Precipice

by Thomas Webb

  Scarlet nodded. “Taken them down and defended them as well.”

  “So a riverboat’s basically the same concept.” He pointed to the bottom of the diagram with a maple stick. “We infiltrate. We board the vessel. Then we clear it, level by level.”

  Scarlet wasn’t so sure. They’d first run through the snatch-and-grab scenario multiple times, plank floors marked with chalk standing in for bulkheads. From there, they’d graduated to hastily constructed wooden mockups of each of the riverboat’s five levels. They’d rehearsed on the mockups until they knew their movements back, forth, and blindfolded. But something still ate at Scarlet. Something still felt wrong, felt off. Seizing the boat was the easy part.

  Maybe it had less to do with the tactical aspect of the operation and more to do with the strange diving suits they would employ. Scarlet suppressed a shiver.

  Training with the suits was scheduled to begin tomorrow. For Carlyle’s troops, the training would be little more than a refresher, but for Scarlet, it would be a completely new, completely terrifying experience. In her work with the department, she’d climbed mountains, leapt from airship platforms on brute-back, and swam every body of water ever set between her and her mission. But the thought of being encased in a tomb-like metal suit at the bottom of the Mississippi made her heart race, made her break out in a cold, clammy sweat.

  “Same concept, huh?” Scarlet replied, careful to not let the fear creep into her voice. “If you say so, petty officer.”

  “What’s the matter, agent?” River asked. The escaped slave with the pretty face and flawless sable skin served as the scout of Carlyle’s crew. “Worried about the company?”

  Everyone in the makeshift classroom laughed. Everyone except Scarlet.

  Scarlet had caught the lone female of Carlyle’s crew stealing glances on several occasions. It wasn’t just the glances that gave it away. It was a flirtatious smile here and there, a rush of color to the sailor’s cheeks when Scarlet entered a classroom, seemingly off-handed comments on Scarlet's beauty. Scarlet herself wasn’t of the nature, but she wondered if River had always preferred the company of women, or if, after a lifetime of abuse at the hands of her former owner, she’d simply decided she'd had enough of men.

  River’s story was a fascinating one. She’d been retained by her master long after the old man, a wealthy aether baron living along the banks of the Mississippi, acquired clockwerks to replace his human slaves in the mines. By day, she’d had no choice but to learn to swim, thanks to her former master’s idea of amusement being throwing her into the water “just to see if an African could swim.” By night, he’d taken her to his bed, beating her to within an inch of her life if she didn’t react to his demands in the manner he thought proper. It was no wonder she’d slit his throat the first chance she got. Then, as a final spit in his face, she’d fled the dogs and the paddy rollers by taking to the water and swimming for freedom. A few days later, during an operation behind enemy lines, Carlyle found her dredged up on the river bank, vomited from the throat of the Mississippi. He’d seen something in her as she lay there, fighting for life. A fire in her dark brown eyes. A fierce spirit that no man could teach. He’d immediately begged her to join the Union navy.

  Not all the sailors in Carlyle’s small band had a story like River’s, but they all had one. Being labeled an outcast or a misfit seemed a prerequisite for joining his outfit.

  “Worried?” Scarlet answered, meeting the woman’s coffee-colored eyes. “Not at all. I just like to know what I’m getting into.”

  A mischievous smirk spread across River’s face. “Funny. That coming from a DSI agent, and all.”

  More laughter from the room. Scarlet gritted her teeth. She was in their territory, and this was a battle she couldn’t win.

  “You see anything wrong with our plans, agent?” Carlyle asked. He looked around at the assembled fighters. “If so, I’m sure we’d all value your professional opinion.”

  Scarlet set her jaw. Was that sarcasm?

  “Nothing to add?” Carlyle asked. “Yet still doubtful we can pull it off?” His mouth turned up at the corners. “O ye of little faith,” he sang.

  The room chuckled.

  First the female sailor and now this ass? Scarlet’s lip curled into a snarl. She was a trained DSI agent — a trained assassin. She held one of the finest mission records in the department’s history. She was no one’s joke, and she’d taken about as much shit from these sailors as she could stand.

