The Faceless Old Woman Who Secretly Lives in Your Home

by Joseph Fink

  From her senior position in The Duke’s Own, Rebekah had been staging a number of attacks with my army of trained and dangerous Swedes against her own underlings, all falsely attributed to the Green and White. The Green and White, once a sweeping rebellion threatening the monarchies of Europe, had, in truth, devolved into a disparate collection of thieves and bandit gangs. But Rebekah brought glory and fear back to the name. The mercenaries from Sweden, clad in those familiar colors, overran dozens of Edmond’s ships in the North and Baltic Seas, cutting off his financial gains entirely in the region. Rebekah then staged her own execution at the hands of the resurgent Green and White, and later, speaking as a representative of this uprising, called for a private summit with Edmond to discuss terms to regain his ships and territorial control. Should he wish to retain a single crown of income there—which I knew, thanks to information from The Shadow of Gamla Stan in Stockholm, was the bulk of his wealth—he would need to meet with this man at a specific time and date at a certain bar with no name in Nulogorsk.

  Rebekah could be quite convincing. Or I hoped she could. For obvious reasons, I had not been able to talk to her since she had embedded herself, and so I walked toward the empty bar without any assurance that I would meet anything but another frustrating failure within.

  And my role in this plan? I had traveled to Dubrovnik, to the man known as the Seagull, whose hut sat below the walls, next to the placid gray of the Adriatic. He was ancient, but alive, and he remembered me. “What now?” he said, and I told him.

  “Simplistic. I expected more interesting from you,” he muttered. “But I can see how the looming specter of death might make you value efficiency over artistry. I can have it for you tomorrow.”

  I spent that evening sitting cross-legged on a slab along the water, just outside of the walls, watching the sky and sea shift through the night. It was a long and perilous journey bringing such delicate materials all the way north, but shortcuts cannot be taken in this life.

  It all led here, to this moment. I opened the door to Venedict’s and walked into the small tavern. For all the importance it held in my life, this was the first time I had been inside it. It smelled sour, like ferment and acrid water.

  I sat at a table in the corner with a view of the entire bar, such as it was, and prepared to wait. I wouldn’t have to wait for long. A quarter of an hour later, Edmond entered and my vision swooned at the sight of him. My hatred was a second entity, sitting next to me, a hungry old creature with no eyes, no mouth, no face at all, only the quiver of rage. It was an inhuman thing, and it urged me on, but I sat, and did my best to ignore it, considering Edmond not as a plague that contaminated my life, but instead as what he was, a man. Merely a man. Older than me by fifteen years, and moving quite slowly, but still with the recognizable trace of the swagger he had carried his entire life. It was the swagger of a man who considered himself beyond the possibility of being touched. He would soon feel the cold digits of the invisible creature next to me, the creature already coiling itself to pounce. I would let loose my hatred upon him. I would get my revenge.

  But first. “Hello,” I said. My voice sounded weaker than I wanted it to be. I had reached an age where unless I drank water regularly, I got this wispy rasp to my throat that made me sound helpless and it infuriated me. He saw me and smiled, showing none of the shock I knew he must have felt, seeing a woman he had thought killed decades before. His career as spymaster was built on a careful performance of emotions.

  “What a pleasant surprise. After all these years,” he said, and I was glad that his voice was equally weak. Time had worked the two of us over, and in that way we were both no longer who we had been when we had last faced each other. This added some uncertainty to the equation. Who was he now? And who was I?

  “Sit,” I said, gesturing across from me, trying to take some control of the situation, to feel an authority that, if I were to make the mistake of being truthful with myself, I did not feel. Edmond chuckled, a warm, honest chuckle that reminded me of when I had loved him, when he had taken care of me and guided me into the life of crime my father had always wanted to shelter me from. His love had felt so genuine, but poison sometimes tastes sweet. And perhaps he really did care about me, even as he guided me toward my family’s ruin. He crossed the empty bar, and obligingly sat.

  “I didn’t think I would see you again,” he said. “Not in this life.” His words were disturbingly tender.

