Precipice

by Thomas Webb

  They heard Truveaux holding court as they approached, something about the finer points of diplomacy when dealing with the Texans. Montclair pushed his red-hot rage down deep in his gut and instead put on his most charming face. As he and Ayita drew near Truveaux, two monstrosities dressed in formal suits — one dark-haired and pale-complexioned, the other bald with skin the color of brass — materialized and blocked their way. Neither wore a mask. With their scarred and disfigured faces looking like ten miles of hard road, neither needed one.

  Truveaux took one look at Montclair and Ayita and froze mid-sentence. “Here now, boys,” she said. The senator moved the two monsters aside with a touch of her gloved hand. “Is that any way to treat my guests?”

  Her lips curled upward under her mask, revealing even, white teeth and a predatory grin that put Montclair in mind of the wolf mask he’d seen earlier.

  Truveaux’s eyes moved hungrily, slowly walking up and down the length of both Montclair and Ayita. “And who might the two of you be?”

  Montclair showed his own pearly whites, summoning as much rakishness as he could muster. He took Truveaux’s gloved hand and kissed it. He fought a wave of nausea as images of his mother’s face as she lay in her fine casket raced through his mind. “Francois Ambrose, at your service, Senator, and may I say it is an honor?” Montclair indicated Ayita next to him. “My wife and I were giddy with anticipation when we learned we would have the privilege of… meeting with you tonight.”

  Truveaux eyed Ayita and licked her lips. “Mmmm. I see the indigo business has treated you well, Monsieur Ambrose.”

  Montclair laughed. “It has, indeed. You’d be surprised at the number of fine things one can acquire just by selling blue dye.”

  Truveaux’s appetites were no secret. Montclair had come to learn that everyone, no matter how powerful, possessed a weakness. Truveaux’s was desire, and with Sawtooth’s help, they planned to exploit that weakness to the fullest.

  Ayita leaned over and whispered into Montclair’s ear, just as they’d planned. He nodded, as if he were acknowledging a request from his wife.

  “It was a pleasure meeting you, Madame Truveaux.” It took all he had to muster the strength and kiss her hand a second time. “We know you’re a busy woman. We’ll let you get back to your guests.”

  “The pleasure was all mine, Monsieur Ambrose.” There was a decided flush to Truveaux’s caramel skin. “I hope I’ll see you and your delectable wife again?”

  They’d planned the operation as well as they could, but without specifics, he’d had no way of knowing exactly how they would get the senate candidate alone in order to apprehend her. Coming in, that had posed a problem, but even through Truxveax’s mask, Montclair could see the older woman’s eyes linger on Ayita. He couldn’t miss the not-so-subtle glances Truveaux directed his way. Just like that, Montclair had the solution to his problem.

  Montclair flashed a smile. “I’m certain you will,” he answered.

  Throughout the evening, Montclair made sure he and Ayita kept passing by Truveaux. Each time, Truveaux seemed to have a fresh glass of champagne. Each time, he watched Truveaux’s hungry gaze fall on Ayita, further solidifying his plan. Each time they passed, he made sure to meet the Senator’s ravenous gaze with his own, just long enough for her to think he was thinking the same thing she was.

  Montclair and Ayita made their way through the gathering, engaging in just enough conversation and small talk to maintain their cover. They held their glasses in hand, only pretending to drink. They needed to remain sharp. Finally, Montclair pulled a pocket watch from his waistcoat. He held it in his gloved, clockwerk hand, checking the time. He turned to Ayita.

  “Almost midnight,” he said.

  The Croatan warrior nodded her understanding and took his hand, leading him through the now-thinning crowd. Montclair and Ayita had been working Truveaux all night, biding their time until just the right moment, until the combination of alcohol and Truveaux’s own desires became an undeniable, overwhelming force.

  Now, that time had come. Their target teetered at the edge of their trap, and all that was required to send her tumbling in was a gentle nudge.

  Ayita led Montclair toward the rear of the room, where Truveax was deep in discussion with a group of wealthy-looking men and women. After one long glance at Mr. and Mrs. Ambrose, Truveaux’s conversation came to an abrupt halt.