  Scarlet pushed back from the table, an iron glint in her sapphire gaze.

  Carlyle’s eyes grew wide. He raised his hands in a gesture of surrender. “Whoa there, agent. Take it easy.” He sounded remorseful, as if he realized they’d pushed her too far. “We’re used to a good amount of ribbing around here. Sometimes we forget other people may not take it the same way we do. My apologies.”

  Scarlet seethed, but she managed to check her anger long enough to favor the petty officer with an abrupt nod.

  Carlyle took the opportunity to check the strange pocketwatch face lashed onto his wrist. “All right, shipmates, been a long morning. What d’ya say we break for noon chow?”

  The room agreed. Carlyle granted them an hour’s liberty before the next training evolution. The sailors all filed out, laughing and joking. When they were alone, Carlyle stepped out of the schoolroom and invited Scarlet to walk with him.

  They meandered through the fort in silence, Carlyle seeming to have no particular destination in mind. Several minutes passed before he finally spoke. “I want to apologize again, agent,” he said. “I know you’ve got a lot going on.” He lowered his voice. “Colonel Montclair told me about your minder and all.”

  Scarlet studied the dirt path beneath her feet. The mention of her minder was like the twisting of a blade in a wound still too fresh. She’d tried to put Copperhead from her thoughts with only varying degrees of success. The best way she could help her minder now was by seeing the Gambler in irons, so she’d chosen to focus on that instead. Once Legree was in custody, then she would find a way to get Copperhead out of whatever hellhole McCormick had damned him to, and together, she and her minder would put an end to that traitorous bag of pig excrement, McCormick.

  “You can rest easy, agent,” Carlyle assured her. “Your presence here and our part in this mission are both hush-hush, top-secret. We’re a brand new, specialized outfit, Scarlet. And we’ve been given a lot of, ah… autonomy… when it comes to getting certain things done. What I’m tryin’ to say is we’ve got you covered.”

  Scarlet swallowed. “Thanks,” she mumbled. “I-I appreciate you helping us like this.”

  Carlyle dismissed it with a wave. “Don’t worry on it none.” He said it as if going behind Strategic Intelligence’s back and conducting clandestine snatch and grabs in foreign countries was the type of thing they did all the time. “We owe Colonel Montclair one,” he continued. “More’n one, truth be told. Vindication pulled our asses out of the fire real proper a few months back.” Carlyle looked her in the eye. “A debt to the colonel is a debt to his friends, and my outfit always pays its debts.”

  Scarlet managed a weak smile. She looked up and saw they’d been walking toward the armory. “What are we doing here?”

  Carlyle smirked. “Got a surprise for you.”

  Carlyle slapped the door three times with the palm of his hand. Scarlet heard the distinctive clack of a massive lock. The door opened, and the petty officer stepped inside. A minute later, he emerged with a long object wrapped in oilcloth.

  “Arrived by airship just this morning,” he said. “Don’t know how the hell he did it, but Colonel Montclair telegraphed someone and had them retrieve this for you.”

  Carlyle extended his arms, and Scarlet tentatively took the object and unwrapped it. A look of joy lit up her face like the dawn after a long, dark night. She dropped the oilcloth to the ground and shouldered her Chassepot.

  “Never thought I’d see this again,” she whispered, sou
nding as though she’d just reunited with a long lost friend. She caressed the etched scrollwork along the rifle’s barrel and stock.

  Scarlet peered through the rifle’s looking glass. Somehow, just holding the Chassepot again gave her strength, filled her with confidence. With this rifle in her hand, anything was possible. Maybe, just maybe, they could still somehow win this.

  Scarlet smiled, reveling in the first genuine gladness she’d felt in a while. Her mood was catching. She looked up to see Carlyle grinning from ear to ear.

  He pointed to the amazing weapons system cradled in the crook of Scarlet’s arm. “Heard you were a pretty fair shot with that,” he said.

  Scarlet’s smile widened. “You heard wrong.” She racked the bolt to the rear and locked it. “I’m a damned sight more than fair.”

  18 New Orleans, Louisiana - The Garden District, October 1866

  Montclair beamed underneath his black velvet mask, forgetting if only for a second the dark work they were about to partake in. ”That gown, it suits you, my heart.”