  “I knew I would see you.” I kept my voice steady and cold, because otherwise the faceless creature next to me would crawl out upon him, and that wasn’t the plan. I had to stick to the plan. Under my feet was the potential destructive energy of a lifetime of hate, and I could picture the flames even as I looked into his placid eyes. They were the same flames that had burned down my home, so many decades before. I would enjoy seeing the fire touch him, the widening of those damned eyes as he understood for the first time what I had done.

  “Don’t suppose it would come as much comfort to know that this had nothing to do with you,” he said. “It was always about your father. His precious family.”

  Ah, if I could do what needed to be done with my hands, but those years were past me.

  “There is no difference between my family and me,” I told him. “His blood is in my veins.”

  “His blood is on my hands,” he said, holding them up and smiling. This was all a joke to him. I was a joke to him. Or no, step back. Look at the situation more clearly. He was trying to bait me into doing something stupid. I would not do anything stupid. I would follow the plan all the way to the dirt on Edmond’s unmarked grave.

  “Where are your guards?” I jeered. “Where are all those young and strong folks you hire to make sure no one can see if you’re actually as strong as you like to pretend?” Now I was baiting him, and I could see it work a little. Despite his airs of superiority, he had a deep pride inside of him. It was what had turned his hatred upon my father. A seething anger. A deadly pride. I knew where to scratch him.

  But he too found some placid spot in his mind and settled there. “I gave them the day off. It seemed to me an old woman was not a good use of my guards’ blades.”

  Then he had known it was me, despite the extent of Rebekah’s subterfuge. His lack of shock upon seeing me was not an act. This gave me a slight spike of fear, but I suppressed it. What difference did it make, now that he was in this room with me?

  “Strange,” I said. “Because an old man would be the perfect use for mine.” I reached toward my waist and saw him grow nervous for a moment. Then he smiled. What could I do to him? I pulled out one of my Roman knives and threw. The blade came to rest in the wall just by his head and his smile dropped away for good.

  “Your old bones are not so accurate anymore,” he said.

  “If I had wanted to hit, I would have hit. I only wanted your attention,” I said. I had wanted to hit. My old bones had missed. While the plan was a good one, if I could go ahead and skewer the bastard’s head to the boards I would have. But my arm was not what it once was. Still, I wasn’t going to let him know that. I took a second Italian knife out and laid it on the table. He was jumpy now. A little nervous. This was all going well.

  “I came unarmed,” he said, spreading his hands.

  “Liar.”

  He shrugged, and pulled out a knife of his own, setting it neatly across from mine. “It’s merely a wood carving blade.”

  “And your guards are all hidden somewhere on the waterfront outside. You don’t take chances. Even with old women like me.”

  “An absolutely fair point,” he said.

  “So here we are. Shall we have a duel, you and I?”

  “Oh, ho ho.” He shook his head. “I think our days of dueling set themselves to rest some time ago.”

  “Then I suppose we could simply talk,” I said.

  “Ah yes. Talk. That’s good. For I do have a few matters to discuss.”

  Glancing down through the hole, I saw the dark outline of
a boat against the soft glint of the surface. Lora was ready. Everything was in place. And hidden beneath the floorboards of the bar, the explosives that I had placed, provided to me by the Seagull of Dubrovnik. I had not told André this part of the plan, as blowing up the establishment of a kind and dear man as Venedict would have alarmed and confused André, but I knew we could procure the funds to rebuild such a modest bar.

  I shifted my chair, and in the process, seemingly by accident, tapped the wood twice to alert Lora below that it would only be a couple minutes now. When I tapped three times, that would be the moment.

  “I’m listening,” I said to him. Now that everything was in place, a conversation wouldn’t make any difference. I was fine with letting him blabber his last breaths out.

  “I imagine you hold quite a grudge against me,” he said. “And it is understandable. But foolish. What benefit is there to a life spent casting yourself against me like a wave against rocks? The rocks stand. The wave dissipates into spray.”

  “And gradually the waves whittle the rocks away into nothing.”

