The Left-Hand Way

by Tom Doyle

  But, although he didn’t know the Left-Hand craft of life extension, Dale was a Morton, and therefore the best weatherman in the world. Though he was far from home and the work was demanding, it was the work he did best, and the air itself seemed to feed some power back into him. Yet by the middle of the flight, Dale’s usual meditative approach to craft had failed him. Sweat poured down his face and soaked his clothes, and he was gripping his armrests like a panicked flight-phobe. When they finally got to Mongolia, Dale saw that one of the pilots had to be assisted off the plane, looking as bad as Dale felt.

  Dale found an Aeroflot flight to Moscow. The Mongolians and Aeroflot weren’t as good at finding the assassins and the explosives. Dale had some craft words and actions with the killers and bombs, and they remained unconscious or inactive for the duration. He had the energy for such, as he didn’t have to deal with more weather assaults or other spooky action at a distance. Much of his flight was over regions that, though nominally Russian, were still dominated by the shaman craft families, and nobody wanted to wake that hot mess up again, particularly in the area of weather.

  With belated regret, Dale considered that he had been too visible on these flights, and that the passengers on the planes may have noticed inexplicable things during his efforts: the abrupt changes in weather when he said “be calm” aloud, the men and women passing out in their seats when he spoke to them, and, for the more sensitive, the shadowy image of a woman who seemed to float next to him, whispering. The passengers who were paying particular attention to Dale got what suasion he could muster. But he was tired with still a long ways to go to reach Roderick, and at his best he couldn’t have swayed so many. Nor did he get a chance to sway the pilots who must have seen the directed sandstorm over China and its strange dispersal better than any passenger.

  In Moscow, Dale’s run of luck ended. Two Russians halted him, plainclothed except for the severed dog’s head and broom handle pins of the Oprichniki, the ancient secret police branch of the Russian craft service. Their sins were unpleasant to look at. “Major Morton, you’re to wait here as a guest of the Russian service.”

  “I’m in a hurry. My wife…”

  But the Oprichniki were not so easily moved as the Korean had been. “As far as we know, your wife is not in Kiev. Something is about to happen there, and though it has a low fate index, we will not let you fuck it up.”

  * * *

  While Roman waited for Lara to arrive at Roderick’s, he allowed himself the small dream that he might have a future. Ukraine had been disappointing in its efforts to establish itself on the world stage. He could push events here, or he could deal with Russians (who might be more open to discussion with Roderick gone), or …

  His reverie was interrupted when Lara appeared in the video from the camera outside of Roderick’s home. Roderick had designed the house with more of the retro-future look of the American 1960s than any contemporary style. To any normal person with craft or historical awareness, the house’s location was chilling. Though most of the ghosts had departed or had been (more or less gently) dispelled from the Babi Yar Park area, the dark residue of what had happened there remained. The park hummed in anticipation.

  The door of the house swung open, but no one was there. That such an effect might be mere technology didn’t lessen its frisson for a new entrant unless she knew very little of normal anticipatory fear. Lara probably appreciated that she hadn’t had to touch anything new to her.

  She entered the house’s public part, public to the extent that Roderick had visitors who were allowed to exit. She walked left with regular, precise steps into the living room, which had two adjoining bookcases filled with books of modern art. She turned and continued toward the house’s rear, which opened up to a view of the park. From the kitchen on the right (sparkling clean), across the dining area in the center, and to the observation nook on the left, it was nearly continuous window—not energy efficient, but aesthetically charming.

  Roman zoomed in on Lara’s face. Her eyes took in the view and the objects about the room with autistic fairness, giving little priority to the human.

  Behind Lara, one of the bookcases slid aside, revealing an entrance to another room. This was not the usual burrowing of the Left Hand. “I’m trying to live more sensibly,” Roderick had said, as if everyone had secret chambers somewhere in their home.

