Rebel Magisters (29 page)

“Or until we overthrow the government.”

I would have thought she was the least likely revolutionary, but she was full of surprises.

I spent the rest of the day working on the padlock until I could open it within a minute. A couple of times, I risked using magic, and that dropped my time to just a few seconds. I tried to get some rest because I knew it would be a long night, but it was futile. I couldn’t shut off my mind as it rehashed every detail of a plan that was frighteningly lacking in detail. So many things would have to come together for this to work, but the alternative was unthinkable.

I finally gave up and forced myself to down some tea and a sandwich before heading out to visit my “sick friend.”

It was time to see if my mad plan had a chance of working.

In Which

I Clean a Cell Block

“So, it’s all set?” Lizzie said when she ushered me inside her boardinghouse.

“I believe so, if the Mechanics are ready on their end.”

“They’ll be waiting at the hangar. The rest is up to you. We also have a couple of riots ready to go. I must say, you’ve put a bounce in Colin’s step. He hasn’t organized a good riot in far too long.”

“I might also need an alibi for myself tonight. I’m supposedly visiting a sick friend here, one who might die tonight and leave me utterly distraught.”

Lizzie smiled. “I believe we can manage that. If we need to, we’ll even have a funeral. Everyone here at the house will be wearing black if any officials come by tomorrow. I’ll arrange for a funeral wreath on the door.”

I took a deep breath and let it all out in a sigh, trying to release some of the tension that had built up within me. “Then I believe I’m as ready as I ever will be. Pray that this works. I can’t believe I’m doing anything this audacious.”

“I always knew you had it in you. You came to New York City on your own, with no support and no clear plans. That was as bold as anything else you’ve done.”

“It was naive. And I suppose this plan is just as naive. But I can’t leave him there.”

She studied me for a moment, a look of realization spreading across her face. “You really love him, don’t you?”

I felt my cheeks grow quite warm. “I—I owe him a great deal. And I care about him.”

She smiled and nodded. “Yes, I thought so.”

I sighed, conceding her point, and shook my head. “It’s utterly hopeless.”

“Well, he’ll be a fugitive, so maybe who he is won’t matter much anymore. Now, we’d better get you ready to go.” We went up to her room, where she had a loose gray dress that fit over my clothes, with a dingy white apron and a kerchief that covered my hair. I left my coat behind, with a shawl over my shoulders instead.

I had just finished tying the kerchief when one of Lizzie’s housemates rapped on her door. She was dressed much like my disguise. “Are you ready to go?” she asked.

“As ready as I’m likely to be,” I said, my voice trembling. I gathered up the cloth bundle that held my supplies and joined her and one other girl from the house as we left and caught a bus heading farther downtown. There, they went off to their jobs and I went to the back of the laundry, where I was to meet my helpers from the fort.

I tried not to panic when I didn’t see anyone there. I was early because I was so afraid I’d miss them. They were taking a huge risk for me, so I didn’t want to inconvenience them further by making them wait. Even so, each minute that I waited seemed to drag. I closed my eyes and counted to fifty, telling myself that they’d be there when I opened my eyes again. It was a game I’d played as a child whenever I had to wait.

When I reached thirty, a voice said, “Good, you’re on time.” I opened my eyes to see the dark-skinned girl who worked on the nighttime cleaning crew. Soon, we were joined by the laundresses. “You won’t be able to carry in that big a bundle,” the German girl said. “It will look out of place.”

“But these are things I need,” I said. After thinking for a moment, I untied my apron, lifted my borrowed dress, and wrapped the cloth items around my waist. With the dress back in place, I used the apron to secure the bundle. I didn’t think the result looked too obvious once I had my shawl pulled around me, and the extra padding helped disguise my body shape.

As a group, we caught a bus down to the lowermost tip of the island. My heart began pounding as I stepped off the bus in front of the fort. As much as I’d been sneaking around and covering my tracks until now, I hadn’t actually been doing anything wrong, and no one was likely to have been watching me. Now, though, I was about to start breaking so many laws that if I were caught, I’d be in as much trouble as Henry, but without the noble title to protect me.