  The senate candidate turned to the group she’d been conversing with, still eyeing Montclair like a ravenous animal assessing its next meal. “Ladies and gentlemen,” she said to the group. Montclair caught the slurring of her speech. “If you’ll excuse me, I’ve promised these two lovelies a tour of my home. Please, make an appointment with my assistant before you leave. We’ll continue our discussion next week.”

  Truveaux invited Montclair and Ayita upstairs. The Senator explained how she preferred not to have her comings and goings noted, so they would not take the main staircase. Instead, her bodyguards, one in front of them and one behind, led them through a bustling, steam-filled kitchen to a private elevator in the rear of the manse. They entered the lift and headed up one, two, three, four floors, all the way to the fifth, where the senator’s private chambers waited.

  Moments later, they stood outside Truveaux’s suite. The Creole bodyguard, his scarred face scowling, moved to enter and found himself stopped cold by a slender, caramel-colored arm, dainty as willow branch but solid as a stone fortress.

  “Where do you think you’re going, ugly?” Truveaux asked. She took Montclair and Ayita by the hand. She nodded toward the twin beasts tasked with protecting her. “You two take a break. I’ve got it covered from here.”

  The bodyguards exchanged looks, hesitant to leave her alone. A raised brow from Truveaux was all it took for them to make their choice. They shuffled aside, each taking a position outside the Senator’s bedroom entrance. Truveaux pulled Montclair and Ayita inside and then shut the doors behind them.

  Truveaux’s eyes feasted on Ayita in her gown. “Would either of you like a drink?” she asked.

  “Please,” Montclair said. Ayita nodded.

  Truveaux poured three glasses of champagne. She brushed Ayita’s shoulder, her hand trembling in anticipation. She licked her lips.

  “You are magnificent,” she said to Ayita. Then she turned to Montclair, pressing a hand against the warm, firm flesh of his chest. He held in a shiver of revulsion. Truveaux smiled in appreciation of their forms. “Simply magnificent, the both of you.” She pulled off her mask.

  She was lovely in a cold, cruel sort of way. Her beauty surprised Montclair. She must have been striking when she had worked for his mother. He wondered why he couldn’t remember her more clearly. Her Creole features were as prominent as his mother’s had been, as prominent as his were now.

  Montclair moved behind Truveaux, drawing Ayita in close and sandwiching the diminutive senator between them. He wrapped his arms tight around Truveaux’s waist.

  Truveaux purred her approval. “The time for masking is over,” she said. “I’ve shown you mine. Now what say you show me yours?”

  Truveaux turned to Montclair, her hands bringing his face down close to hers. He felt her breath, hot and sweet, brush against his cheek. She pulled away his mask.

  Truveaux froze, her features twisting in confusion.

  Odd that Montclair sensed no fear from her, only a mild curiosity. Perhaps she thought she was safe, with a manse full of hired killers and her bodyguards just outside the door. Or perhaps she presumed herself too powerful to be in any real danger. Who would dare come for her in her own home? Montclair wondered if that level of blind arrogance was a requirement for gaining political power.

  She studied Montclair, reaching out to touch his face. “Something about you seems… familiar to me,” she mused. “Who are you?”

  Montclair’s eyes narrowed to slits. “I am Julius Montclair,” he said. “My father was General Phineas Montclair. And my mother, well, you were very well acquainted wit
h my mother. Her name was Regine Montclair.”

  Then he saw the fear, only a flash, gone as quick as it had come. She hid it well, but he’d seen it.

  Her face twisted, fear transforming into unbridled rage. Truveaux laughed, the sound a bit too high-pitched. “Only a child last I laid eyes on you. Regine’s spoiled little whelp. A damned snot-nosed brat-prince, running wild through his mother’s queendom. You looking for vengeance, boy? Chickens coming home to roost now, are they?”

  Montclair’s nostrils flared. She’d given him all the proof he needed of her guilt.

  Her eyes darted to the drawer of a nearby bureau.

  Pistol, Montclair thought. She’d never make it past him to get to it.

  All of a sudden, Montclair became painfully aware of time. With every second that passed, their chances of capturing Truveaux and escaping intact became less and less likely. He had to move quickly.