  Lara entered the chamber. It was split in two by a translucent red curtain, now partially opened. The divided space resembled a parlor and a bedroom of a wealthy antebellum New Englander, if that Yankee was something out of Poe’s nightmares. The windowless chamber was lit only by candles and whale-oil lamps. A nicely upholstered sofa was set behind an ornate rectangular box, decorated in the chinoiserie style popular with the wealthy merchants of nineteenth-century Rhode Island. The box might serve as a table, but whether it was also a coffin was an empirical matter. Roderick placed some of his “friends” in the box to see if they could make the leap that his sister had. But he didn’t pursue this seriously, often neglecting to have a new body available for them to jump to.

  Re-creations of portraits of Roderick and Madeline hung on the wall. The originals had turned into blackened reminders of the Family shame in the House of Morton. Below and between the portraits was an oversized jewelry armoire that held Roderick’s tools. The enormous four-poster bed dominated the other partition of the chamber. Its size seemed more suited to a sporting event than sleep or amour. Neatly arranged about it were restraints that ranged from gentle to maiming.

  From behind the red curtain, Roderick emerged into the parlor. He wore a smoking jacket, and carried a white dress draped over his arm. “You’re late. Please put this on.” He threw the dress at her. She caught it, then reached a hand toward him. He waggled a finger at her. “The dress first.”

  Lara stripped down to her inelegant bulky underthings that contrasted with a graceful though excessively thin body. Then, she slipped into the dress, a garment appropriate for a bride or a corpse, or both. It fit her well enough; either Roderick foresaw his victims’ sizes or they were close enough in type.

  Roderick studied Lara, head to toe, then turned to address the portrait of his sister. “Madeline, I know you can see me. Please watch this. Please watch what we do.”

  Lara stood in the dress. “What do we do?” she asked, flat voice matching flat affect.

  Roderick nodded and smiled. “Once upon a time, I loved a woman very much. She hurt me for centuries. I never got to hurt her back.” He gestured with his hand toward the sofa. “Please sit down. I’m afraid this is going to take a while, though not nearly as long as I would like.”

  Lara sat down. “You appear to have a psychological problem,” she said. “Perhaps you should get help.”

  Roderick turned to the armoire and, one by one, brought out and displayed his tools. The first few were the standard sensual aids, but they quickly descended into devices of pain, mutilation, and death. “Sometimes I like to be friends first. I pretend it’s like me and Maddie in the early days, before we cheated death. We have a little romance, but then something goes wrong—something always goes wrong—and I have to start over again. But now I have other guests coming, and hardly any time to prepare. So, no long walks and dining al fresco for us, dear.”

  Roderick flourished each of the items of his kit for unsuccessful surgery, waiting for her reaction. Her face looked progressively more distressed as she made little sobbing noises and said, “Please. Don’t.”

  Roderick put down a Japanese flensing knife and took up his last tool, which appeared to be a simple tube of alchemical alloy. He flicked it forward, and a line of metal sprang out. “The sharpest edge in the world. I was saving it for…”

  Roderick stopped speaking and stared at Lara, puzzled. “You’re just sitting there. Why haven’t you tried to run or fight yet?” He sniffed the air. “You smell all wrong. No fear sweat. And your sins are confused.” He moved closer and stared into her eyes, then down at her throat. “Hmm
. Your face shows distress, but your pulse is calm. You’re not really afraid of me at all, are you? Why would he send someone like you?”

  She was quick, hands like cobras seeking to touch him. He was quicker, leaping back, but he drew back his knife slower, thinking it some protection. Her index finger just grazed the nail of his right thumb. It bubbled, and the bubbles spread.

  Without hesitation, Roderick sliced off the end his thumb. “Oh, no you don’t!”

  Lara advanced on him as he scrambled back toward the bed. “Let’s make love,” she said. But some instinctive aversion to touch seemed to be reasserting itself within her.

  “Please sit down,” he commanded.

  Straining, Lara took another step toward him, reaching out with her right hand. A centimeter had melted from her index finger, leaving a black wound and an unsupported fingernail.

  “Down!”