We joined a flock of other girls, all dressed more or less alike in loose dresses, aprons, shawls, and kerchiefs, coming from other buses or on foot. My helpers kept me in the middle of their group and moved us all to the center of the crowd as we passed through the gates of the fort. I held my breath when I crossed the threshold, but the guards didn’t look twice at us.

The laundresses took me with them to the laundry shed at the back of the fort. “You’ll have a few hours to wait,” the tall German girl told me.

“How can I help until then?” I asked.

“Help?”

“Well, it would look suspicious if I just sat around, and I may as well earn my keep while I’m here. Give me a job to do so I’ll fit in.”

She put me to work moving carts of linens around. I was surprised by how much laundry the barracks generated. There were sheets and towels for all the men, as well as their shirts and undergarments. Apparently, only the officers who had money sent their clothes out to be cleaned. Everyone else had to take the service they got from the fort’s laundry, where just about everything was thrown into a couple of huge copper tubs of boiling water.

The work was mind-numbing and made me grateful that I was educated enough to work as a governess. That mind-numbing quality also helped pass the hours. I was startled when my German friend tapped me on the shoulder. “It’s time,” she said.

If my heart had been pounding before, now it felt like it would burst out of my chest. I could hear my own heartbeat. Before I left the laundry, I paused to pull the clothes out from under my borrowed dress and stuff them with rags from a pile I found. The result looked nothing like Henry, but I hoped this would help delay discovery of the escape. I put the pieces of the dummy in a laundry bag.

The dark-skinned girl met me at the entrance to the laundry. She pushed a dustbin on wheels and had a broom in her hand, which she gave to me. “I assume you know how to use this,” she said.

“I’ve done my share of chores,” I replied. We’d had a housemaid at home, but I’d had to help while my mother was ill, so I didn’t think I’d be an obvious amateur. She hid my bag in her dustbin, and we set off, going deeper into the fort.

We had to work our way around the entire fort before we could get to the cells, and I was sure my hands would blister from all that sweeping. There was a great deal of chaos in the fort, with soldiers running to and fro, dressing and gathering weapons before assembling and then marching out. I took that to mean that the riots had started. I wondered if that had been the wisest plan, as it meant there were many more soldiers out and about rather than sleeping, but the chaos did seem to mean that they looked even less at the workers than they normally might have.

Finally, we reached the cells. A guard had to let us in, but he didn’t seem to notice that I was new. He went back to his office while we got to work. “Won’t he notice if there are more of us leaving?” I whispered to my partner.

“There’s a shift change soon. The new one won’t know how many of us there were if we’re scattered and working when he arrives.”

Every instinct I had told me to hurry and find Henry, but I knew we needed to do our job systematically and according to the usual routine. We started at the rear of the cell block and worked our way down, sweeping and mopping the floor. Most of the cells we passed were empty. The few that were occupied contained soldiers who seemed to be sleeping off bouts of drinking.

I was starting to panic that Henry might already have been taken away when I reached a cell whose occupant was sitting up on the narrow ledge that served as a cot, his back against the cell wall, and his knees drawn up to his chest. Even in the dim light, I knew it was Henry.

I tapped lightly on one of the cell bars to get his attention. He lifted his head, then slowly unfolded himself to stand and move to the bars. “Verity? Is that you?” he asked, his voice barely a whisper. “What are you doing here?”

“I’m here to rescue you, of course,” I whispered in reply, hoping the quaver in my voice wasn’t too obvious.

I slipped my hand between the bars, and he clasped it, squeezing like he was holding onto a lifeline. “How?” he asked.

“I have a plan. First, we need to get you out of that cell.” I reluctantly withdrew my hand from his grip and took the lockpicking tools out of my apron pocket. This lock was more similar than I’d expected to the padlock I’d used for practice. While the lock was resistant to magic and I was unable to unlock it with magic alone, I found that magic plus the tools worked.

“Hurry,” my colleague hissed. “Shift change.”

