The Left-Hand Way

by Tom Doyle

  Grace gave me a look, lips pursed and head tilted, as she waited for all the pennies to drop.

  “Oh, he was that Marlow.” Somehow Conrad had gotten away with including the name of a real practitioner in his stories, including Heart of Darkness. “I should have put that together myself.”

  She smiled. “Yes, that’s one thing. Here’s another.” With sureness and ease, she kissed me.

  Even non-religious craftspeople weren’t big on casual touching. Grace’s kiss was like the lightning I’d called down in the tunnel. “Wait, I…”

  “We have a few hours. If you have a better way to pass the time, I’m all ears, and lips, and mmm.”

  She was warmth and closeness, and her closeness felt as natural and good as a prayer and its answer. But too many things felt natural now. I balked. I was all for women expressing their desires boldly and straightforwardly, but as a practitioner, this intimacy was threatening in too many ways, and I was a practitioner dosed up with Left-Hand alchemy. If she was using suasion, I’d never know. “I can’t trust myself,” I said, moving my lips away from hers. “I need to know. Am I just another duty for you?”

  Anger flashed from her eyes; then she closed them, and her face went calm. “You’re right. I know your background, and I still came on like this was just a bit of fun. A nice ride, because tomorrow we die. If we don’t die today.”

  “So, it isn’t? I mean, it’s not just a bit of fun? Don’t get me wrong, it’s not a bad idea. Not the worst sin I could think of.” I took a deep breath. “You are the most exciting woman I’ve ever known. But I don’t know how it is for you. You wear that cross, but all your gifts, well, they seem to have a pattern.”

  She said it for me. “All my gifts allow me to sin effectively. But all my sins are in the name of defending the realm. Never for myself. Nothing for myself.”

  “Nothing?”

  “You mean, did I enjoy them? Of course, as with anything, to achieve excellence, I had to enjoy them, at least a little, even if it’s just the enjoyment of being good at them. You should know right now: I have slept with several men and a couple of women for the Crown, and they were convinced by my passion, and shocked by my betrayal.” She held a hand to my lips. “Before you say anything, just think a moment. You also sin. Like me, you kill.”

  “But that’s different,” I said, “that was…” And then the logic kicked in. “For Queen and Country?”

  “For Queen and Country.”

  That reminded me of the big long-term problem. “I’m an American.”

  “Do you always talk so much?” She seemed more teasing than upset.

  I grimaced and shook my head. I usually didn’t get the opportunity.

  “We’re on the run,” she said, again with teasing emphasis. “We’ll be lucky if we survive long enough to worry about national issues.”

  I nodded, trying to keep my stupidities to a minimum.

  “Look,” she said, “I have you at an advantage.” All too true. “I’ve studied your file thoroughly. I watched our surveillance footage of you, again and again.” She had that embarrassed look again. “You’re a good man, good in ways that I would find difficult to credit in a mundane, much less in our line of work. I think you’d be good for me. I would like to get to know you better.”

  “Even though I’m an Endicott?”

  “Your name doesn’t seem so very important, now I’ve seen you, and been with you. I am a Marlow, and we don’t worship the Bard of Avon, but ‘a rose by any other name’ might apply here.”

  “So, I’m not just a challenge?”

  She smiled, very wickedly. “True, part of the attraction is the challenge. But far from all of it.”

  I felt the crossing of a border; we must have been entering Germany. “Thank you for talking about this.” I took her hand in mine. “Anything physical is a serious thing for me.”

  “So let’s get serious.”

  Lord, it’s not by the Numbers (or any other book in the Bible except the Song of Songs), but I think this might be the right move. Please forgive me if I get it wrong. I kissed her.

  The kiss, the touch, was even more electric than the first. I had complete focus in the moment, as if this were some particularly difficult bit of prayer that I had to get right to save some fellow soldiers. But then, from somewhere, a distraction, a buzzing noise. Not a pleasant buzz in my head, more like a mechanical mosquito. It sounded like my phone. I had turned it off, but maybe while I’d been unconscious someone had turned it on (just like its owner). The universe seemed intent on preventing me from lying with a woman. I broke our kiss. “Just a moment,” I whispered.

