by Thomas Webb
Its job complete, the second clockwerk resumed its post behind the entrance. The clockwerk with the single functioning eye had been waiting patiently but now motioned for them to follow farther into the passageway, farther into darkness. They walked in the one-eyed clockwerk’s footsteps, venturing down a shadowy brick corridor. Cool air washed over them. The pungent scent of mold and damp permeated the space. The quiet lay heavy, almost suffocating, the only sound the grind of clockwerk gears and one-eye’s metallic footsteps from the shadows ahead.
Montclair’s eyes strained to pierce the darkness. He felt the tension in the air, humming like a telegraph wire. This place was an ambush waiting to happen.
Just as Montclair’s eyes adjusted to the darkness, the corridor opened into a vast, wide space. Wooden beams crisscrossed a ceiling so high it was nearly lost in shadow. Sunlight filtered in through the grime-covered glass far above, illuminating a dust-covered plank floor.
Before he stepped from the shadows, Montclair froze. He raised a clockwerk fist, signaling his lover and his friend to hold their positions. Montclair dropped to a semi-crouch, flattening against the wall, and motioned for Ayita and Greg to do likewise. Stock-still, every muscle taut and ready, he allowed his eyes to readjust to the light.
Empty, rotting crates filled the far side of the warehouse. Tarps, covered in dust from years of abandonment, lay strewn about the floor. Motes of dust caught the afternoon sunlight as they drifted toward their resting places. The warehouse, large enough to accommodate an airship, emitted the feel of an abandoned city, empty and forgotten. Only the earthy smell of raw cotton lingered from the old days.
“You’re a sight for sore eyes, boy.”
The voice boomed from behind a stack of rotting wood, shattering the cathedral-like silence of the abandoned warehouse. Three 1861 Model Colt Navies were up and sighted in before the voice’s echo faded, long before the owner of that voice finally hobbled into view.
The two people who stepped from the shadows were not what Montclair expected. An older, heavyset man leaned on a hickory cane, the wood bending beneath his weight. A towering acolyte of the Alchemists’ Guild followed, phantom-like and close on his heels.
Montclair’s eye was drawn to the acolyte. The alchemist wore wine-colored robes, the standard garb of the guild. As per their customs, the garment concealed the acolyte from head to toe, his or her face draped in a shadowed cowl. The alchemist was of stunning height and stood in place with almost preternatural silence and stillness.
Montclair’s gaze shifted back to the old man. His clothes—yellowed cotton shirt, scarf, waistcoat and trousers — hung in tatters, and his shoes, worn and cracked, had certainly seen better days. He carried a prodigious belly with chest and shoulders to match, though he was a full head shorter than Montclair. His hair was white and thinning, and a wiry bush of more-salt-than-pepper beard covered the lower portion of his coppery face. Despite his appearance, he stood proud, giving the air of a man more used to giving orders than obeying them.
“Don’t recognize me, do you, boy?”
Montclair kept his pistol where it was. “Should I?”
“Look closer,” the old man said.
Montclair did. Something about the old man’s face rang familiar. Then, Montclair noticed the ragged scar running the length of the old man’s cheek.
“Sawtooth?”
The old man smiled, his right tooth as jagged as the tool it was named for. He gave a slight bow. “At your service, young man.”
Montclair secured his Colt then gestured for Greg and Ayita to do the same. “It’s all right,” he assured them. “Sawtooth used to work for my mother.”
Sawtooth pouted, the vulnerable gesture out of place beneath his jagged scar. “Oh, now, Julius, you wound me! I know she tried to keep this world from you, but she was a queen, Julius, and I was her right-hand man.”
“A queen, was she?” Greg said. He looked at Montclair then at Sawtooth. “Old man, would you say Julius’ mother was Creole royalty, then?”
Sawtooth nodded. “I’ll overlook your lack of respect, young man, but, oh, yes, she was a queen. Every bit of one. Or at least the closest thing to such that we’ll ever see in these parts.”
Greg grinned at Montclair. “I’m surrounded by royalty, it seems.”
