The Faceless Old Woman Who Secretly Lives in Your Home

by Joseph Fink

  The remaining crew appeared to be in the dark about Nathan’s ultimate plans. They clearly had been ordered to fight if we should return, but their faces showed bewilderment at the reasoning behind this. We were able to disarm the four men on the top deck and haul them tied up aboard Iraj’s gunboat, where Rebekah watched over them.

  I opened the hatch and was immediately greeted by the sinewy, round faced boy from the staged fight with Vlad. His immense leg muscles propelled him up the steps, and I fell back into a defensive position. Still, it was one man against three. Worse for him, he didn’t see Lora behind him with the slop bucket. Lora rang the wooden pail hard down onto the young man’s crown and he collapsed immediately.

  One more unlucky (or unskilled) sailor followed, succumbing to the same bucket. Then two more, who saw what happened to the ones before them, and managed to dodge Lora’s attacks. But not the subsequent attacks from me and André. By my count, we had only Vlad, Samuel, and Nathan remaining.

  André and I climbed below. The suffocatingly narrow passageway was empty. I made way immediately for Nathan’s berth while André rooted out the others. Lora remained on deck to stop any potential escapees.

  Nathan’s tiny room was empty. I peeked under his bunk to see if he was hiding. He was not there. But he had left his log book, which I opened and read. It was not a normal log book, detailing our journeys across the sea. I knew that already. But it was also not a journal recording my actions for the upper ranks of the Order of the Labyrinth.

  A small involuntary croak burst from my throat as I read. Again I tasted lemons, sharp and sour and awful across my tongue. From behind me, I heard, “Captain! You made it.”

  It was Samuel. He was nervously looking over his shoulder. Down the hallway, perhaps even below in the hold, I could hear fighting and shouts. I drew my sword on Samuel.

  “Captain, I had no part of Nathan’s mutiny,” he whined. “Nathan plans to use the gunpowder in the hold to blow the ship. He’s going to light the fuse, and jump to your gunboat, leaving you and your friends to die.”

  I eyed Samuel carefully. I had always liked Samuel, but I could not trust him here. Did Nathan betray the entire mission by abandoning us in Cyprus, or had Samuel known since the beginning? It was Samuel, after all, who had navigated us to our doom.

  “Why are you telling me this, Samuel? Undermining your superior is mutiny.”

  “Nathan’s gone mad. Follow me. We have to get to the hold to stop him.”

  I dropped Nathan’s log book and the horror it contained. “You’re a good one, Samuel,” I said, placing a compassionate hand on his shoulder and my other on his waist. “Thank you for always looking out for me.”

  I followed Samuel down the narrow passageway to the hatch leading to the hold. From behind me I heard a loud thud. I turned to see the door to my own cabin at the far end of the hall, broken open. Lying in the shattered wood, bruised and bleeding, was Nathan. Standing over him was André. “The coward hides in the captain’s quarters,” André said with a laugh.

  Samuel, of course, had lied. I knew he would lie, which was why I had taken the opportunity back in Nathan’s berth to slip his dagger off his belt.

  Samuel reached for the scabbard. In doing so, he simultaneously recognized that, one, his blade was gone, and, two, he had confirmed his own deception. He asked with a defeated sigh, “Captain, what else was I to do?”

  I threw his own dagger into his eye. I was still an excellent blade thrower. The knife went in smooth and rattled sharply as it cracked through the bone of his socket. He wheezed and was on the floor, done but not dead. Death would take another ten minutes at least.

  If the hold was Samuel’s trap, then there was only one person who could be waiting for me there. I opened the hatch and climbed down. The hold was dark, save for a single lantern by the narrow, steep stairs. I pulled it from its mooring and walked slowly.

  “Vlad?” I called. No answer.

  “Vlad, you’re the only one left. I know Samuel wanted you to kill me, and you, of anyone on this ship, are capable of doing that.”

  I heard a breath, or maybe just a draft from the open hatch, to my right. I turned the light in that direction, but saw no one. The hold had mostly been emptied out, but it was still so dark.

  The breath again. I walked cautiously toward it, continuing to speak. “Vlad, I care for you greatly. I hope you care for me too. I think you do. We grew so close, writing letters to Azra.”