The last tumbler clicked, and the lock opened. Henry rushed back to his seat and I stood in front of the unlocked door, sweeping, as the guard came out of his office, unlocked the entrance for his replacement, and they switched places. The new guard barely glanced at us as he headed, yawning, into the office.

Once he was gone, I pulled the door open, and Henry rushed forward. My colleague took a bundle out of her dustbin. “Put these on,” she ordered. I helped Henry pull a loose dress over his clothes and tied the apron around his waist. The kerchief was oversized, and we arranged it so that it hid his face.

Next, I took the laundry bag out of the bin and arranged the pieces of dummy on the bunk, covering them with a blanket. Henry shook his head, frowning. “I’m afraid they gave me something that makes it difficult for me to use magic, so I won’t be able to make that look more authentic.”

I glanced over my shoulder to see that my colleague was back outside the cell, pushing her broom. “Let’s see what I can do,” I whispered. I’d struggled with illusion and hadn’t had much opportunity to practice lately, but with Henry unable to help, I had to make it work. I only needed to affect the dummy’s head, making a lump of cloth look like it was covered in hair. I glanced at Henry, noting how his sandy hair was disheveled, and laid that mental image over the dummy, shaping the ether. Soon, it looked like Henry really was lying on his side, his back to the bars.

“I don’t know how long it will last, but it should buy us some time,” I whispered.

Henry and I left the cell, and I paused to gently push the door closed. My colleague eyed Henry up and down. “You’re too tall, so you’ll have to do something about that,” she said. “Push the dustbin.”

He crouched, bending his knees beneath the loose skirt, and stooped his shoulders over the dustbin as we headed for the exit. The cleaning woman knocked on the doorframe of the guard’s office. “We’re done out here. Need me to sweep up in there?”

“Just empty the rubbish,” he said.

While she emptied a small waste can, he walked toward the exit to unlock it. The guard waited while we trooped out before locking up behind us and returning to his office.

I wanted to hold my breath the whole way back to the laundry room, but I knew that wouldn’t decrease our chances of being detected, and if I passed out, we would be noticed. Now we were really in trouble if we were caught, and I doubted we’d get another chance to rescue Henry if this attempt failed.

One shift of cleaners and laundresses was getting ready to leave when we arrived in the laundry room, and the scullery maids were arriving for the morning. Henry and I blended into the group shuffling out at the end of their shift. His slouched, crouched posture fit in well with the weary women leaving after a hard night’s work, though his head still stood above most of us.

I found myself holding my breath again as we approached the fort’s gate. This was perhaps the last dangerous point of our escape attempt. If the guard there noticed anything odd, we were doomed. If the guard in the cell block noticed Henry’s absence before we were through the gate, the gates would likely be closed on us.

We were so close. Twenty more feet. Ten. Then we were walking past the guard. “Good morning, ladies!” he called out. I tensed, waiting for him to tell us to stop. “There’s been rioting all night, so it’s not safe for you to go home your usual ways. We’ve got buses to take you away from here.”

I forced myself not to look at Henry in dismay. We were more likely to be spotted on a bus, and we might still be under their supervision when Henry’s disappearance was noticed. Where would they take us? But I was afraid we didn’t have any choice but to get on a bus.

Henry and I found a seat together, with him closest to the window. He sat with his head down and his shoulders slouched. I tried to look like I was tired rather than tense, but all I could think about was that we were getting farther and farther away from where we were supposed to meet Henry’s friends.

I wanted to cry out for joy when the bus stopped a few blocks away to let off some of the women. Henry and I joined them. We moved slowly, letting both the bus and the other women get out of sight before we headed west. In a dark, narrow side street, Henry paused to pull off the dress and kerchief. “I think I’m more noticeable dressed like that than as myself,” he said, “and I’m not sure how much longer I can walk so stooped over.”

“You really made a terrible woman,” I agreed, “but I didn’t have time to come up with a better plan.”

“It was a brilliant plan. It worked, didn’t it?”

“We’re not safe yet, and we’re running late and in the wrong place to meet our transportation.”

“Airship?”

“Not yet. Your friends are supposed to be coming back from a yachting excursion. Now we’ll have to backtrack to meet them.”