakness,” he said.

  “Forget Nathan. What else do you know of the war on the Persian traders?” I asked.

  “I bought Persian maps which show their Mediterranean trade routes. I also met an Egyptian merchant in the bar who told me the Persians often stop in Cyprus where taxes are lower, and they can hire gunboats for escorts. I’ve been trying to get hold of my friend on the other Order boat, but there has been no word from him since they left for war.”

  “I’m impressed with your enthusiasm,” I said.

  “Captain, we should be in the east, taking over spice ships, instead of roughing up poor Catalan farmers.”

  I knew Vlad would be up for a war as well. I had been teaching Vlad to read and write for the past four years. He began sending letters once a month to Azra, finding messengers in ports and paying them gold for a promise to carry the letters overland. Sure, some of these messengers might discard the letter and keep the gold, but we hoped that with enough letters sent some of them would feel obligated to make good on their promises, especially with the possibility of running into someone so enthusiastically violent as Vlad again in the future.

  The early letters had a stilted, childlike charm (“Hello. I am Vlad. I am fine. How are you?”) but by late last year, he had begun to incorporate some more advanced poetic elements (“Hello. I am happily Vlad. I am like a dog who is happy but lost. I want to hear your laughter again. Your laughter is like a rose that can laugh in a nice way.”) I didn’t edit Vlad. He insisted on writing his own letters. Sadly, no messages from Azra had ever made their way back. Vlad had begun to think she did not love him anymore, or worse, did not remember him. I reassured him that it’s possible her parents were hiding the letters from her, and maybe she had never seen them, or none of the messengers she had sent back had bothered to find The Wasp.