The Left-Hand Way

by Tom Doyle

  I turned toward the back and spoke in panglossic. “Wake up, Ivan.” His form squirmed under the cover. “We’re going to leave you here for your people to retrieve. My recollection is that the Oikumene is led by someone called the Pythia. Tell her I understand her concern, but that I have things under control. Tell her that if she tries to take preemptive action again, I’ll make the Oikumene destroy itself.”

  Lara said, “Say hello for me too. Say I can kill him, but it is not yet necessary. Have a nice day.”

  Our plane had arrived, and my friends gave me a hand out of the car, though it wasn’t so necessary now. Some power continued to rush my healing along, and every second I felt a little more functional. I asked Lara, “What you said to Ivan, was that true?”

  “Yes, it is not yet necessary to kill you.”

  “But you can?”

  “Probably.” She held up her shortened index finger. “Nail melted with your brains on road. I was weapon against Roderick. If I touch, he and I both melt like wicked witch. Do little Left-Hand things keep you alive too?”

  I looked at Scherie, whose eyes were wide at this exchange. But I didn’t answer. God was keeping me alive, but I wasn’t sure about his immediate method for doing so.

  “Does not matter,” continued Lara. “I do not like touching. Touch me not, Endicott.”

  Fine with me. But that left another question. “Why didn’t Roderick kill you?”

  “I think I am weapon when dead too,” said Lara. “He said he will leave Ukraine. He asked me not to touch him again. I said yes, I will not touch him again, never.”

  “He believed you?” asked Scherie, incredulous.

  Lara looked at Scherie like she was the one not making sense. “He left Ukraine,” she said. “I do not like touching.”

  Instead of trying to sort out this strangeness, I appraised our ride home. I was unfamiliar with this jet’s design, but Dale whistled at it.

  “We still won’t catch Roderick,” I noted.

  “No, but he might not get the lead he expects. This is a new supersonic for private individuals and businesses, and Langley too, it seems. Max airspeed of Mach 1.5. Shit, it’s a shame, but I bet we can’t go supersonic until we’re over the Atlantic. Even with its dampening design, the sonic booms would be way too public a disturbance.”

  The Mortons and Lara packed the weapons we’d used or might want into cases to bring with us, ignoring Ivan as they did so. Grace helped me up to the plane, though I was feeling steadier. As we entered the cabin, a young woman greeted us with a salute. “I’m your copilot and crew for this flight. Please take your seats immediately and we’ll get underway.” She didn’t bother with a rank or cryptonym or service—we had no need to know—but even with my one blurry eye, I could tell her flat accent and corn-fed farm-girl looks resembled those of the Gale Family line, notorious for their countercraft assassinations and fine-tuned weather control.

  The Gale returned my examination of her face by betraying a mild surprise. “Major, I didn’t expect to see you. After takeoff, you’ll find medical supplies in that overhead cabinet next to the galley.”

  Ignoring the copilot’s instruction, Grace went immediately for the cabinet. Failing to hide her annoyance, the Gale said, “We weren’t expecting her either.”

  “She’s a commander with MI13,” I said. “We all vouch for her.”

  By then, Grace had already returned to the seat next to mine with supplies, and the Mortons and Lara had entered and were storing our weapons in the overhead compartments. The Gale turned toward Lara, her voice betraying a slight distaste. “Her we had some inkling of.”

  “I can vouch for her,” said Scherie, trust apparently unrattled by Lara’s danger to me.

  “I vouch for you all,” said Lara.

  The Gale closed the cabin door, and the plane was immediately taxiing for takeoff. Grace rummaged through the medical supplies, then stopped, as if she had struck gold in a toy box. She pulled out a small, black, silk object. “My view’s still a little fuzzy,” I said. “What is it?”

  “An eye patch,” she said, sounding solemn.

  The patch’s presence was suspicious, as if the possibility of my injury had been foreseen along with the probability of my death. “I’m fine,” I said.