  Truveaux sensed the change in his demeanor, and tried to scream, but he was ready. His gloved clockwerk hand clamped firm and tight over her mouth. Truveaux struggled against him, but she may well have struggled against a cord of iron chain for all the good it did her.

  Montclair dragged the petite woman over to the window and assessed the area. They would never make it down into the courtyard and past the Hessians with a struggling prisoner. Leaving through the interior of the manse was out of the question as well, thanks to the guards posted both by the door and throughout the building.

  Three loud bangs at the door interrupted Montclair’s thoughts. “Madame Truveaux!” one of the guards shouted.

  Time was up.

  Montclair looked at Ayita, still in her mask. She drew a long, slim blade from her hair. Raven-colored tresses, now free of the constraints of the assassin’s blade, tumbled past her shoulders. Slow and deliberate, she stepped toward Senator Truveaux.

  They would never escape with Truveaux as their captive, but what if it were only the two of them? Ayita was offering them the chance to find out. But that chance demanded a choice.

  Truveuax deserved to die. Montclair felt it from the very depths of his soul. How many lives had she destroyed in her rise to power? How many more would she destroy as part of Smythe’s greater plans? He thought of his mother…

  Truveaux squirmed in Montclair’s grasp. He imagined her eyes big as saucers, her fear almost palpable as she suddenly became aware of her own mortality.

  More banging on the door. “Madame Truveaux!” the guards shouted. “If you don’t answer us, we’re coming in!”

  Montclair hesitated. Could he truly commit this act? Could he kill this unarmed woman, even as guilty as she was?

  Soldier? Or assassin?

  The line between the two had long ago become blurred if not erased altogether. He’d simply chosen to blind himself to it. He thought back to the argument he and Greg had back in his stateroom onboard Vindication. It was in that moment he realized Greg had been right all along.

  A loud thud came from outside the entryway, a second’s pause followed by another. Montclair had breached enough doors to know what that sound meant. They were coming in.

  Montclair laid Truveaux on the floor, indifferent to her struggling. Keeping his clockwerk hand clamped over her mouth, he placed a knee across her sternum. His other hand he held out to Ayita.

  “Give me the blade,” he whispered.

  Without hesitation, she placed the sliver of metal, blade-first, in Montclair’s hand. Montclair looked into Truveaux’s eyes as she lay helpless, pinned beneath his crushing weight. Her eyes weren’t wild with fear as he’d imagined. They burned with rage and hatred, as if she were insulted to die from a blade wielded by his lowly hand. She glared up at Montclair, defiant to the last.

  Montclair flipped the blade and slipped the point between her ribs. The rage in her stare dissipated like smoke before wind. At the end, Truveaux opened her eyes wide one final time as they took in sights no man or woman saw until the golden thread of their life was severed.

  Montclair removed his hand from her mouth, and Therese Truveaux sighed. She spoke, her last words almost too faint to hear. Montclair leaned in close, the warmth of her dying breath brushing against his ear.

  “Your… m-mother,” Truveaux said, each syllable a struggle. “It wasn’t personal, you know… R-Regine… she would have u-understood. Only one way this life we chose ever ends. It was poison. She died well. You should be prou—”

  And then, she was gone.

  Montclair’s shoulders sagged. He fell back, collapsing against the wall, the wet blade falling from his numb fingers.

  The bedroom door gave with a sharp crack and a spray of wood and splinters. It burst open, and light from the hallway flooded the room. Montclair was on his feet in an instant, instinctively shielding Ayita behind him and reaching for a sidearm that he realized, too late, was not there. With his body still between his love and the door, he backed the two of them into the far corner.

  Truveaux’s bodyguards, low and hulking, came in first. Both spotted the Senator’s body at the same, where it lay cooling in a pool of its own blood. Then, they turned to Montclair. Their charge lay murdered, the deed done right under their noses. The looks in those two sets of fetid eyes made their intentions crystal clear. Montclair dropped into a crouch as they stalked toward him.

  “Go!” he shouted at Ayita somewhere behind him. He knew she would just as soon die beside him as run, but he prayed to the Healer above that she would see the sense in fleeing. He spared a glance backward and saw the pain in her eyes.

  “I will return for you,” she said.