  Pulling against a playful tug from Grace, I fumbled for the phone. The off button wasn’t working, and there was a message on the screen.

  Dear Major Endicott:

  My regrets to you and yours, I know you’ve had a hard day’s night. I had thought that my scenario in which I destroyed your ancestor and my tormentor Abram would suffice, and that I would not have to pay personal attention to your demise. I was mistaken. I find that I need to keep killing Endicotts, or I lose some of my new-found joie de vivre. Please forgive my imposition.

  As for the device you hold in your hands, you may be an expert texter, but the jester on the hill laughs at you. Cry for “Help!” all you want; the only one who will hear you is me.

  Here, there, and everywhere yours,

  Roderick.

  P.S. I loathe you. ;)

  “What’s so distracting?” asked Grace.

  According to Family lore, Roderick always got a little punchy before doing something particularly horrible. “We need to run,” I said. “Now.”

  Then the train blew up.

  CHAPTER

  TWELVE

  “Do you intend to keep me here as a prisoner?” asked Scherie. She could only hope she was being rhetorical.

  “There’s no need for dramatics,” said the Pythia. She set down a tray with lunch for both of them on the table in Scherie’s room. The grilled lamb and the inevitable Greek salad looked and smelled delicious, but Scherie wasn’t going to let hunger delay her another minute.

  “Then I’m leaving,” said Scherie, as she continued shoving her few effects into a Delphi museum souvenir bag. She wore a souvenir T-shirt, head scarf, and sunglasses, all without having seen the shrine or the museum except through the video streams. She hoped no one asked her what she thought of Delphi on her way to Athens.

  “But how will you reach Endicott? We’ve only just found him. After Calais, he could have gone back to your country. He could be anywhere.”

  “No, not anywhere.” Bag over her shoulder, Scherie stepped into the corridor and walked toward the elevator, and the Pythia kept pace with her, waving away the staffers who approached them. “The Oikumene hasn’t been in a real shooting war in a long time, have they?”

  “I do not see what that has to do…”

  “It’s basic military training,” said Scherie. “Soldiers don’t run away from enemy fire, and they don’t hunker down. They do what every bit of common sense says they shouldn’t. They move into the fire, into the fight.”

  “That is disturbing. You’re too important to risk.”

  “I’m a weapon, and I’m too important not to deploy.” That was the lesson she’d taken away from the fight in the Pentagon. Perhaps Scherie was fighting the last war, but she had shit little else to go on.

  The elevator opened immediately, and the two women took it up together. Scherie tried for a better good-bye. “Thank you for everything you have done for me. I am grateful, but before I can help you, I have to help those close to me. But we will return.”

  Pythia shook her head and said, “I wish I could be as certain. We can see very little on this path. Adio, Lieutenant Rezvani.”

  “Adio.”

  The elevator opened. Scherie exited it alone into the museum, as if she had just taken it up from the other exhibit level. She ignored the entering tourists and strode out into the bright
cool day.

  She walked away from the shrine area toward the town. She would hop on the first bus to Athens, if she couldn’t hitch a ride. She hadn’t been able to appreciate the beauty of the area before leaving the Oikumene bunker. The shrine and town were on the side of a spur of Parnassus, and below to her left Scherie could see a wooded valley. The far-off Gulf of Corinth sparkled. Tall cypresses guarded her way.

  As Scherie crossed the boundary of the shrine’s power, Madeline appeared, strolling on her left, using a long spear as a walking stick. Her long hair was pinned up in the ancient style, with just a strand provocatively out of place. She was wearing a chiton, the basic woman’s garment of classical Greece, and it had Greek letters and a right-pointing arrow stitched into it.

  “What’s your shirt say?” asked Scherie.

  “I’m with stupid.”

  “Very funny.”

  “No, the simple truth. You’re leaving this place, which is safe, and going somewhere else, which isn’t.”

  “I’m not discussing my plans with you.”