  She crumbled to the floor. Roderick found a pair of black rubber gloves more suited to a butcher than a surgeon and with a wince snapped them on, covering his hands and wounded thumb. “Now see what you’ve done, you forced me to be rude, you goddamned…”

  Then, slowly, like the painful start of a two-stroke engine, Roderick started to laugh. Tears came to his eyes. “Oh, that’s the other trigger, isn’t it? I’m supposed to kill you. This has been delightful, but I’ve no time for riddles. You’re too precious to destroy—like destroying a fine gun instead of the assassin behind it.” He waved his hand at the hidden camera mote.

  * * *

  With the wave of Roderick’s hand, the images from his house disappeared on Roman’s computer. As the Americans would say, the jig was up.

  Roman was prepared for this possibility. Sprinting and driving all out, Roderick would take at least ten minutes to get to Roman’s office. In a second, Roman grabbed his case with all the money and IDs he’d need to flee with one hand, and clutching the needle with his other, he was out from behind his desk and running, stealth full on.

  Flinging open his office door, Roman stumbled backward, true terror gripping him for the first time. There, on his office threshold, stood a man dressed in a lab coat and nothing else, dark hair still slick from immersion in an alchemical tank. “You forgot that I keep my bodies downstairs,” said Roderick Morton.

  One last play for the great fixer, thought Roman. Using his remaining stealth and glamour, he retched and bent over. He covered his mouth with his hand, gulping hard as if trying not to throw up, but swallowing something small and plastic instead. He was still trying to get it down when Roderick gave him a barefooted kick in the head, sending him tumbling backward. “I completed transfer just before your poisoned package arrived, and I ran my former body as a meat puppet. I was preparing to depart at a comfortable pace, but you had to try this. So now I have to devote special attention and materials to you.”

  Roman tried to scramble farther away. Maybe he could break the window glass and fall to his death.

  But no deity was listening to Roman’s prayers today. Roderick grabbed Roman and threw him into one of his office chairs. “Please be seated,” said Roderick. “We haven’t got much time, and we must make the most of it.”

  CHAPTER

  ELEVEN

  I awoke, seated again. Would I never get to lie down?

  A window to my left showed me snatches of a misty, flat, rural countryside going by beyond a broken line of leafless trees and side slopes. Not in the Chunnel, but I was on a train. Lord, I’m usually not serious in my complaints about your will, but if this is the afterlife …

  I looked to my right. Grace sat there, dressed ordinary Parisian instead of English craft-glam, as if for a weekend holiday in the French countryside. Maybe I spoke too soon, Lord.

  “Major?” she said, some concern in her voice.

  “Call me Michael.”

  “Mike?”

  “Uh, Michael, please. Though people who save my life can call me what they like.” I looked at my watch, which said a day had passed. Under the French business-travel clothes that I was now wearing, I felt my gut. Smooth, not even a bandage, and no pain at all. “Are you a healer as well?” That ability didn’t fit her pattern of powers for sin in the name of the service.

  Uncharacteristically, Grace averted her eyes downward. “No. Not like that.”

  “I didn’t know the French were such good healers.”

  “Not the French,” she said.

  “Are you going to tell me?” But then, I realized her eyes already had. Only one way remained that I could have been healed so quickly and completely. I patted my pockets for Dee’s syringe. I was in different clothes, but that wasn’t why it was gone. Grace had injected the Left-Hand alchemy into me.

  It felt like jumping out of a plane and both chutes failing. Then every bad emotion competed for my heart: the two worst were anger at Grace, and despair, that sin of sins.

  To calm myself, I spoke calmly. “How much did you give me?”

  “You were going into shock, dying. I had to save you.”

  I closed my eyes. “How much?” But again, I knew the answer already. “All of it.”

  The Endicotts weren’t like the other Families, where it was no big deal if someone went into black ops or drank some vile potion to talk to the dead. We never used the Left-Hand craft, even to save someone else’s life, much less our own. I looked at my gut in spiritsight and saw the radiating glow of a black hole sun chakra.

  “Do you know what you’ve done?” A stupid question.

