The Left-Hand Way

by Tom Doyle

  “Natural for sons to want to surpass their fathers.” Dale’s father sometimes had an emotionally careful way of putting things, but Dale still heard his statement as So, you think you’re better than me?

  They were walking past the Roppongi Cemetery, a spiritual maw of darkness in its center into which the local energy spun in a slow, twisting vortex.

  Dale stopped walking and heard the distant telltale of trailing feet stopping too late. Not much more time for chat. “OK, Dad,” he whispered quickly, “I’m going to try this hypothesis out on you. When our revered ancestor Joshua called the other Families in for the siege of Roderick and Madeline, it wasn’t just because his grandpa Elijah had disappeared. The Left Hand was too close to finding something.”

  “They looked, they failed. Leave it be. This path is the one I was afraid of, the one I tried to keep you away from.” Agitated, he was fading into the fog. “Leave it be.”

  Knowing better than to try to summon his father back, Dale pivoted and started walking briskly. The tailing steps kept pace, but didn’t try to approach, so nothing acutely unpleasant seemed in the offing, except Dale’s having to think of his next move. He had no further leads. Maybe Kaguya-san and his father were right, and he should go home. His father was definitely correct about the money trail: it ended here with his father’s return flight. When Dad had next turned up in the record, it’d been in the woods near Mount Weather, Virginia, and he’d been raving.

  Only in between here and Virginia, his dad had found something, and he seemed worried that Dale would too, which meant the quest wasn’t impossible.

  Sensing a change in the tailing rhythm, Dale looked back in the direction of Roppongi Cemetery. Nobody, not even a ghost. Roppongi Cemetery had few spirits, and few of those had the substance of craft veterans. All those war ghosts were somewhere else.

  Then it hit him—one place he could go. Where his father, a Morton, would have gone for information if the living weren’t talking: the Yasukuni Shrine to the Japanese War Dead. Dale would wait until it opened tomorrow, and not risk a nighttime break-in. Shit, here he was again, going to the Underworld, only this wouldn’t be the mine theater or Elysian field of the Appalachian’s Sanctuary, but a true Hell, human-made and terrible beyond myth.

  The trailing footsteps left off just before Dale reached his hotel. Dale was following footsteps too, and for his father, this way had led to madness.

  * * *

  When the sun rose, Dale itched again to talk with Scherie. But he kept to contact discipline and told himself that she must be fine.

  No shadow trailed him by daylight as he taxied to Yasukuni, passing near Budokan. I don’t want you to want me, he sang to himself, thinking of what he would find at the shrine.

  As Dale approached the shrine’s main hall, he ignored the museum to his right, with its suicide machines of war, and couldn’t see the smaller shrine for foreign war dead, as it, unlike the main shrine, attempted no permanent binding of souls. He hoped the main hall, with its traditional broad and curved tiled roof, would be close enough, as the spirit house behind it was barred to the public.

  A gray-haired, white-robed priest stood at the line of the large posts and double lintel of the last torii gate as if to block Dale’s path, but when Dale came close, the priest smiled, bowed, and backed out of the way. This was the first thing that scared Dale: they might want him here.

  As Dale passed through the torii, he felt a low rumble of sentience. The craft glowed in a way familiar to him from his own House—a grave light display like a horror-show Christmas. Yasukuni might seem to the unaided eye like many other Shinto shrines across Japan, but a craftsman could see its true distinction: this place was a magnificent and heinous spiritual trap.

  The mechanism was quite simple; its success inexplicable. The craft priests listed the names of those who died during a war and then ritually “enshrined” them—that is, bound them to this spot for eternity. Most of the enshrined dead were from the Second World War. The ritual didn’t catch everyone that it named, but even a 10 percent success rate would mean two hundred thousand souls, and the Shinto priests were much better at their craft than 10 percent. So many souls made the spiritual force of the House of Morton seem puny.

  Dale called these trapped spirits “souls” because, once enshrined, no other spiritual echo of these soldiers could ever be found. If something like a true soul survived after death, Yasukuni appeared to bind it.