Montclair groaned. Greg had once accused him of being royalty after seeing a daguerreotype of his mother. Montclair had vehemently denied it. Now, he’d never live it down.
He gestured to the acolyte. “Who’s your friend, Sawtooth?”
The old man glanced at the robed figure. “This here? Just an acquaintance.” The hooded figure bowed to Montclair. “Call her a ‘business partner’ if you will. One of the few left from your mother’s reign.”
“My mother did business with the alchemists?” Montclair asked.
Sawtooth shrugged. “Onliest way I know to turn raw aether into a usable power source is through the alchemists. And Regine controlled much of the aether market in the territories, once upon a time.”
Montclair’s eyes widened.
Sawtooth laughed. “Thought she was only into the smuggling and the pleasure houses, did you? There’s much about your mother you don’t know, Julius, and much I could tell you. Perhaps when the time’s right, you’ll let me.”
Montclair held his peace, still processing. The aether trade was a high stakes game, reserved only for powerful aether barons, or so he thought. But his own mother?
Ayita’s brow furrowed. “If Julius’ mother’s empire is no longer, and you were her loyal servant, how is it that she is gone and you remain, Uncle?”
Sawtooth smiled. “‘Uncle’, is it?” He looked at Montclair. “I like this one, Julius. She’s sharp. Your mother would have approved.”
Pain tightened in Montclair’s chest at the thought of his mother approving of someone he cared about. For a brief second, he was a youth again with barely a hair on his chin but still desperate for his mother’s approval. Then, the second passed.
“I remain,” Sawtooth said to Ayita, “because I had no other choice. Not if I wanted to survive.”
“The drop box message,” Montclair began. “How did you know it was me, Sawtooth?”
Sawtooth grinned. “The river rats.”
“River rats?” Ayita asked.
“The children of the river,” Montclair said. “Orphans and runaways making a living off those who frequent the city and the riverfront. My mother used to pay them to act as her eyes and ears.”
Greg whistled low. “Genius.”
“That she was,” Sawtooth said. “I’ve managed to keep a few of the rats on the payroll. Part of their job is to always have one eye on that message box you used, just in case we needed it again. Imagine my surprise when we did.”
Montclair looked around the abandoned warehouse then at Sawtooth. His mother’s former lieutenant was now barely getting by from the looks of it. He’d been a wealthy man under Montclair’s mother. Now, he was reduced to this, a shadow of what he’d once been and with a new criminal overlord running the Crescent City.
“What happened here, Sawtooth? After my mother died, I mean.”
Sawtooth sighed, his body seeming to deflate. “When Regine passed,” he said, “we mourned.” What little spark of life there was drained from the old man’s eyes. “We mourned long even after you left.”
There it was again. The pain in Montclair’s chest. The guilt, gnawing away at his insides like rats chewing their way out of a cage.
“But not all mourned your mother’s passing,” Sawtooth said, too lost in his own pain to acknowledge Montclair’s. “After you left, Regine’s empire shattered like so much glass. Each shard became a rival faction: the Yellow Hanks, the Live Magnolia Boys, Gironde Street… a hundred others. And before we knew what’d happened, those shards went to war.” Sawtooth paused, recollecting. “It started off small at first. A stabbing here, a throat cut there, some upstart voyou leaving his calling card.” He shrugged. “The occasional
street skirmish over territory. But then…”
“What came next, Uncle?” Ayita asked.
Sawtooth looked at Ayita as if seeing her for the first time. He gave Montclair a knowing look. “Then things took a turn,” he continued, his voice low and mournful. “The smaller gangs fell, absorbed or killed off by the more vicious ones until only the strongest and most ruthless remained. They started to consolidate.” Sawtooth nodded toward Montclair. “This was ‘round about a couple years after you left.”
Montclair didn’t flinch from the accusation. “I wanted no part of what my mother had built.”