  “Does it? I am happy it pleases you.” Ayita’s eyes, the color of molten gold, sparkled behind the black plaster and white feathers of her mask. “But I would trade it in an instant for my buckskins and my bow.”

  Montclair made an approving sound. “That would work, too,” he said, thinking of how those buckskins fit her like a glove.

  The moonlight shone from her copper skin. Her silk gown, sable-black to match the color of Montclair’s suit, hugged the contours and curves of her body before widening in a voluminous skirt. She wore the gown as if it were made for her, which, in fact, it was by Montclair’s mother’s very own dressmaker.

  They walked arm-in-arm along the narrow streets of the French Quarter, the evening air damp but cool, the heat of the day having fled with the setting sun. Aether lamps burned low in iron sconces, shadows flickering off stone walls built when the French occupied the city over sixty years past. Just ahead, through an iron gate, the garden entrance to Senator Truveaux’s manse waited.

  “This slinking through the shadows,” Ayita said, looking as if she’d just bitten into something sour. “The ways of the spymaster do not suit me, my love.”

  Ayita was a warrior. She faced her enemies in the forests, along the rivers, or in the open fields. A clean fight and a clean kill were the hallmarks of the Croatan. There was honor in that.

  Montclair remembered what honor felt like. If only it were that simple. “Sometimes, these ways are necessary, Chieftain’s daughter.”

  He spoke the words, but did he really mean them?

  “And what of the ways of vengeance?” she asked.

  Damnation. Sawtooth had picked up on it right away. She was perceptive. It was one of the many things he loved about her.

  “You’re referring to my mother,” Montclair said.

  She nodded. “I once thirsted for vengeance too, my heart.”

  “And?”

  “And I drank of it. My thirst was quenched, but the taste was rancid.”

  Montclair squeezed her hand. “We’re here.”

  Together, he and Ayita strolled up to the spike-tipped iron gate. Montclair quickly assessed the two men standing guard. The Green jackets, the red piping…

  "European mercenaries," he whispered to Ayita. “Hessians.”

  The Hessian’s presence here was a bad sign. There had long been fears that the Confederacy was strengthening its ties to Europe. These paid mercenaries from Hesse were proof that those fears were well-founded. Montclair and Ayita waited as the hired soldiers waved another couple in before them.

  Montclair produced the invitations Sawtooth’s alchemist ‘friend’ had given them then handed the card-sized pieces of vellum over to the hired soldiers.

  One of the Hessians, sand-blond with sharp Teutonic features, eyed Montclair. “Very good, monsieur,” he said, his French passable. He nodded toward Ayita. “And madame. Now, if you would, please?” The mercenary indicated a space to the left of the walkway, where two other hired soldiers searched a pair of guests for weapons.

  Montclair smiled. “Of course. Merci.”

  Once they’d been searched, the Hessians allowed them to pass. Montclair noticed it then, the scent of magnolia blossoms, their perfume so thick you could almost taste it. Torchlight bathed the courtyard, not quite reaching the secret, shadowed places among the elephant ears and crepe myrtle. He closed his eyes and breathed it in. Only New Orleans looked, smelled, and tasted like this.

  He recalled similar nights, running barefoot through the midnight gardens of his mother’s manse. What remained of the house stood less than a mile away, but it may as well have been a thousand. He remembered the feel of his mother’s arms around him. He remembered her laugh, so high and full of life, like the sweetest of songs.

  Montclair shook off the nostalgia and returned to the present, to the mission. A clockwerk ambled by, a tray of champagne attached to its arm, making its way through the inflow of ball guests. Montclair plucked two champagne flutes from the tray as it passed, one for Ayita and one for himself.

  She took a sip. “Oh!” she exclaimed softly, a smile on her lips. “Now this I enjoy!”

  “Easy, my heart,” Montclair said, remembering the Croatan warrior had never tasted champagne. “Small sips. It can go to your head quickly if you’re not careful.”

