Chapter 42 - The Ghost of the Syndicate
The cold air in the capitol courtyard turned to ice as the ironclad train ground to a halt along the military siding. Steam hissed violently from undercarriage pistons, masking the boots of dozens of uniformed private riflemen who stepped off the flatcars with mechanical precision. They carried repeating carbines, their gray coats bearing no state seal—only the embossed emblem of a black iron anvil.
Clara could not breathe. Her heart slammed against her ribs like a trapped bird.
"Arthur..." Judge Vance's voice was barely a rasp, the paper in his trembling fingers rustling like dry leaves. "He survived the river collapse a decade ago. He faked his death to evade the anti-trust hearings in Philadelphia."
From the central armored carriage, the heavy steel door swung wide. A man stepped onto the iron landing. He leaned heavily on an ebony cane capped with a polished silver skull, but there was nothing frail in his posture. He wore an immaculate charcoal wool coat over a tailored three-piece suit, his graying hair slicked back against a scarred, aristocratic brow. His eyes—the exact shade of cold, slate blue as Clara’s—scanned the courtyard before settling directly on her.
"Ten years," Clara whispered, the word tasting of ashes. "Ten years mourning an empty grave."
Caleb stepped forward, his hand dropping naturally to the worn grip of the Colt Peacemaker at his hip. "Stay behind me, Clara."
"No," Clara said, her voice dropping into a register of terrifying calm. She pushed gently past Caleb, descending the marble terrace steps until she stood just twenty paces from the tracks. "You don't hide behind a shield when your own blood comes to collect your soul."
Arthur Thornton looked down at his daughter from the carriage steps, a thin, patronizing smile pulling at his mouth. "You grew up hard, Clara. Good. The frontier suited you better than the drawing rooms of Boston."
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"You killed sixty men on Dead Man's Trestle," Caleb called out, his deep voice carrying over the low rumble of the idling boiler. "You paid the sappers to drop the middle span beneath the night express. You tried to bury me in the canyon."
Arthur barely glanced at Caleb. "A minor miscalculation in the overhead costs, Mr. Blackwood. You were supposed to die cleanly on that bridge. Governor Sterling made a mess of my timeline, so I had to come finish the ledger myself."
