Rebel Magisters Page 6

  Colin stopped at the end of the passage we were in. “I’m going to show great faith in you by not blindfolding you. You already know about the subway, and you know a couple of the access points, so there’s not much point in confusing you about where you are now. But I will stress that this location is a secret that only the Rebel Mechanics know.”

  “On our honor, we will keep this secret,” Geoffrey said solemnly.

  “Well, good, then. Otherwise, I’d have to kill you.” Colin grinned as he said it, but his eyes were unusually serious. I shuddered at the thought that he might have meant it.

  Chapter Five

  In Which

  We Make Great Plans

  I felt like Colin was taking us on a particularly circuitous path as we spent longer than I recalled was necessary walking through tunnels. I was tempted to mark a wall so I’d know we were walking in circles if I saw the mark again. Finally, we reached a large steel door.

  “Wait here a moment while I prepare our hosts for your presence,” Colin said. “Ladies, if you’ll care to join me—other than Verity.” Lizzie and Emma followed Colin through the doorway, leaving me with the magister men.

  “I get the feeling we’re not entirely welcome,” Philip said, his tone flippant.

  “But I thought they wanted money,” Geoffrey said, frowning.

  “I don’t think they like having to ask for it,” Henry said.

  “What they wanted was more money from the Masked Bandits,” I explained. “They probably don’t want money from magisters, unless it’s stolen from them. This is…I think this is making them think about people in a different way. They hate owing you anything. Remember, you’re what they’re rebelling against.”

  “We’re what we’re rebelling against, too,” Philip said. “We don’t want to have to be what we are.”

  “Then you’ll have to show them who you are, that you’re individual people, not just magisters.”

  I was beginning to fear that Colin had stranded us there when he finally returned. “Come, and enjoy the party,” he said, flinging the door open theatrically.

  We found ourselves in the main station of the underground railway. “It’s got to be the safest place in the city for us to gather, since no one knows about it,” Colin said. “And you have to admit, an underground rail station is rather appropriate for our cause.”

  The magisters had seen the station the night we loaded the machines onto the subterranean railway to get them out of the city, but they hadn’t had much time then to look at their surroundings. This station had been built when the railway was meant as a way for magisters to travel out of the weather. As a result, it looked like the first-class waiting area of a major railroad depot, with decorative tile and fine wood furnishings. By the time the station was completed and the tunnel bored, the magisters had moved uptown, and the railroad never went into service—until the Mechanics found it and fitted it out with their machines.

  I was familiar with the station, but I’d never seen it quite like this before. The benches had been shoved aside to create an open dance floor on which people in colorful Mechanics garb were twirling around to the tunes provided by a small band set up in a corner. They didn’t have the full-sized calliope that had been at the last Mechanics party I’d attended, but they did have a miniature model providing a breathy, hooting descant to their wild music.

  I recognized the odd and overly complicated drink dispenser, but there was also a new one with an array of bottles and a mass of tubing flowing into a line of glasses. The big machines might be safely out of the city, but some of the smaller models were there. A small traction engine pulled a cargo of sandwiches across the floor, and a tiny airship drifted around the room with a basket of roasted nuts in its gondola. People grabbed handfuls as it passed them.

  “You appear to incorporate your mechanical philosophy into your recreation, as well,” Geoffrey remarked to Colin.

  “It’s a way of life,” Colin said. “We think of new ways of doing things. Some of the machines are less useful than others, but they’re still fun to make.”

  I noticed after watching the party for a minute or two that most of the attendees wore goggles pulled down over their eyes. I knew the Mechanics often wore goggles as part of their attire, sometimes even for practical purposes, but were they now using them as masks to hide their identities from the visiting magisters?

  Philip was the first to make a move to join the party. He approached Emma and held out his hand in an invitation to dance. Soon, they’d blended into the swirl of color in the middle of the room. “Feel free to enjoy yourselves,” Colin urged. “We’ll talk later when all of us are here.”

  Geoffrey and Henry looked at each other and shrugged. “We may as well,” Geoffrey said. “How often are we likely to get an invitation like this?”

  Henry turned to me. “You’ve been to their parties before, haven’t you? What would you recommend?”

  “I think you should get a drink over there.” I pointed to the drink dispenser. “You really ought to see it in action.”

  We skirted the dance floor to reach it, and Geoffrey went first in tossing a small gear into the tray that set the elaborate machine in motion, mixing various liquids to be poured into a tin cup. He and Henry laughed as they watched the machine in motion. Just as Henry was taking his turn, I noticed someone approaching us. He wore a hat and goggles, but my breath caught in my throat as I watched him. The first time I’d met Alec, he’d been dressed similarly. I wondered if there would ever come a time when seeing him didn’t affect me so strongly. I’d seen him just days ago, so it wasn’t as though this was the first time I’d encountered him after our falling-out.

  When he reached us, he took off his hat, shoved the goggles up onto his forehead, and bowed slightly to me. “This is a bit of a surprise,” he said.

  “It shouldn’t be. You were the one who approached me to ask for help.” I gestured to the magisters. “I brought them so you could ask them yourself.”