  Dale understood the political protests against “honoring” war criminals at Yasukuni, but the poor mundanes had it all wrong. This sort of binding was the worst type of punishment, and the protests should be for all those craftless and relatively innocent souls trapped here, away from family and friends, identity slowly crushed and fused with an angry, suffering mass.

  Why did those priests do this horrible thing? Because it made Yasukuni a spiritual engine of tremendous power. The official story was that the craft priests had hoped that, properly used, Yasukuni could have turned the tide of the war with a literal spirit wind, or kamikaze, and right up until the bitter end, some political leaders believed them. But wiser heads prevailed, as any Imperial craftsman could see that Yasukuni had become too powerful and raging to tap without risking all Japan. By the time Japan surrendered, it was too late for the Allied or Japanese magi to do anything about this spiritual reactor, as an attempt to defuse it might set it off.

  For Dale, caring greatly about these soldiers’ souls could have been considered hypocrisy. He had some of his own family’s spirits bound forever at the House, and that those spirits were all Left-Hand might seem too fine a distinction here. But he allowed himself to care anyway; it was good moral hygiene against the ever-present Left-Hand voice in his brain.

  In the constitutionally enforced peace, the shrine had grown quieter from decade to decade, like a radioactive site as the waste decays in the cold mathematical progression of half-lives. The ambient energy had helped power the miraculous postwar recovery and rise to economic greatness, but such material concerns would have seemed trivial to those who had designed Yasukuni. Some old craft priests still prayed for the day that they’d find a greater use for this power.

  To Dale’s ears, the noise of the shrine was like the cacophony of Yoyogi Park, where dozens of rock bands played at once, each separated from the next by only fifty feet or so. The shrine mixed screams of horror and ecstasy with a polyrhythmic drumming, like the beating of many giant hearts driven to synchronize and resisting beyond their last breaths.

  What had Dad been up to? Dale hadn’t slept well while trying to figure out what his father’s questions to the shrine might have been. Then, Dale decided that he’d simply ask the shrine: What did my father want to know?

  Dale didn’t attempt to go into the main hall proper, but stood before it in the middle of the courtyard, as if waiting outside the barred window of a jail the size of a world. With a penknife, he cut his hand under his jacket and let the blood drip onto the concrete courtyard. No one tried to help or stop the stupid gaijin; apparently, no priest cared if he wanted to stick his head in this monster’s cage.

  He hoped he wouldn’t require the death trance to speak with these spirits, but only one way to find out. “Good day, honorable spirits. My name is Dale Morton of the House of Morton. Would discussion of my father be convenient?”

  The chaotic screams and flashing grave lights stopped. Various Japanese voices broke the silence from all sides, sounding like the schizo debates of the Morton Left Hand.

  Then, a single, panglossic voice, terrible, like the god of hydrogen bombs and hurricanes, spoke Dale’s damnation. “You shall not leave this place.”

  Dale immediately tried to flee, but he was paralyzed below his neck. He could move his head and eyes, meaning he could see a one-eighty-degree sweep of his new home in hell. Every person and thing in view was frozen in their tracks like a game of statues. Physical time outside of his head had stopped, or slowed so much that Dale couldn’t tell the diffe
rence. But spiritually, the shrine was more alive than before. Its screams deafened not his ears, but the part of his brain that heard. Its spirit lights grew garish with glowing appetite and moved closer to his face and inside his very eyes. Dale saw his future: a subjective eternity with these rapacious revenants howling around, and within, his skull.

  Frozen mute, and abject in horror, perhaps he had found what had destroyed his father’s mind.

  CHAPTER

  THREE

  Lieutenant Scherie Rezvani was limping in the dark, soaking wet and seeking cover, and, despite her best craft efforts, bleeding badly. Blood—if they’re like Gideons, they can track that. Light-headed, caught between the fears of panic and passing out, she moved across the old city, trying to dodge the next bullet. Some fucker had shot her, here, right in the middle of Istanbul. A gun of her own would have been nice, or any weapon at all would do. Her throwing knives were used up. Death seemed very near; Janissaries and the other city ghosts were growing clearer around her. Oh, and another spirit was also here in 3-D Technicolor clarity, a person she had thought she had finished with forever, and might just dispel again for spite.