  “If we had a thousand years, a fair point,” he said. “But unless you have a way to give yourself endless time to complete your revenge, then it would appear you have only a few years left. What I have to propose is this: Why not spend those few years living quietly? If you will walk away, I will walk away. Neither I, nor anyone in my organization, will seek you out. Surely one of your kind friends will take you in, busy as they are with their more productive lives. Surely Albert—although I do see he has married—would welcome in an old friend.” His words, carefully and cruelly chosen, stung acid. “I’m offering you a chance here.”

  The stupid, condescending man. To think that I hadn’t offered that same chance to myself years before, and come to the conclusion there was no moral way forward in that direction. No, both of our lives led only to here, only to this village whose name would be long forgotten, to this bar that was not even going to exist in a few more minutes. Just a tap. Three times. And then Lora would light the fuse. André already would have quietly barred the door on the outside as soon as Edmond had entered. I would drop down into the boat. And before it could even occur to Edmond to follow, the fuse would reach the barrels I had brought north from the Adriatic, full of a most efficient substance. The bar would be an inferno. This sad struggle that had entangled our two lives would end with the arctic winds blowing away the ash.

  “Ah,” he said. “It is as though I can read your thoughts. Speaking of your friends, how are they? Whatever became of that giant? Oh, what was her name.” He mock-grimaced in exasperation. “Funny how her size is so much more memorable than her personality. Lora, right? That’s right. Where is Lora for instance? Where could she be?”

  I heard shouting outside. A crowd. I tapped my foot once. The lock on the front door was turning. I tapped again. I lifted my foot. Better to end this before whatever reversal Edmond had planned could occur.

  The door opened and Venedict came running in. His face was twisted in grief and again I felt some echo from earlier in my life. I knew that pain.

  “André,” Venedict managed. “It’s André. He’s been . . .” Venedict’s face contorted into a sob before he could finish his dire statement. The expression was disturbing and familiar.

  “What have you done?” I said to Edmond.

  He stood and brushed his hands off.

  “I’m afraid this whole ordeal has been rather an embarrassment for you. I would have expected better.”

  “Venedict, where is André?”

  Venedict howled at the name. Edmond made an annoyed wince. “With the movement of tides, who can say, but it’s possible his body is well on its way to the icebergs by now.”

  I took up my wicked knife and came for him, with all the skills that once my father had spent patient afternoons teaching me, but Edmond easily stepped away. My body was just not what it used to be. Those lessons from my father could not account for the simple fading of age. Edmond loudly and calmly said the word “Light!” And through the hole in the floor I saw a flame kindle in the boat. A torch. The light revealed its bearer not as Lora, but as some sallow-faced stooge of Edmond’s, grinning up at me with the immutable sneer of a skull.

  “Ah, I’m afraid you gave a job to a Lora too?” Edmond said. “Took eight of my men to subdue her. You should be proud. If I could have found the man who infiltrated my people to set up this meeting, I would have done him in too, but I never could figure out which one he was. Well, can’t worry about every detail.”

  It was over. It was done. All that was left was Edmond. I lunged again with the knife, and for a moment I had one hand upon his face, and the other toward his chest, but Edmond, poised and balanced, took my arm, stepped aside, and used my momentum against me. He pulled back and I stumbled forward with the blade. I saw what would happen a second before it did, but I could not stop my fall. My Roman knife perfectly skewered Venedict, who let out a faint pop of air.

  Venedict’s face went pale, and his features contorted into a look of absolute shock and pain. The front of his shirt was wet with blood. He gasped at me, but couldn’t seem to make words, leaning forward over the wound, hunching his back. In that moment I knew where I had recognized him from. Truly, I had known him my whole life. He had been my own failure, my complicity in all that would come, and he had followed me from my childhood all the way to this moment. A strange hunched man, bent with pain, lurching, mouth agape. The consequences of my rage had been given presage since my earliest years by this poor man’s stumbling, dying body.

  “Why?” Venedict said to me. His shirt soaked red. “Why?” And then he fell dead upon the bar floor, the last victim of my life of foolish failure.

