Rebel Magisters

by Shanna Swendson

  I distrusted him immediately, not so much because he was attractive but because of the way he smiled as he bowed to me. He knew he was attractive and counted on that affecting me. I’d been burned by flirtatious Mechanics before, so I steeled myself against his charms.

  “Ah, the infamous Miss Newton. Colin didn’t tell us how lovely you were,” he said, taking my hand to kiss it.

  “That’s because Colin respects me as an ally and as a valuable operative,” I said, withdrawing my hand from his. “My appearance is not relevant.”

  He smoothly recovered. “Well, of course he mentioned how valuable you are.” Barely missing a beat, he turned to Henry. “And your lordship, as well. I understand we owe the survival of our movement to you. We are honored to have you among us. I’m sure you’ll understand if we don’t share our names, but you can call me Adonis.”

  I had to restrain myself to keep from snickering. I hoped he was aware of how ridiculous he seemed. It was hard to believe he might be sincere.

  Either I’d done a good job of hiding my amusement or he was oblivious, because he didn’t react to my barely hidden snort. With a practiced smile, he said, “May I take your coats and hats and offer you refreshment?” If he was being at all sarcastic to Henry, I couldn’t detect it. Either he was more open-minded about magisters than most Mechanics tended to be, or he was the rare man who was even more glib than Colin.

  As I unbuttoned my coat, I took stock of my surroundings. The large basement room seemed to be one part shabby but gracious parlor and two parts laboratory. There were upholstered chairs that could have come from a fine house decades ago, and pieces of machinery covered all the tables. Only about half a dozen people were present, with no musicians, no dancing, and no elaborate machines dispensing drinks. Unlike the New York Mechanics’ raucous parties, this seemed to be more of a polished salon, for conversation about social issues.

  None of the other Mechanics made any move to speak to us, and no one other than the greeter introduced themselves. That much I was accustomed to. It could be dangerous for us to know their identities, and I couldn’t much blame them for being uncertain they could trust us.

  Adonis took our coats and handed them over to another Mechanic before escorting us to a seating arrangement. He gestured me to a wingback chair and Henry to a velvet settee across from me. “Would you like coffee, wine, sherry, hot chocolate?” Adonis offered.

  “A cup of chocolate would be lovely,” I said.

  “The same for me, thank you,” Henry said. His posture was tense, and he sat on the edge of his seat, most of his weight still on his feet, as though he was ready to spring up at a moment’s notice. I didn’t feel like we were in danger, but I also didn’t feel entirely comfortable. There was something odd about this situation.

  Adonis sent one of his people to get the chocolate and sat next to Henry on the settee. I noticed that he wore the most elaborate Rebel Mechanics insignia I’d ever seen. Most of the members merely put a red ribbon through a gear, but he’d put together multiple gears inside one larger one in a complex pattern, and instead of a simple red ribbon, he had an intricately braided lanyard holding his gear. I couldn’t help but wonder what would happen if he and Colin ever ended up in the same room with each other, and I made a mental note to never let this man go anywhere near Flora.

  “Did you have a pleasant journey to Boston?” he asked. “I assume you came by airship.”

  “Yes, we did, and it was pleasant enough,” Henry said. “If your people keep making progress on the electrical storage battery, you should soon be able to make trips this far with your ships.” I felt a subtle shift in the mood of the room and had a feeling Henry had just scored some points by suggesting a hint of mechanical knowledge and interest.

  “We work on smaller-scale projects here,” Adonis said. “The New York crowd has their big engines, but we have more esoteric interests.”

  A huge, bearded man wearing a plaid waistcoat in colors that never should have been put together entered the room bearing a tray and offered us dainty cups of chocolate that seemed much more normal-sized once they were away from him and in our hands.

  “Clearly you have a dynamo,” Henry said, indicating the electric lights with a gesture.

  “Not of our own invention. We share technology with our brothers throughout the colonies. What we’re working on is rather more specialized.” His tone remained friendly and casual, but I didn’t like the way he kept his phrasing so vague.