  “You will be,” she said. “Please let me do my job.” She cleaned me up and applied some bandages. Then she put the patch over my bandaged socket. She studied me a moment. “That will do nicely.”

  The plane rose above the gray residue of clouds into bright sunlight. The pilot was good; the flight preternaturally smooth. The copilot sat back with us, popping a dangerous number of Nicorettes, empty tabs on a table, eyes staring outward into the spiritual beyond. The Gales weren’t Morton caliber, but she could at least keep watch on the air currents and let Dale relax with the rest of us.

  We perused the cabin. The fully stocked galley was the size of a small poolside bar but with a granite surface. Some of the seats were arranged around a table, and there was a couch running along one of the cabin walls. Everything gave off a sense of clean comfort lacking in a normal airplane. The cabin air even smelled fresh and pleasant and free of whatever plagues afflicted the airlines.

  Scherie said, “Finally, the James Bond treatment. Why don’t we get this more often?” Dale opened his mouth to explain, but Scherie cut him off. “I know.”

  I knew too. The Families all have money, but my family couldn’t have afforded anything like this, and those Families that could would regard it as too flashy or decadent. That Langley was footing this bill just showed how desperate things were.

  At the rear of the cabin but still well before the tail was a door in a wood-finished partition. I thought maybe it led to someplace to wash my hands and face or a larger conference table where we could plan our next move. But when I opened the door, a dim light revealed a queen-sized bed.

  “Huh, a plane with a bedroom,” I said.

  The others came over to see. “You’ve been through a lot,” said Scherie. “Maybe you should lie down for a bit.”

  “I’m feeling fine, really,” I said.

  “Which means you’re delusional,” said Grace. “I’ll take care of him.”

  Dale’s face went oddly bland. “Yes, you do that.”

  “Hey!” I said, as Grace gave me a shove into the room, then shut the cabin door behind us with emphasis. It wasn’t a thick door, but the noise of the plane seemed to drown out any world outside this little space.

  As good a time as any to have the necessary conversation. I wouldn’t be Grace’s charity case even for another instant. “It’s very kind of you to offer to take care of me, but really, I’m fine.” My voice lost its steadiness. This was more difficult than I’d thought, but I plowed on. “Don’t worry about what we discussed before. I won’t let it be awkward; we have a job to do. This sort of thing happens in combat, and it’s best to just move on, so…”

  With her preternatural swiftness, Grace seized my head in her hands and brought her lips against mine. I surrendered to the kiss for some eternity until she stopped and whispered into my ear. “You are my pirate. I thought I had lost you, and by God and you as my witnesses, I’m not going to lose you again, come Roderick, the Left-Hand gods, and Hell itself. And if you try to run from me, whatever power you think you have, I can and will kill you. Do you understand, Major?”

  She was telling the absolute, honest-to-God truth.

  “I do,” I said.

  Very romantic, but actually, I was a little unclear on the details. Was this what they called a craft marriage? But I wasn’t going to die saying no to love, so I would assume we were married in some fashion to mitigate any sin. I didn’t expect that she’d be able to prove me wrong before we all perished.

  She tilted her head and raised her eyebrows at me. “Do you need further orders, Major? Something from Henry V or Nelson?”

  “No, ma’am.” No, my dark lady, my English rose.

  What happened next was very private
and personal. I’d often heard that first times could be awkward at best, and that practice made perfect. But when I’d been a boy performing my daily spiritual exercises, my maternal grandfather had winked at me and said that all that prayer and meditation would come in handy some day. To the delight of all concerned, it did.

  As for Grace, her name was what she did, and how she did it.

  During an in-between time, Grace told a story. Apparently, her ancestors had a thing for one-eyed men. In the 1800s, Jane Howe, a weatherperson and spiritual instructor of great ability, had married her boss, Edward Rochester Marlow, despite the damage that his insane Left-Hand first wife had done to his face. Fortunately, this marriage also redirected Jane from a colonial assignment in India in which the entire craft contingent was killed.

  “That’s nice,” I murmured, playing dumb.