  “You don’t have to. But wherever you’re going, wouldn’t you like some nice weapons as souvenirs?” Madeline shook her spear at her. “Just a little knife, even? I know I would.”

  Scherie stopped her rapid clip along the walkway. She had been planning to improvise arms purchases, but the Oikumene could help with that. “I wasn’t very nice to my hosts just now.”

  “They’ll forgive you; you’re important. Yes, we know that the ancient office of Pythia and her Oikumene seem very mysterious and mighty, but who the hell do you think we are? Now go back down there and tell that stingy bitch to open up her armory and to drive you back to Athens, ASAP. They can also see to your other travel arrangements. You’re a Morton now, and we do not suffer fools or anything less than first class gladly.”

  As she spun on her heels, Scherie thought, Madeline Morton, empowerment coach.

  * * *

  Rezvani’s return wasn’t a great surprise to the Pythia; the Left-Hand revenant had been circling the shrine area like a shark, and those dark spirits had a way of making people more demanding. The Pythia and her staff were annoyed at the tone of Rezvani’s demands, but not the demands themselves, as they improved Rezvani’s chance of survival. Her physical examination had been negative, so it was essential that she live long enough to meet her husband again.

  After the American left for the second time, the Pythia made her calls. She hadn’t discussed her other concern with Rezvani; it was something that took time to understand. In repelling Roderick’s attacks, Endicott had displayed the transnational power.

  This had happened many times before. Often in response to some inchoate need, a hero of the Oikumene would arise, a great magus who could summon the power across many lands. With that strength, a practitioner could break down the old craft boundaries and do battle with his or her generation’s incarnation of the Left-Hand way.

  In a sense, the Oikumene wielded something like that power through its multinational members, and in such an institution, diluted and dispersed, the power was relatively safe from corruption. But in an individual, even a well-intentioned one, that power had an inevitable consequence. Such a magus could build an empire for himself.

  Alexander and Caesar had vividly displayed the problems with those who had started with good intentions and way too much craft. Unfortunately, the solution to those problems hadn’t changed. The Oikumene would not let things get as bad as they had in earlier times. They would watch Endicott, and if he showed any taint of imperial aspirations or the Left-Hand way, they would kill him.

  * * *

  Almost to his disappointment, Dale wasn’t being taken to one of those legendary craft subbasement dungeons of Lubyanka. He had become an expert on evil fortresses below the earth’s surface, and he would have liked to view the structure and its craft. But Dale was also an expert at taphephobia, the fear of being buried alive, so he was relieved when the Russians told him that he was bound for one of their rooms for foreign guests in the Mercury City Tower. “On an upper floor,” his escort emphasized. He must have read Dale’s file.

  Despite this escort’s courtesy, Dale did not like or trust him. His suit and sins were indistinguishable from a successful Russian mobster’s.

  Dale had once enjoyed the green Gorky Park of midsummer here, but this was the grim Moscow of late autumn. That did not disturb him so much as the view of the Mercury City Tower’s copper-colored cladding, which reminded him of the alchemical brass-colored alloys often used for Left-Hand craft. The post-Soviet Russians had a way of flirting with the Left Hand that made Dale uneasy.

  The Russians hustled Dale through the Tower’s lobby and took him up in an elevator to an unnumbered floor. Dale counted the seconds and listened for any telltale noises. It wasn’t the second floor, but it probably wasn’t one of the top floors of the seventy-five-story building either. When they left the elevator and walked toward their room for him, it seemed to Dale from the openness of the floor plan that the Russian craft service had at least all of this floor of the Tower; they probably enjoyed having some space to themselves and away from the Federal Security Service over in Lubyanka.

  At the door to his room, Dale said, “I wish to speak with the American Embassy,” and made the other standard protests for the record.

  His escort heard him out and replied, “We are just delaying your travel for national security and your own safety. The usual protocols do not apply.”

  “Whatever is happening with Roderick, I could help.”

  The Russian seemed grimly amused by that. “Americans. Always wanting to help.” Then he shut the door on Dale.