  The breath sounded like a sob. It was coming from behind the stack of sacks to my left. I stepped carefully around them and shone my lantern in the corner, illuminating Vlad, shivering and tentatively raising a long knife.

  “Vlad, you stopped taking writing lessons from me. I hope you were not discouraged by Azra not writing.”

  “No,” Vlad said through a quivering lip.

  “Why then?”

  “Embarrassed.”

  “I never wanted you to feel embarrassed. I’m sorry.”

  “Not you. Azra. She wrote me back.”

  “Vlad, that’s wonderful. What did she say?”

  “She said she misses me too, and wants to see me again.” His knife trembled a little closer to me. “And I was scared to write again, because her letter was so smart, so easy to read. I read it over and over, and it was perfect, but mine was. . . . It was not good. She cannot love me, because I am a monster. Because I am not smart enough to read her books.”

  “Vlad.” Tears came to my eyes, and I tried my damnedest not to let them, because I needed above all to be able to see. There was still a good chance that Vlad would lunge at me. “You are the most beautiful man, so sincere, so loyal. You know what you said is not true. Give me the knife and tell me about her letter.”

  Vlad wept too, but he held his blade tight. I twitched apprehensively toward the hilt of my sword, but before I could take action, he turned the knife, handed it to me, and leaned forward to hug his tutor, his captain.

  I held him tight for a moment, and then pulled away to look into his eyes. “Oh, Vlad,” I said. “Please forgive me.” I swung the lantern across the side of his jaw, knocking him unconscious.

  We sailed both ships to Malta. Once there, we loaded all of the munitions, weapons, and provisions from both ships into The Wasp, and left Vlad and the others with the gunship in Valletta. We took Nathan with us. I waved good-bye to Vlad as The Wasp pulled away, but he did not reciprocate. Once to sea, we sailed directly for Barcelona.

  Rebekah stayed on the quarterdeck, looking thoughtfully back to land.

  “We’ve left Vlad with the faster ship,” she said.

  “And nothing else,” I said. “By the time he raised weapons and men in port, we’d be out of range.”

  “You could have at least taken their sails.”

  Ah, when Rebekah was right, she was right. On our long trip west, we took turns on lookout, but in any case, we never saw that gunship again.

  Upon arrival in Barcelona, I sent a messenger into town with an urgent letter for Edmond, telling him to meet me at my ship. That dispatched, I gathered Lora, André, and Rebekah.

  “Thank you, dear friends. You fought for me and would have died for me. Please know I would do the same for any of you. But I am through now. The Order of the Labyrinth is a foul trick played upon us, and I cannot have you risking your future families, future wealth, future loves, or any other kind of future anything for me when I have been so wrong for so long. I have one final thing I must do, alone.”

  There was the solemn silence that follows heartfelt words.

  “Don’t be stupid,” Lora said. “We’re staying.”

  “This was your big speech?” André said. “You used to be better at this stuff.”

  Rebekah folded her arms.

  They were the best friends I could ever have had and I did not deserve them. “Please,” I said. “If you wish to show me loyalty and love. If you wish to stand behind me. Do it by listening to me here. It is not cowardice or distrust. I can only do w
hat I do next alone.”

  Now the silence truly had weight. And it was Rebekah who finally nodded and embraced me. André, seeing her give in, shrugged. “I won’t force my company upon you. But do drop in someday, please. I feel life will get so boring without you.” Finally Lora swept us all up in her arms and we were lifted from the floor, our gang of thieves, saying our good-byes.

  “We will see each other again. I am certain, but for now our adventures are at an end,” I said. “Lora, please set us down, I can hardly breathe.” André gave a muffled grunt of agreement. “Weaklings,” scoffed Lora and let us go.

  And so my friends departed The Wasp for the last time. I had no idea if and when I would see them again. It seemed to me that perhaps I never would.

  Edmond arrived forty minutes later, and I greeted him at the gangway. He was smiling and soft-eyed as usual, holding open his arms upon seeing me. I stepped back, refusing to touch him. I expected confusion in his eyes, but what I saw was cold knowing.