Sawtooth’s eyes flashed. “You think it was all about stealing?” he shouted, spittle flying from his mouth. His anger came on sudden and unexpected, a flash of lightning in a Louisiana summer storm. “What your mother stood for, what she fought and killed for her whole life, you think it was all about thieving and whores, do you, boy? No! It was about this city! And the territories beyond it! Christ the Healer, boy, Regine was so much more than what you think she was. You’re too young to remember, but before she took over, the streets of the French Quarter ran red every night. When she came to power? All that killing ended. Women and children felt safe walking these streets. People are always apt to do evil, Julius. Regine knew that, but she kept it tolerable. She kept the peace. Don’t you see that?” He half-fell, half-sat on a box and pointed his cane at Montclair. “You were supposed to take over her empire, Julius. But you left… went off to play soldier! And people died because of it.” His voice dropped to a whisper. “Simple as that.”
Montclair stared at the old man sitting there, broken and forgotten, his anger seething. Montclair said nothing. There was nothing he could say.
Sawtooth hung his head, suddenly ashamed. “You never understood your mother,” he said, “but she forgave you for it. Said you had nobler pursuits than maintaining what she’d built even though she knew what it would cost.” Sawtooth looked up, his eyes rimmed red with tears. “Said you took after your father that way. She did love him, you know. I-I know that better than anyone.”
“I’m sorry,” Montclair said. “I didn’t realize...”
The old man laughed, the sound both bitter and sweet. He dismissed his pain with a wave of the hand. “Almost everyone loved your mother, Julius. Almost everyone, but not all. Your mother’s death…”
The unstated implication hung in the air. Montclair’s eyes narrowed in skepticism. “Consumption… consumption took my mother.”
Sawtooth turned away and shook his head.
Montclair’s heart hammered in his chest. “What are you saying, old man? Speak up. Now!”
Sawtooth smiled, sour and without mirth. “I was never a fighter, Julius. My talents were more… administrative in nature.” His eyes glazed over. “But if I was, I’d have taken vengeance on Therese. Her and all her ilk.”
Montclair glared at Sawtooth. “You’re saying my mother was murdered?”
Greg swore, and Ayita shifted uneasily next to him.
“Never proven,” Sawtooth said. He looked over at the hooded acolyte. The woman stood still as a statue. “The best assassins don’t leave a trace.”
A cold chill had seeped into the warehouse, despite the damp warmth emanating from the river.
“Who?” Montclair demanded, iron in his voice.
Sawtooth looked older now, old and worn and defeated. No one person could bear the burden of revenge and guilt and self-loathing for so long as he had without it taking its toll.
Sawtooth began to speak, pain and effort etched in the strain of his voice, into the lines of his face. “After Regine’s death, for a long while after, things were bad. Blood ran thick and crimson in the gutters. The Mississippi flowed red with it for a time. Then, seemingly from nowhere, Therese Truveaux appeared.”
Montclair nodded, fighting to suppress the red rage growing inside him. It didn’t take a genius to connect the dots Sawtooth had drawn.
“Therese Truveaux?” Greg asked. “You mean Senator Truveaux. “I thought she was just a politician.”
Sawtooth laughed. “Learn your friend here about our ways, Julius,” Sawtooth said.
Montclair turned to Greg. “In New Orleans, politics and the underworld,” he clasped both his hands together, “are intertwined. Sometimes inextricably so.”
Sawtooth nodded. “When Regine died, her empire fell into chaos until Therese rose to claim the remnants. Therese came from humble beginnings, but she’s a natural-born leader. I’ll give her that. Masterful how she manipulated the heads of the factions and united them under her banner. Once she had the power of the gangs at her command, there was no stopping her. She killed her way to becoming city alderman then on into the Senate.”
“Who is she, Sawtooth?” Montclair asked.
He shrugged. “She was nobody, Julius, until she became something else. She started as a courtesan, but no mere trollop working on her back for scraps to live on. She was trained for the life, groomed for it from an early age, a product of a plaçage gone wrong. She was a working girl, one of the best there was, up at the Basin Street House.”
“My mother owned the Basin Street House,” Montclair said, his voice devoid of emotion. Now, he knew why her daguerreotype had looked so familiar during the briefing. It had been a lifetime ago, and she’d aged, of course, but he had seen Therese Truveaux before.
Sawtooth nodded. “She did own it. Therese was one of her girls.”