  She imagined explaining to Dale her failure to survive. Not my fault. But how the hell had it come to this?

  * * *

  Just over an hour before, she had watched the sun going down over the heights of old Istanbul from the Galata Bridge. Domed mosques and the water of the Golden Horn, lovely and romantic, so of course she was viewing it all with another couple, while Dale was thousands of miles away. Bastard husband hadn’t even called—sure, no calls except in emergencies, but since when had Dale started following the rules?

  She didn’t even have the soldier’s consolation that this was what she had signed up for. Her primary mission, the one for which she was best suited, was Iran. But mundane and craft confusions there had put a hold on her vocation of revolt, and the U.S. had no immediate need for her extraordinary ability against possessing spirits and ghosts. So first they’d sent her on the usual training runs paired with another craftsperson. Among those watching her performance had been the shrinks. Prior to killing that Gideon in the Poconos to save Dale, she had been virginal, with no combat experience. A new killer usually had some reaction, if only because he felt he should. But she felt nothing for her first kill, and as for Madeline, Abram, and Roderick, she had merely delivered the bad news: they were already dead.

  They’d called her reaction atypical, but she had always known she was special. The shrinks had seen this reaction before in some of their best soldiers, so they gave her a pass and General Attucks ordered her first solo op: glorified guard duty with an acceptable risk level. Among the Iranian dissidents in Istanbul were a craftsperson couple, the Safavians, and like their fellow exiles, they needed protection from the assassins that Iran would send to kill them. Experience had unfortunately shown that the locals couldn’t be trusted for that protection on their own.

  Dale and Michael had made a scene about her value, which might have been sweet of them, but most of it was about Roderick’s possible return, which diminished her previous performance against him. Their protest also made it seem like they weren’t treating her as a full comrade in craft.

  So here she was, out on the bridge with the Safavians. In preparation for a future mission, Scherie had been debriefing the couple on Iranian craft and improving her contemporary Farsi idioms. The Safavians were frankly minor practitioners. Come the revolution, Iran would want a new craft order, but the Safavians were more likely future liaisons than leaders. They were older than Dale and herself, and their ideas of fun seemed so sedate that Scherie found it hard to understand why they wanted to risk leaving the safe house rather than staying locked up tight and secure. But confinement had nasty long-term psych effects, so Scherie had to meet their demands for a twilight walk and a fish sandwich fresh from the boat. As the safe house was up in the İstiklal neighborhood, that meant crossing the bridge over the Golden Horn.

  Superficially, Scherie’s walking gear would have suited any fashionable İstiklal woman who needed good cover for her little surprises: long boots, the better to hide one’s long knife, dearie, with a blade in the toe besides, and a skirt with pocket-like slits for grabbing the other blades strapped to her thighs. H-ring considered it “bad form to arm agents with more than their craft” in allied states, so knives were the best she could do.

  Istanbul wasn’t a feminist paradise, but Ms. Safavian was clearly enjoying walking bareheaded and bold. Mr. Safavian, displaying his own graying head and precisely groomed short beard, smiled at everyone. Despite their situation, an outing in a city still new to them had a romantic quality, as if they were promenading tourists. The little sparks of the craft of many nations were like candles on date night. It would be nice to promenade with Dale here—later. So early, and already so many laters.

  The Safavians passed a postcard seller, mostly images from the old city, the Sultanahmet district. Scherie wouldn’t take her party farther than the fish boats in that area, a morass of residual magics and freelance craftsmen, feral and amoral. But seeing Hagia Sophia on a postcard made Scherie resent this restriction.

  As if in response to her card viewing, Scherie heard a familiar yet strange voice over her left shoulder: “Here is wisdom. Let her with understanding speak the name of the Beast.”

  Startling the postcard seller, Scherie swung around, ready for combat. The Safavians were smiling at a food vendor, blissfully unaware. But Scherie saw the black-lit halo of the terribly thin and tall Left-Hand spirit in their midst, now wearing the face of her original body. Scherie whispered the riddle’s answer: “Madeline.”