  “She acquired a nickname from her manipulation of the weather,” said Grace, patience weakening.

  “Hmm. Jane Storm?” I ventured.

  Grace huffed with exasperation. “You have no idea who I’m talking about, do you?”

  I tried to keep up the stupid American act, but I couldn’t control my laughter. “I get it, I get it!” I said, as she hit me with the thin pillow. “It’s very romantic. But is there a book your family isn’t in? You’re worse than the Mortons.”

  Even after meeting Dale and Scherie, that Family name could still give Grace pause. “You Yanks live too much Poe.”

  “And what craft-nosey classics do you prefer, besides the ones the Marlows are in?”

  “Dickens,” she said. “Every bloody word of Dickens.”

  “Me too,” I said, but something about that choice made my heart ache. Dickens had all of those selfless women doing good, which was a better life model than Poe’s consumptives and metempsychotics, but not by much. To repeat myself, I knew the difference between self-sacrifice and pointless self-immolation. My hand drifted to my missing eye.

  “Oh, no you don’t,” said Grace, taking my hand, placing it on the curve of her bare waist. “I’m happy you’ve read my favorites, but don’t hyperanalyze my bookshelf.”

  Thus ended the spoken interlude. Above the Atlantic, we broke the sound barrier.

  * * *

  When we emerged from the bedroom, relaxed but not very rested or even sated, I noticed that everything in the plane seemed sharper and more colorful, like going from fuzzy analog to high-def. It seemed I’d regained full depth perception, which made no optical sense. In fact, I was seeing better than I had before. That made no sense at all, whatever healing power Grace might have recently wielded. A minor miracle, though I didn’t think Saint Paul had ever gone to this sort of Damascus: zero to the mile-high club in one flight. Lord, if this is a sign of your continued love for this sinner, thank you.

  Dale kept his eyes fixed firmly on a tablet, though the corner of his mouth was twitching. Lara gazed at the staring copilot, fascinated by the Gale’s quiet stillness.

  Scherie, however, was staring at me. “Is something else wrong?” I asked.

  “It’s nothing.”

  “Nothing?”

  “You’re glowing. I mean, your eye is glowing a bit in craftsight,” she said.

  “Right,” I said. “I’m seeing better too.”

  “That’s great!”

  “But something’s still wrong,” I said.

  “Well, you might have to be careful about Middle Eastern assignments from now on. I’m not very religious, but it’s just that, with your one eye all crafty like that, you resemble the Dajjal.”

  “The what?” I asked.

  “He’s the equivalent of the Antichrist in Islam,” she said.

  Great, so it wasn’t just my fellow Christians who would be getting prophetic dread from me.

  Dale looked up from his tablet. “Antichrist, feh. I think he looks like Odin. Good and pagan.”

  Grace studied my face as if it were somehow new to her. “I think he looks like a pirate. A complete rogue.”

  Laughter was about to explode from Dale. “A pirate?”

  Scherie gave me another look-over. “She’s got a point.”

  “Both are wanderers,” said Lara, breaking her silence.

  Pagan or pirate jokes, I didn’t mind. Because if one man in the world today deserved the title of Antichrist, it certainly wasn’t me. The man we were hunting might deserve it, but God alone knew for certain.

  Then, the cabin light seemed to shift, and a wave of uncertainty passed through me, like entering the Sanctuary. I was immersed in tremendous power, familiar, yet also strange and alien. Like the power everywhere we’d gone, this spiritual fount was ready to my hand.

  The copilot spoke. “We’ve just entered American airspace. Welcome home.”

  “You shall wander far,” said Lara.

  CHAPTER

  EIGHTEEN

  On American soil, Roderick breathed in the air, then dabbed his lips with a handkerchief. “So much life!” Before his flight had left from London, he had disposed of his Kiev-tailored suit in favor of more comfortable street clothing that doubled as combat gear, but he’d kept the handkerchief. He missed his mask and robes, but in these end times he had come to see that costume as mere pretense—he wanted to be the Red Death incarnate.