  “Yes,” she said, in a small, hopeless voice. Then she regained herself. “Or I thought I did. I thought I was defiling an Endicott to save his sorry life. But I was wrong. You can’t be just any bloody Yank. You summoned the old power of Albion. Who are you?”

  Oh, this was too much. I started to laugh, bitterly, veering toward hysterically, then reined it in when I saw Grace’s eyes checking the exits and her hand touching her sidearm. “You think I know how I summoned that power? Well, commander, it’s worse than you think. Even in wartime, we Endicotts are more territory bound than most. I’ve always felt more disconnected overseas than the Mortons, or Hutchinsons, or any other family. Now, I’m feeling everywhere at home, if only for spiritual power.”

  As if in answer, that power was rising up into me, through the seat, the train, the tracks, the land. “I can feel it now,” I said, “and I have no bloody idea which country we’re in.” That could be a problem. “Where are we?”

  She sat, looking at me, silent for a long moment. Finally, she said, “You shouldn’t say that.”

  “Say what?”

  “Bloody. It’s a bad, probably sacrilegious, word, and I know you don’t like to say such things.”

  “You say it.”

  “I say lots of things. To answer your question, we’re crossing Belgium, on a train, in a sleeper car, first class double cabin, ticketed through Prague.”

  Oh, sweet Jesus. “Not Prague again.” Absurd trouble always found me in Prague.

  “No, we’ll get off at Berlin, and take a chance on a flight from there.”

  “To Ukraine?”

  “Right. Kiev.”

  Kiev wasn’t where the Russians had fought Roderick, but it would do as a base to look for him. I tried not to think about being in a sleeper cabin with Grace, so I thought about ticketing. I stood up—though I was healed, that still hurt. “We should move to an empty cabin.”

  Grace rose and gently pushed me back into my seat. “I know protocol. We’re not in the cabin that I booked. We’re not even on the same train. But they’ll figure all that out eventually. We can only hope it’s after we’re gone.”

  “Who knows where we are?”

  “That’s uncertain,” she said. “Too many people know where we’ve been. The local French helped us, but they didn’t care for my use of Left-Hand craft on you. They seemed to have their own internal troubles brewing, so I didn’t discuss our plans with them and went stealth for our departure. I also sent a message to the Confessional. It’s a
break in the chain of command, because the chain of command can go wrong. A story vital to the defense of the realm that needs to be told goes to everyone, including the very top craft authority.” That wasn’t the prime minister she was talking about, but her majesty herself.

  “So they know we’re alive.”

  “They know I’m alive. They’ll figure out you’re alive soon enough.”

  The accent was still killing me. No, not the accent. Her voice, because it was hers. Time to swallow my pride and get back into Grace’s good graces. “Thank you for saving my life,” I said. “I owe you.”

  She nodded, with just the hint of a Mona Lisa smile on her lips. “Yes, and I intend to collect. But first things first. Sandwich?” At Grace’s feet lay a picnic basket with a baguette sticking out through one of the flaps, which had to be a bit of staging on her part. She opened the basket, and inside were the sandwiches. I was as hungry as I’ve ever been, and not just for food. Despite everything we’d been through, despite what she had done to save me, Grace seemed radiant. But food didn’t require discussion, so I ate.

  After much silent chewing, Grace said, “This trip, going eastward towards a great evil. It reminds me of something one of my ancestors did.”

  “Frodo Baggins was your ancestor?” Her eyes flashed at me. “Sorry. Please, continue.” Honoring the ancestors was something all spiritual practitioners seemed to share, whatever the culture of those around them.

  “It was Charles Marlow’s journey up the Congo,” she said. “The Crown sent Charles to investigate, and eventually destroy, an evil practitioner who was hiding in the midst of a greater evil, King Leopold’s genocidal disaster. The target magus was using the millions of deaths to cover his own killings, experiments, and abominations. The farther Charles went up the river in pursuit of this vile man, the more powerful the magics arrayed against him. I expect it will be like that now.”

  “Wait,” I said, “that’s like Apocalypse Now, which was based…”