“And now this murdering bitch has Smythe’s ear,” Montclair said.
“A powerful position,” Ayita said. “Most especially given what I have heard about your Texas and the other lands north and west of here.”
Sawtooth shook his head. “Without Smythe’s support, Therese‘s campaign would’a melted away like evening mist over the bayou. She’d have never been in this runnin’ for Senate… there’s a limit to who people will cast their vote for, even in New Orleans. But Smythe needed her, and she needed him. Now, she’s more powerful than she ever has been, and she’s bringin’ the territories in line, just like he asked. Together…” Sawtooth shuddered and looked away. “Texas ain't none of my concern, mon cher, but you’re right, girl. New Orleans is the gateway to the Texas Republic, and the crescent city is the key to the rest of the Louisiana Territories, too.”
“If Smythe wants Texas and the territories in the fold, he needs New Orleans,” Montclair added.
“So he needs Truveaux?” Greg asked.
Montclair nodded. “He absolutely needs her.”
Montclair thought of the capture order he’d decided upon. If what Sawtooth had just said was true, it would be easier than he’d thought.
Greg scratched at the stubble on his chin. “From what we’ve seen, Truveaux’s security is as impenetrable as a frog’s ass is watertight. How can we get to her?”
Sawtooth grinned, the jagged incisor he was named for on full display. “That’s the main reason I agreed to meet y’all here. I missed my opportunity to avenge Regine years ago, I ain’t gonna miss this one. It just so happens that tomorrow night there’s a Masquerade ball in the Garden District, and it just so happens it’ll be at Therese Truveaux’s mansion.”
“Won’t do us much good, old man,” Greg said. “From what I’ve seen of how the wealthy down here live, their homes are built and manned like Caribbean fortresses. It’d take an entire platoon to assault one at all, much less win it. Not to mention all the mercenaries and Confederate regulars Truveaux will have on hand.” He shook his head. “No way can we get to her.”
“If we could somehow gain entry to this celebration, could we not take this woman then?” Ayita asked.
Montclair shook his head. “Masquerade is one of the biggest holidays of the year in New Orleans. Invitations for this thing would have been secured weeks ago. We’ll have to think of something else.”
Sawtooth whispered something to the acolyte. Her hooded head moved up then down in one slow, deliberate nod.
Sawtooth turned back to his au
dience. “That’s where you’re wrong, Julius.”
17 Banks of the Mississippi in Illinois - Fort Defiance, October 1866
Scarlet faced the front of the room, pondering the crude diagram hanging on the wall. Carlyle’s chalk screeched across the slate slab, adding yet another chicken-scratch note to a slate board already full of them. Scarlet shifted in her seat, overly aware of Carlyle’s sailors seated to both her right and her left.
After some initial mistrust, she’d blended in well enough with Carlyle’s group. They were stronger, tougher, and better trained than any sailors she’d ever seen, nothing at all like their naval counterparts, and Fort Defiance teemed with them.
They worked in small squads of no more than sixteen, with the ability to split into smaller sections of eight, four, or even two if only a long rifle and a spotter were needed. Each member of Carlyle’s crew was cross-trained, able to do the job of almost any other crewman. In addition to standard military skills, the sailors practiced disciplines as diverse as field medicine, airship piloting, climbing, sharpshooting, and aether explosive ordnance work. There were even trained mechanists in case they had to deal with clockwerk technology and technists able to program punchcards in a pinch.
They prided themselves on the level of difficulty of each mission. The tougher the assignment, the better they liked it.
Fort Defiance reported to a single rear admiral, presently in Washington on business. In his absence, a meek naval captain, the silver eagles on his uniform not yet deprived of their shine, was left in charge. But ask anyone and they’d tell you that Carlyle and his crew, the most elite of the newly trained sailors, were really the ones in charge. He and his band had the run of the small outpost. Even the most senior officers, especially the captain, gave them a wide berth.
The big Union Naval petty officer peered at the chalk diagram. He scratched his face, the lower portion covered by a thick beard. “You’ve taken down an airship before, haven’t you, agent?” he asked Scarlet.