  But how is a child supposed to know what to make of prophecy? Truly, how is anyone? I cannot avoid what I cannot comprehend. It is only in Venedict’s death at my hands that I can see the fault in my path. No. Not my hands. Edmond’s hands. Edmond never needed to draw a knife to make decisions on life and death. He manipulated people into executing his every desire. I did not kill Lady Nora, nor Lord Fullbright, nor André, nor Lora, nor Venedict, and especially not my father. Edmond did. The faceless, hateful creature who sat beside me moments ago, perched upon my back and snarled as I knelt over Venedict.

  “Venya,” I said. I had moved too late to stop his fall. “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.” An incantation for a man whom I had known since I was a little girl, although I had not known that I had known him. My spell was useless. I was not absolved. The creature on my back dug its sharp claws into my armpits, pulling me upward, but I held Venedict tightly.

  “Well,” said Edmond. “Hate to leave the party, but . . . listen. It was nice to see you. Really it was.”

  He paused for a moment, staring at me. “Your face . . .” he said. “You don’t look like yourself.” The creature’s faceless head was right alongside of mine, gurgling and panting. Edmond took a little skip down through the hole in the floor. I heard his bulk hit the boat. I heard the crack of the fuse being lit. Venedict bled in my hands. The flame raced along the rope, toward barrels I had carried countless miles only for them to be used against me. The door to the bar slammed shut again, and I heard the thick bar fall across it. The hole in the floor was sealed from below, leaving me alone with the body of Venedict. The flame would be almost to the barrel now.

  This was my failure. Not only of myself. But the death of my friends. And Venedict, sweet Venya, the last innocent to die in the wake of my revenge. I had no escape, no other plan. The faceless creature was gone now. With no vengeance left to fulfill, it had retreated back into my body as flames poured up the walls, a liquid in reverse.

  I smelled smoke and alcohol and gunpowder. I heard a savage roar as the explosives from Dubrovnik, efficient as promised, ignited. I tasted salt and charred wood. I saw the walls burst outward. I felt the man whose body I was holding torn from me.

  I was in the air, and then I was in the deep water
. It was freezing. I thought that perhaps I could swim, but I didn’t know how injured I was, and anyway I didn’t have the strength I used to have.

  They came to me one by one.

  First came André, sweet André, who had disappointed his family with his embrace of my way of life. I wondered if all in all I had been a net positive or negative for him. Certainly he would have had a more peaceful life without me, but I wondered if he would have been happy. Of all of us, he enjoyed the excitement of it the most. I did not mourn his death the way I would mourn Lora’s.

  The pain here was heavy, because Lora found joy not in our way of life but simply in the expression of her massive body, which could have been found in any of several more salubrious means of living. To have brought her all the way to this seedy corner of this seedy world, and to have her die over something as silly as a boat, that was a heavy blow.

  Then Rebekah, and here I had some solace, because I knew that she had disappeared. Her greatest skill was never to be seen, or at least not to be seen as she was, and so I knew that somewhere a tired soldier or an industrious merchant or a tattered peddler was making her way back to Lithuania, and to the wife that waited for her there. She, of all of us, would die at home, and I was glad of it.

  The water grew colder, but I began to feel warm. It was as though my body didn’t want me uncomfortable for this drift downward into the frigid darkness of the sea, and I was grateful for the wisdom of flesh. I moved my limbs a little, just to see if I could, and as I did, I saw suddenly one of those clear, mild mornings on the Mediterranean, when Albert and I would go swimming in our cove. The water was clean, the waves were light, and our bodies were so young and so strong. We darted through the water, beings of promise, as all children are, yet to become the beings of regret that we all transform into. Through that water I could see the face of Albert, and he smiled at me, and I smiled at him, and I would never see him again, not in this or any other life, because as Lora said, there is no whole, discrete entity called a happy life, only sometimes we get happiness but often we don’t, and either way we must keep going. As my limp and bloodied body sank to the bottom, I saw my younger self in memory rising back up. I saw my head breaking the surface. There on the shore, I saw my mother and my father. They waved to me, beckoning me over, and my younger body moved toward them with strong sure kicks, touching the shore just as my current self, lifeless and torn, touched the sea bottom, and both selves felt the soft grit of sand upon their skin.