  Guests in all manner of masks stood among the palm fronds and banana trees, talking and laughing to themselves. From somewhere in the garden, Montclair detected the tinkling of a fountain. Music from a clockwerk orchestra on a makeshift stage wafted through the background.

  As he and Ayita walked together, Montclair caught a glimpse of someone in the shadows — a tall, well-built man wearing a mask fashioned in the image of a wolf with fangs bared. Something about the stranger in the wolf mask — the way he stood, the way he moved — seemed familiar. Montclair turned to look again, but the man was gone.

  “According to your friend Sawtooth, she’ll be wearing the mask of Venus, Roman goddess of love,” Greg had said in their briefing earlier that afternoon. “Whatever the hell that looks like.”

  “Sawtooth was my mother’s friend,” Montclair had corrected him. ”Not mine.”

  Greg had shrugged. “Whatever you say.”

  Montclair had caught the not-so-subtle hint of bitterness in Greg’s voice. Things were still uncertain between them, but the mission came first. The mission always came first.

  “Sawtooth’s got it set up so she’ll be expecting the two of you,” Greg had continued. “You’ll be posing as husband and wife. Shouldn’t be too much of a stretch.”

  That had been several hours ago. Now, Montclair’s muscles tightened like a swamp cat ready to pounce. For the hundredth time, he checked his surroundings. Nothing was out of place. Still, there was something, a heaviness in the air like the smell of ozone and the crackle of electricity just before the storm.

  Montclair slowed his breathing. He forced himself to relax in order to better see what it was he thought he was missing.

  Besides, Greg and the support troops were positioned right outside the walls, holed up in a rented shotgun house just down the cobblestone street. At the first sign of trouble, they’d assault. Montclair was no stranger to tight spots, but he had to admit the thought of Bull crashing through a squad of Hessian mercs was rather comforting. Even if the two of them were at odds, Greg would never abandon him and Ayita to the hands of the enemy.

  Champagne in hand, Montclair led Ayita through the garden and inside the manse. Aether lamps lit the grand foyer, which blossomed into the interior of the home. Light sparkled far overhead from the crystal of a gigantic chandelier. A great staircase faced the front of the foyer, leading to private rooms on the second and third floors. Montclair looked up, noting the myriad of people drifting in and out of those rooms. If the walls of those suites could speak, what secrets would they reveal?

  The sounds of music, clinking glasses, scattered conversation, and haughty laughter fi
lled the grand room from polished marble floor to soaring domed ceiling. Guests, every one of them masked, crowded into the first floor of the manse. There was no way to tell honest man from crook, crook from politician, politician from killer.

  Montclair chuckled to himself. As if there was a difference.

  “What do you find so amusing, my heart?” Ayita asked. Her eyes shone brighter than ever under the chandelier in the estate.

  He took her into his arms. “Nothing important, my love.”

  Ayita looked up and over Montclair's shoulder. The light in her golden eyes flashed keenly. She pointed with her champagne glass. “There,” she said quietly.

  Montclair turned. His heart skipped, and behind the mask, his dark brown eyes turned hard as flint. She was surrounded by a throng of guests, a petite woman in a pale pink mask of polished whalebone. The mask was a masterpiece with full, pouting lips, sculpted forehead, and almond-shaped eyes — features so desirable they could only belong to the goddess of love. She was just as Sawtooth said she would be. Senator Therese Truveaux, the woman his nation wanted captured. The woman who’d murdered his mother.

  “Come, my heart,” Montclair said. He took Ayita on his arm, and together, they made their way through a mass of reveling guests.

  Montclair focused on Truveaux. The words he’d said to Greg back in his stateroom onboard Vindication came rushing back.

  Are we soldiers, Greg? Or are we damned assassins?

  What was the difference between what Greg had done, taking rightful vengeance against the man responsible for his wife’s death, and what Julius might have to do? What he’d already had to do during his career as a soldier? Might the fact that the acting President of the Union ordered him to kill, if it came down to that, make it any different than what Greg had chosen to do on his own?

  Once he’d have been absolutely clear on the answer, but now, Montclair wasn’t so certain. There was one thing he was certain of. As soon as this mission was complete, he and Greg would talk again. This time, Montclair would give Greg the apology he was owed.