  “You got it in one. Hello, sister.”

  Great, Madeline is haunting me. Yes, when Scherie had exorcized her into the afterlife, Madeline had been absorbed into the Left-Hand Morton collective spiritual entity, but it was still Her, acting as the evil revenants’ creepy, dominate voice.

  Scherie found it easy to ready her anger for dispelling this nightmare. “Enjoy your trip home.”

  Madeline raised a hand, palm out. “Wait.”

  Scherie paused, troubled by something like human concern in the monstrous specter’s thin face.

  “We have many things we could teach you.” Oh, that royal “we” sent a shiver down Scherie’s back. “Craft unknown to your consort.”

  “Right. Your price?” Not that Scherie cared. She was no folktale fool, and if the Thousand and One Nights and Children of Dune were clear on one thing, it was never to seek the help of malevolent spirits.

  Madeline smiled with the indulgent sadness of one who can see through lead. “We can haggle later. For now, just take a good look around you, craftswoman.”

  Huh. Other than not wanting to let Madeline out of her sight, the advice was sound. Scherie looked, and spotted the problems immediately, just like in training. Stealth cover or repression craft had its own signal, and that signal was moving toward them from both ends of the bridge. She stifled her pleasure at success. The Safavians were in deadly danger.

  Scherie guessed the hunters were the local equivalent of the Gideon hounds: the Dogs of Istanbul. Despite their name, they were a multinational assortment with no local loyalty. Two of the good ones would be a serious challenge. Scherie needed to get the Safavians back to the safe house and call in support. Fortunately, they were far from trapped. The bridge had two levels and restaurant after restaurant on the lower one, which made for a maze of escape routes, and she couldn’t have asked for a more public, crowded venue to limit enemy action.

  Madeline could wait. “Sir, ma’am, we have to go now. Back to the safe house. Follow me.” She started on a path that would put them on the west side of the upper level with no pursuer between them and Galata.

  “They aren’t after them.” Madeline flared her nostrils in disgust as she effortlessly kept pace with Scherie. “They’re probably double or triple agents anyway. No, sister. These Dogs are hunting you.”

  “Bulls
hit,” said Scherie. She didn’t believe she was on anyone’s kill list for her father’s sins against the Islamic Republic. A list that included every relative of every exile was too big to take seriously. Scherie herself hadn’t had time to make craft enemies. “I’m going to protect these people.”

  “You’ll just get them killed too. They couldn’t pull a rabbit from a hat, but if you’re with them, the Dogs will kill them to cover their real target. You.”

  This was nothing but distraction. Scherie needed to save her breath and ready her mind for combat. She needed …

  Before Scherie’s party turned a corner to cross through a seafood restaurant, one of Scherie’s pursuers came close enough on the upper level for her to blink-assess him. He was dressed as local police. Hell, he might be local police as his cover job. He had a gun, and was close cut and clean shaven in Turkish police or military fashion. She couldn’t see his eyes, so maybe he spared a glance for the Safavians, but she felt his tracking craft on her like a hare senses a hound.

  He was tracking Scherie.

  Still, maybe he saw her as the key to the Safavians. How would Madeline know differently? “You have one shot,” said Scherie. “How do you know they want me?”

  “The Morton way,” said Madeline. “We see their sins, even of intention, and murder has intensity and degrees. They intend your killing in a very first-degree sort of way. The two other intended sins are weak afterthoughts, almost manslaughter.”

  “That level of detail is beyond Dale. It’s certainly beyond you ghosts.”

  “Did you think I’d be an ordinary spirit?”

  The fierce pride in this first-person statement convinced Scherie. She stopped the Safavians. “I have new intel. I’m the target. You’ll continue this way, take the stairs back to the upper level, and get back to the safe house. If support hasn’t already arrived, call it in. Go.”

  The Safavians looked at each other with a love and understanding that might have been beautiful if it didn’t threaten FUBAR. “We will stay and fight with you,” said Ms. Safavian.