  Compared to the many cheap hotel rooms Dale had known, this “guest suite” was nice enough, though it locked from the outside. The room had no windows, but the lighting design helped one forget that. The bed was simple, but a damned samovar occupied the space where a coffeepot might have been. They had even given him hotel-style sample-sized toiletries.

  For food, he was greeted with some dark bread and caviar (not an extravagant amount, just a taste to be welcoming) and bar nuts and pretzels. Within the hour they offered him a full meal, but Dale ate little—his current concern for Scherie wasn’t helping his old PTSD stomach. As the jailers would prefer it if their guest found a way to occupy the time instead of attempting to escape, they also provided bottles of Stoli and Laphroaig, and satellite TV with enough international channels to assure the guest that he wasn’t missing the end of the world, so calm down.

  They’d probably want Dale to give the place a favorable review at CraftPrisons.com.

  Other than dealing with his food, no one came to talk with him. The geomancy of the structure and its location oozed power, and Dale sensed plenty of human energy keeping an eye on him. He was anxious about Scherie, and even gave Endicott a thought just to relieve the monotony, but for all he knew the Russians were right, and Roderick was in the karmic crosshairs. For now, Dale had nowhere to go, so it wasn’t time to break out. Yet.

  Exhausted, he took off his clothes and lay down on the bed, and after a few flips through the TV channels, gave up. Perhaps the Russians had inadvertently done him a favor: after his travel, he wasn’t ready for Roderick. Though the Moscow ground wasn’t friendly to him, the Tower harnessed the local energy so effectively that it had some energy to spare, even for a foreigner. Letting the power seep back into him, Dale fell asleep.

  “Major Morton.” Dale awoke into darkness and stone-cold fear. Someone was in the room and had spoken his name.

  Show me their sins. A glow of letters illuminated a tall woman’s form, sitting very still in a chair facing the bed. For a moment, Dale was worried that Madeline had, despite all, found a way to incarnate again, for this body was surely her type. But Dale looked at her sins, and saw only a few of the usual acts committed in the line of duty.

  “You could have knocked,” he said. This stranger had a dangerous disregard for her own safety.

&nbs
p; She answered in heavily accented English. “I wish to have advantage. You are Morton, like him.”

  A sudden rush of guesses about this woman and Roderick hit Dale, and all of them were bad news. “What is your name?”

  “No need to know,” she said. “You can call me Vasilisa.”

  “Vasilisa.” A Russian fairytale name. “Can we use panglossic? Language craft?”

  “No,” she said. “No craft. English.”

  “OK, no craft. You’ve met my ancestor.” Dale spared her the name.

  “Yes,” she said. “He killed my friends. All of them.”

  “Just now?” If so, Dale needed to leave immediately, as this meant the Russians’ hoped-for solution was gone.

  “No. Weeks before. He did not kill me. But he gives nothing free.”

  Oh, this was bad. No wonder everyone was after Dale. He had not realized that Roderick had been so active in the craft world. “He let you live?” asked Dale. “To do what?”

  “To tell story,” she said. “To scare everyone. To scare me. To show all how big Left Hand is. When I wake up, my boss ask about devil body, devil power. Your devil makes them want Left Hand.”

  Yes, Roderick would have known the effect of his appearance. “What did he look like?”

  “He wore mask,” she said. “Red Death. But we know what he look like. Russian. Like model Soviet worker—big jaw, blond hair.”

  Dale got out of bed and turned on the light, not caring that he was in underwear. He began to put on his clothes. “I have to leave here, to kill him.”

  “Yes,” said Vasilisa, insistently. “Leave here. I cannot sleep. They will hold you here.” Her voice cracked, and she shook her head in desperate negation. “He will come here for you. He will find me.”

  “How can I leave?”

  “Come.” She stood and walked toward the wall.

  Vasilisa raised a fist, and Dale jerked aside as she gave the wall of his suite a solid smack. This action revealed a glowing keypad. She pressed some numbers, and a section of the wall slid aside to uncover an office building window above a narrow interior shelf, an appropriate arrangement for when the guest wasn’t being held incommunicado. Dale could see the lights of Moscow at night, and all those lights were far, far below him.