  A nondescript, used Honda Civic was waiting for him. Rather than rent or lease a car, he had purchased one outright. He could have gotten another top-tier sports car like the Bugatti he’d left in Kiev; for the time left until his apotheosis, Roderick had more cash than he knew what to do with. But where he was going, craft alone wouldn’t hide anything for long, so he bought a car that went counter to his profile.

  Roderick placed his small briefcase in the trunk. Passing through customs, he had not declared the wheat as agricultural produce. For this evening in central Providence, he held the sky clear of cloud—he wanted the stars themselves to witness the path of his ascension. All of human history, all the failed prior attempts, had led to his moment.

  He parked a few blocks away from the House of Morton, outside the perimeter of his enemies’ attention, and walked the rest of the way in the brisk evening air. As his only physical weapon, he carried concealed in his jacket a kitchen knife, which seemed appropriately domestic. After several lifetimes of captivity and subsequent exile, Roderick was finally going to confront the House that had betrayed him.

  From a distance, before he sensed anything else of it, he felt House’s hatred for him, seemingly undiminished with time—if anything, stronger, as it had no reason to hide the depth of its feeling from him anymore. As if it were the wronged one. Two centuries before, Joshua Morton and Abram Endicott had entered House with its connivance and had found Roderick in his trance attempting his greatest magic. Abram had quartered Roderick and then hacked him to bits, leaving only the head intact. Even decapitated, Roderick had felt every blow.

  It bothered him that Joshua and Abram’s descendants had been so successful in getting to Ukraine and in disposing of his former body. He had predicted a high probability of suffering and death for them and those they cared about, but his farsight hadn’t been as clear with them as it was with nearly everyone else. He had a theory about that blind spot, and he’d taken some further precautions, but for now Dale, Scherie, and Endicott didn’t matter, as they were hours behind him. Roderick would take his time with House, the only true home he had ever known. It wouldn’t be a party unless his guests showed, and rushing things wouldn’t help.

  He strode up the steps of the tiered garden. In the reconstruction, a new gate had been built, but Roderick said, “Please open,” and, lock and hinges squealing in protest, it did. This was his first time at the old House in the flesh since Abram Endicott had taken Roderick’s still-living head away. Roderick stood for a moment in the courtyard, running his mundane and preternatural senses over everything—the hibernating bats, the garden going to rest for winter, the breeze through the dead leaves, the cold breath of House’s silent hate through the crack in the wall.


  Finally, hearing no greeting or curse, Roderick addressed the door of his former abode of seven gables. “Did you think I’d never return? That you wouldn’t have to pay for your betrayal?”

  Go away, tyrant. Kill you this time.

  “Tell me why you did it, House. I only asked you for a few more hours of resistance. So much grief could have been avoided.”

  No wait. Root and stone despise you.

  Roderick sighed. “My dear, foolish House. There are few truly sentient buildings in the world. Did you think to wonder why? Jonathan made you, but you owe your awareness to me and the Left Hand. For you, sentience was dialectic.”

  Thank you and fuck off.

  “That, House, was inexcusably rude,” said Roderick. “One question before I destroy your door and much else besides. I was the rightful owner, descendant of Jonathan. How did you defy me, House?”

  “We’ll answer you.” A black-lit shadow fell across the door, whirling like a slow tornado into a human shape. Madeline stood before him, a spiritual provocation, dressed in male hunting clothes of the nineteenth century, clothes that Roderick had worn when he was master here. Madeline smiled at him, feral but relaxed, without the crazed passions that he had loved. “Brother,” she said, “your blind spots are antediluvian. In the crisis of whom to obey, you assumed House was as patriarchal as you. If anything, House is a she.”

  “Greetings, sister. I am pleased to see you here. But your little sophistries cover nothing of your treachery.”

  “You should be going,” she said, “to and fro in the earth, walking up and down in it. Anywhere but here.”

  “But here I am,” he said. “And you’ve been wandering far more than I, despite your supposed confinement to the lower chambers. What’s your game, sister?”