  “Your crew is on leave, I take it?” he asked, even though he already had his answer.

  “Who are the Order of the Labyrinth?” I asked, even though I already had my answer.

  I didn’t let him respond. “They carry crates,” I continued. “They are not tall nor short. They do not interact with us unless they have to. They are as part of the world as the wind and rain.”

  The words fell out of my mouth effortlessly. I had known all of this ever since I left my father’s body at our burned estate, but I had stashed it away. I had poured this knowledge into a bottle, and let it age and collect dust deep in the cellar of my conscience. And now the vintage was uncorked, its bouquet opening up, bitter and sharp.

  “They do not steal the crates,” I said. “The crates belong to no one and everyone. Perhaps there are entire worlds inside the crates. Perhaps there is nothing, and the transport of the crates is its own purpose. The Order does not steal anything, nor have any interest in other activities. I was never in the Order. They are a fog, a storm, a breeze, a forest. They are true to their name. They are a labyrinth, bigger than human greed or power.

  “I read Nathan’s journal. I read the notes he made for you. You staged all of this. Over two decades of my life. Why did you do this?”

  I tasted the hot salt of sweat and tears on my dry lips. When I thought of all those wasted years. My father hadn’t wanted me to spend my life this way, and yet I had foolishly stepped into the trap, like a child. And even though I had reached my middle years, that is what I felt like. I felt like a child, a foolish little girl tricked one more time by her uncle Edmond.

  There was a moment where Edmond did not react, and then he gave a short laugh. I knew that laugh. I had once dreamed that laugh, as my sleeping mind had desperately tried to warn me of what my waking mind hadn’t yet realized. When he spoke, it was with an airy casualness, as though we were chatting in his parlor.

  “I’m getting old,” he sighed. “Before I die, I want to have a son. I want to settle down someplace nice and enjoy my wealth and my wine. You pushed my hand, but perhaps it was time anyway. And this fool,” he indicated Nathan, still beaten and tied up on the deck, “couldn’t keep you in line.”

  “Edmond, the Order has no interest in human affairs. And so it had no interest in our little smuggling operation.”

  Edmond looked bemused and tolerant, the same face as when he mock cheated at games when I was a child, and let me catch him doing it.

  “And so the threat you brought to us was false. And so the Order did not kill my father.” There had been a slow awareness over the last weeks, a dawning of understanding. But even still, as I put it together out loud, I felt the shock in my teeth, and tasted it in my saliva. I took a step off the gangway, onto the dock. “And so the Order did not burn the house, or watch me for years, or send me to do random acts of cruelty up and down the Mediterranean. You did all of this to me and my father.” I took another step closer to Edmond. “You had him killed.” I could barely voice the words.

  “It really did take you a long time to figure that out,” he said. “And you used to be so clever as a girl.”

  The world went fuzzy behind my tears, and I wiped them away so I could look that devil in his eyes. I voiced the question that had plagued me as soon as my doubts had come to the surface of my mind. “What did we do to you that caused so much damage, so much pain, that you needed to destroy not just my father, but his daughter too?”

  “Your father betrayed me.” Edmond dropped his causal air and showed for a moment the real malice beneath. “He betrayed my trust, my friendship, my livelihood. We were small time. We were nothing. Unless we joined The Duke’s Own, we’d spend the rest of our lives doing the same tiny nothings for the same tiny no ones.”

  I wanted to lunge at him, drive my sword into his neck, and it is with great regret that I did not, but my mind was spinning madly. I only took another step closer. Far beyond him, at the city gate, I thought I saw a familiar man lurching stiffly along, blood running down his shirt, mouth open in his silent scream.

  “Again and again I begged him to allow us to join The Duke’s Own,” Edmond said. “But again and again he refused and for the same reason: you. His family. His legacy. My fortune held up for a proud man’s legacy.”

  “My father vowed never to allow me to become a criminal, or a pirate, or a smuggler.”

  “And yet you became all three,” Edmond said. “I killed your father, yes. It needed to be done. If he wouldn’t join The Duke’s Own, then he was a competitor. So killing him became my ticket into their ranks. Proof of my usefulness to them. A nasty necessity.”