  Montclair nodded once then turned back to the door to face the impending attack. He heard the crash of glass behind him, the shouting of the guards in the courtyard below. Then, they were on him.

  There was a satisfying crunch as his clockwerk hand shattered the first man’s jaw. A right cross connected with the second before half a dozen bodies wrestled him to the floor.

  “Stop!” a voice bellowed.

  Montclair knew that voice. “No,” he said. “It can’t be.”

  The man in the wolf mask stepped into the doorway, this time flanked by two others — a large man masked as a lion and a smaller one masked as a dragon.

  The man in the wolf mask strode into the room. He looked down at Truveaux’s corpse and shook his head.

  “I warned Therese,” he said. “Told her that her appetites would get the best of her someday.” He shrugged. “Still, she served her purpose. I couldn’t stay in the shadows forever, I suppose.”

  “No,” Montclair pleaded. “Please. Don’t let it be…”

  “I’m afraid it is,” the wolf said. The man removed his mask. “My dear, dear brother.”

  “No!” Montclair screamed.

  The undersized man in the dragon masked stepped forward. Montclair felt the man’s fist like a blow from a hammer. His vision swam. He put his clockwerk hand out to steady himself but found it did not respond. His knees buckled underneath him. The man above him laughed as the hammer-like fist fell a second time.

  Montclair’s consciousness began to fade, the light shrinking like the slow dousing of a lantern. He saw Randall nod toward Truveaux’s bodyguards. “Track the native woman down and kill her,” Montclair heard him say just before the blackness took him, “but Julius is mine.”

  19 Outside New Orleans, Louisiana - Montclair Estate, October 1866

  Montclair returned to consciousness to the sound of buzzing. A fat, black fly alighted on his arm then quickly flew away when he stirred. Montclair inhaled, nearly choking on the stink of his own sweat and blood mixed with the stench of a nearby bayou. Sluggishly, each movement like wading through molasses, he came to. He opened one eye then winced as he forced the other, swollen and gummed shut, to crack open as well. He looked around. He lay in an iron cage, heated to sweltering by the noonday sun.

  Montclair swallowed hard. His throat convulsed. His tongue, swollen and dry, felt as if he’d spent the night chewing wool. He c
losed his eyes. How his body longed to quit, to simply shut down like a clockwerk run out of aether. The darkness beckoned to him, offered to envelope him, the promise of oblivion so inviting.

  But a single muddled thought kept echoing, screaming, through his mind. Christ the Healer, what was it? Something pressing… if only this fog in his brain would lift.

  Ayita!

  He roused with a start, the realization snapping him back to clarity. He crawled to the front of the cage, reaching, clawing through the bars of his box-like prison.

  “Ayita!” he croaked. Christ the Healer, if they’ve done anything to her…

  The exertion was too much. Darkness returned.

  When Montclair woke the second time, the sun lay past its zenith, well along its westward journey toward the horizon. The iron cage, warmed throughout the day, remained hellishly hot. From where he lay, he could just make out the edge of the bayou to the west and beyond that the swamps. In that moment, he realized where he was. This was his father’s estate.

  Memories came flooding back. He and Randall running through the swamps. He and Randall wrestling in the red dirt behind the manse. He and Randall out in the wetlands, nothing but a knife and a pistol between them, their father telling them to come back with five muskrat skins or not come back at all. “Training,” their father had called it. But to them? To them, it had simply been their childhood.

  He forced the onslaught of memories aside, his mind a jumble. A torrent of images and feelings assaulted him. He was unable to move freely, unable to think clearly. Cold tendrils of panic crept in and clutched him in their grip.

  Montclair could think only of Ayita. He began to scream her name. He screamed her name until the sun dipped below the tops of the moss-draped cypress trees. He screamed her name until twilight came upon him, until he had nothing left and collapsed, drained.

  A man dressed in Confederate gray came bearing a tin tray. “We wagered on how long you’d yell for her,” the man said, a sneer slashing across his face. “You cost me a greenback.” He spit in the dish and slid it through a slot at the bottom of the cage. He set a glass jar, half-full of water, between the bars. “Best eat up. You’ll need your strength.” The soldier laughed as he turned to leave.