  Henry, having obtained his drink, turned around and saw Alec. “Oh, hello. Alec, was it?” he said. “Good to see you again. This is Geoffrey. I don’t know if you remember him from the night we saved your machines. And Philip is around here somewhere.” If he noticed any tension, he gave no sign of it, but he had managed to slip in a reminder of the aid they’d already provided.

  Alec nodded to them. “Thank you again for your help. And for considering helping us again. There are a couple more people who aren’t here yet, so enjoy yourselves in the meantime.”

  “It’s quite a show you’re putting on,” Geoffrey said.

  “You’ve seen the real machines. These are just demonstrations and class projects,” Alec said.

  “So you’re a student?” Henry asked.

  “Not on track to graduate anytime soon,” Alec said with a laugh. “I keep missing classes.”

  “And I imagine your term was disrupted when you had to flee the city.”

  “The machines had to leave. The people can come and go, as long as we keep our heads down. In fact, us being in class keeps them from knowing for certain who was part of the movement they thought they drove out. If we’d vanished, it would have been like a confession.” He turned to me. “Verity, would you care to dance?”

  “Not really,” I said.

  “Then would you be willing to take a turn around the room with me?”

  I suspected that meant he wanted to talk, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to do so. I automatically glanced at Henry, reluctant to leave him and unable to avoid comparing the two men. Henry, whose obliviousness wasn’t always an act, said, “Go on, Verity. Enjoy yourself. We’ll be fine.”

  Declining Alec’s invitation after that would only raise questions I’d rather not have to answer, so I took the arm Alec offered and walked away with him. “I really wasn’t expecting you to bring the magisters to us,” he said.

  “You asked me to ask them for more money. I thought you should speak directly. You’d do a better j
ob of making your case than I would, since I don’t know what you need or what you have planned.” I kept my tone stiff and formal, the way I might speak with Rollo’s headmaster.

  “You’re still angry with me,” he said with a rueful grin.

  I started to deny it, but decided that honesty would be better. “Yes, I’m angry. How should I feel? You deceived me, and then even after you knew me better and knew where I stood, you didn’t trust me enough to let me in on the truth. You’d have kept on using me if I hadn’t figured it out.”

  “I told you, it may have started as a lie, but it came to be real. I miss you, Verity. You mean a lot to me, and I enjoyed our time together. Couldn’t you try giving me a second chance? We could start over, with total honesty this time.”

  Could I? I forced myself to look at him, to remember the time when the thought of him made me tremble. I remembered the kisses we’d shared, the time he held me against himself as we hid from what I’d believed were soldiers looking for us. That was the sticking point. He’d led me to believe so many things that weren’t true, just to manipulate me. I wasn’t sure I’d ever be able to trust him the way I needed to trust anyone I grew close to. “A lot more time would have to pass before I could even consider it,” I said at last. “We have too much to do.”

  “You know nothing could ever happen with your magister boy.”

  “It’s not about him,” I said, willing my face not to flush and give me away. “Whether or not Henry and I have any interest in each other—which we don’t—it doesn’t change the fact that I can’t trust you to be honest with me as long as the cause is involved, and the cause is what’s most important for all of us right now.”

  “Then after the revolution, we’ll talk.”

  After the revolution, perhaps I would have a chance to be with Henry, but that seemed like such a far-off dream that it was no more realistic than one of Olive’s storybooks. “Perhaps,” was all I said. “Now I think I should return to”—I almost said “my friends,” which would likely have been interpreted badly—“the others.”

  We reached Henry and Geoffrey just as Colin approached them. “We’re all here, if you can extract your friend from Emma’s delightful grasp,” he said.

  Henry signaled to Philip, who handed Emma over to another dance partner before joining us on one of the benches that had been pushed against a wall. Colin, Alec, and two other men I didn’t know pulled up chairs to face us. The two strange men wore goggles, and they weren’t introduced to us.

  Colin was apparently the spokesman for the group. “You’ve seen our machines and what they can do,” he said. “We’ve got the big engines that can haul just about anything, and they also make a rather formidable battering ram. The same sort of engine could be put on a railroad and haul just as much, just as quickly, as a magical engine. We’ve got an airship we’re still improving. There’s this underground railway, and we’ve got electric dynamos that can give us lights and communications.”

  “Yes, it’s all very impressive,” Geoffrey said. “I’d love a chance to get a better look.”

  “No offense to your lordships, but we figure these machines are the key to us beating the magisters,” Colin continued. “You have magical power that you control, and that’s been what stopped us from winning our freedom before, but now we’ve come up with ways to generate our own power. The problem is, it costs money to make enough of these to make any difference. A couple of steam traction engines aren’t going to win a war for us. Having the technology will also allow us to maintain our independence after we kick you lot out. So, we need money.”

  “We’ve been funding you all along,” Henry said.

  “Yes, and that’s how we’ve been able to develop the prototypes,” Alec said. “Production requires a different sort of financing. And since you’ve been funding us…”

  “I’m afraid there won’t be any money from the Masked Bandits for some time,” Henry said. “We’re on hiatus. We came too close to getting caught, so we want the authorities to think we’ve quit or have left town.”