  “Then you blamed the Order so I wouldn’t know.”

  “Yes, it gave a rather large target for your revenge. A life lived for revenge, by any means necessary. Needless to say, your father would have hated that. So perhaps it was sadistic, that final twist of the knife. Taking away his precious legacy. But we are,” he shrugged, the airy act returning, “all allowed our vices.”

  I was within striking distance. Just do it, I told myself. Just do it, I say to myself centuries later.

  “You manipulated me.”

  “I told stories. I surrounded you with my spies, Holger, Samuel, Nathaniel, Señora Bover, all playing different parts in the play of your life. But it was you, child, who chose. Every choice, it was always you.”

  My stomach twitched, acid again burning my mouth. I had thought I was doing this for my father. It was love, I had thought. And in doing so I had allowed myself to betray his memory. I felt almost as though I were the fraud and the monster, not Edmond. After all, Edmond was right. It was always me making the choices that betrayed my father’s memory. Somewhere there was a version of this life where I walked away from the estate with Albert instead of with Edmond. But I hadn’t, and every choice after had been mine.

  I took one last step closer to Edmond, my sword pointed at his throat.

  “Sadly, I could only stretch the story this far,” said Edmond. “I am in my fifties. Still so much time left. It is a shame to end it all so soon.”

  “You have no time left,” I said, as I finally swung my blade. But two burly arms crashed over mine, and my sword tumbled out of my hands. Edmond stepped back, unharmed.

  “I thought you might react this way,” he said. “So I arranged for a friend of yours.”

  I heard heaving thick breaths behind me and I knew who it was. The man I had left with a boat much faster than The Wasp, and I hadn’t even taken the sails.

  “Vlad,” I cried. “Vlad why are you here? Are you not returning home to Chișinău? To see Azra?”

  “Shut up,” Vlad growled, then laughed. I kicked my legs and tried to bite his arms, but he was so much bigger than me.

  “Finally got her,” Nathan said, through sunburnt chapped lips. “Let’s get out of here.”

  “No. You’ll stay,” Edmond said politely, stepping around Vlad, climbing up the gangway and in a balletic, single motion pulling his sword and plung
ing it into Nathan’s neck. Nathan gurgled a final unintelligible word and flopped like a bag of lentil beans onto the deck.

  I screamed, but Vlad held me tighter.

  “Vlad. No! I’m sorry I struck you. I’m sorry I abandoned you. I had to get home. How much did he pay you? Is it worth killing the only person who ever believed in you? Believed you could find your lost love. Vlad!”

  I kept talking, and kicking. Vlad was standing right at the lip of the pier, holding me over the cold black edge of the sea. I no longer hoped to live. I only hoped that Vlad’s sword completed the task swiftly. I was a child again, standing on the high rock, not wanting to jump. It is not the water I feared. It was the fall.

  Vlad lifted me by my collar and let out one final coyote howl of a laugh as he stuck his sword deep into my gut, deep enough that I could feel the sharp rip of the blade’s exit from my lower back. Edmond nodded and said something. I couldn’t understand quite what as my senses were failing. I tried to call out, to say one final thing to my father’s killer, to my life’s undoing. But Edmond was already walking away, back toward his elegant and elaborate city home, afforded by betrayal and murder. As he went, Vlad dropped my limp body, and I splashed down into the choppy water below.

  I sank, my muscles rigid with shock and panic, the weight of oceans upon me, pressing my body down, down, down. I could not calm myself enough to patiently await imminent death. My vision left me. I was alone underwater, in a void of my own making. But then something was pulling me up, and I felt annoyed. It was peaceful in my void. Let me stay there. I would have waved away Vlad’s hands if I had the strength. He pulled me from the water. My vision returned with a blear of sunlight. I gulped and wheezed and spit a pint of saltwater from my nose and mouth. My belly and chest burned intensely. I could not move.

  “He is gone,” Vlad said quietly into my ear. “I will take you to a doctor now. I must do what Edmond said. But you will live. I am good with the sword and know how to avoid heart and lungs—a lesson from the master torturers of Bucharest. I studied there many years. Best student they ever had.”