  “There’s also no way we could steal enough money to fund the kind of industry you’re talking about,” Philip added. “We’d have to hit every bank in the colonies. That’s beyond our capability.”

  Geoffrey took a sheet of paper out of his breast pocket. “I ran some hypothetical numbers, based on material and labor costs. What you want to do is just about impossible. Do you realize how many factories it would require to produce enough to make a difference in a war against the Empire? How much raw material and manpower? You need an entire industry. And you’d have to do it without anyone noticing so you don’t get shut down before you finish production.”

  “We thought we might take some existing magical equipment and retrofit it for a new power supply,” Alec said.

  “No one will notice you buying up surplus equipment?”

  “So we’re just supposed to lie down and take it? Not revolt at all?” Colin said.

  “No, but I’m afraid this is beyond us,” Geoffrey said. “It would take many more of us, all over the colonies, maybe even back in England, to have the resources to pull this off. I might be able to buy you a magical engine or two and the equipment you’d need to retrofit it. But you need hundreds of engines, plus the organizational infrastructure to hide what you’re doing as some innocuous enterprise.”

  It was as though someone had dumped cold water over the party. The magisters and Mechanics alike looked crestfallen. “So, you’re not going to help us, then?” Colin said.

  “We didn’t say that,” Henry said. “There are more of us than you might realize who are sympathetic to the cause. Many of us want revolution, too. We might be able to find investors to fund your efforts.”

  Alec’s angry response surprised me. With a fierce glare, he crossed his arms over his chest and said, “Oh, so our overlords will deign to give us money? What will you expect in return? Are you buying us?”

  Henry’s eyes flashed, but he kept his tone perfectly cool as he replied, “You were willing to ask us to put our lives on the line to steal money to fund your cause. Is it so different if we offer to give you money?”

  “If you give us your money, we’re beholden to you. You might expect us to dance to your tune,” Alec said. “Isn’t that how investment usually works?”

  “We would want to be equal partners in the revolution,” Henry said. “We wouldn’t just be funding your rebellion. We’re doing this not because we like you, but because we want to be free just as much as you do.”

  Alec shook his head. “Then we’d just be answering to a different group of magisters. What’s the point of a rebellion, then?”

  “Freedom,” Philip said. “We could make our own decisions instead of being ruled by people living on the other side of the ocean. We could break down the barriers between magisters and everyone else. People could decide for themselves what they want to be and do. Your machines would help level the field, as you said. We’d all be equals.”

  Leaning forward and looking Alec square in the eye, Henry said, “Look, we’re planning a revolution with or without you. We have wealth and magic on our side, so we don’t really need you. We’ve been sending money to your people because the nation we imagine is more equitable, and your technology helps make us equals. But if you don’t want to participate, that makes equality a lot more difficult.”

  The men on both sides glared at each other. I worried that they’d come to blows, but Colin broke the tension. “This would all be a lot simpler if you’d just agree to rob each other and then give us the money,” he quipped.

  One of the Mechanic men who’d been silently listening all this time said, “We will have to think about this and discuss it with our people.” He stood, and the others rose, as well. “Now, you are free to enjoy the party as our guests.”

  The Mechanics went back to the party, but before he left us, Colin said, “When you’re ready to leave, let us know. We can either send you uptown via the subway, o
r I can guide you to the surface.”

  The magister men and I lingered on our bench. “What are you going to do?” I asked.

  “I suppose that’s up to them,” Henry replied with a weary sigh. “But in case they do want our help, we should probably start doing more organizing on our end. We’re not quite as ready to rebel as I made it sound, but we should be.”

  “What about Brad up in Boston?” Philip said. “He was a good chap—had the best ideas. Last time I talked to him, he made it sound like they’d put together quite a group. They’ve even been taking action, sabotage and that sort of thing.”

  “I’m sure there are others in the other colonies. I’ve heard rumors that there are rebel sympathizers at some rather high levels,” Geoffrey said. “The trick would be finding them and finding an excuse to meet with the other groups. This lot here may be secretive and worried about being caught, but we’re under a lot more scrutiny.”

  I had a burst of insight. Turning to Henry, I said, “You should come with us on the governor’s trip.”

  “Me? I’m not sure I was invited.”

  “It didn’t sound like you were being specifically excluded, and if he really wants to take the children for their benefit, as he said, he can hardly deny you.”

  “Then I’d have to face him in close quarters for an extended time.” He shuddered at the thought.

  “Think of it as a test of your acting ability and your cover identity.”

  “It’s too bad it’s the wrong time of year for peak insect activity,” he said with a mischievous smile.

  “What trip is this?” Philip asked.

  “The governor is meeting with the local governments around the colonies, and he wants to bring the children,” Henry explained.

  “Oh, you should definitely go,” Geoffrey said. “It’s the perfect opportunity to make contact, and right under the governor’s nose.”

  Henry clapped me on the back. “Capital idea, Verity,” he said. “I knew there was a reason I hired you.”