  “How so?” I asked.

  He gave a careless wave. “Oh, small devices to make daily life easier. Anything that saves us physical labor gives us more time to devote to our cause and less dependence on the thieving magpies. No offense,” he added with a slight nod toward Henry.

  “I’ll assume you’re not including me in that group,” Henry said politely, but I thought his eyes looked a little harder than they usually did.

  “But perhaps you have some connections with others of your class who share your beliefs.”

  “I might.”

  “You see, we’re having a little problem with them here. They’re quite active, but either they’re pretending to be us or the authorities assume it’s us, so every time they do anything, we get the blame, and the authorities crack down on us.”

  “You’re sure it’s not another group of Mechanics?” I asked.

  “Absolutely,” Adonis said, nodding firmly.

  “I’ll mention it to my friends and see if they know anything—” Henry began, but he cut off abruptly.

  At the same time, I found it hard to breathe. My entire body was frozen. Even my ribs refused to expand with my breath, leaving me feeling suffocated. Once the initial shock wore off, I had the presence of mind to notice that none of the Mechanics seemed to be affected. I suspected that these feelings must have something to do with magic. I didn’t want the Mechanics to know I was part magister, so I forced myself not to let any sort of reaction show.

  Not that they would have noticed me. All their attention was on Henry, who sat perfectly still. His breath came in short, shallow gasps, and he hadn’t managed to complete his sentence. I thought he looked a little paler than normal, but it was hard to tell under the unusual lighting.

  I noticed then a tall, slender woman in a severe gray dress standing by a machine set on a table behind the settee. The machine consisted of tubes through which some glowing material flowed, all coming from and going to a central wooden box with knobs on it. A web of copper wiring surrounded it all. The woman kept glancing between her machine and Henry. I deduced that the machine had something to do with whatever was happening to us.

  I soon found that I wasn’t as frozen as I felt. I was perfectly capable of moving normally. Only my magical abilities had been affected, and that had made me feel paralyzed. Forcing myself to move, I bent to pick up my cup and took a sip of chocolate, as though nothing was happening. “What were you saying?” I asked Henry, keeping my voice light and even.

  Instead of responding to me, Henry said to Adonis, “You’ve developed some sort of magical dampener.”

  The woman turned a knob on her machine and I felt like I could breathe freely again. She stepped forward to address us. “Yes, the machine affects the flow of ether to block the use of magic,” she said, her voice lightly accented. I guessed that she must be a native of one of the African colonies, judging by her accent and dark skin. If our host looked like a painting, she looked like an onyx sculpture given life, with a high forehead and sharp cheekbones. The planes of her face were somewhat softened by the small round glasses she wore.

  “Interesting,” Henry said, turning to face her. “And very useful for a conflict against magisters.”

  “How did it make you feel?” she asked.

  “Like it was more difficult to breathe and move. You did something to the ether, didn’t you? Something that makes it impossible to process into magical energy?”

  She smiled, her teeth showing white in vivid contrast to her dark skin.
“Exactly! The device sends a current through the ether that makes it magically inactive. This one works at only a short range—perhaps a hundred-foot radius. I have found that it stops magical devices from working, but I was not sure how it worked on an actual magister. Would you mind very much if I activated it again? And then you could try using magic.”

  Although I could tell that Henry was intrigued, and I knew he’d happily go along with the test, I was outraged on his behalf. “That’s why you invited us here? You needed a test subject?” I snapped. “Did you consider just asking? Is there something in the Rebel Mechanics’ charter that requires you to recruit assistance under false pretenses?”

  Henry turned back to face me. “Verity, it’s all right,” he said. “I don’t mind helping them.”

  “That’s my point. You don’t mind. If they’d invited you by saying they needed a magister to test a device, you’d have been happy to help.” Addressing the Mechanics, I asked, “What would you have done if he didn’t want to help after you sprang this on him? What if you’d hurt him?”

  “I apologize. I meant no offense,” the inventor said, giving us a slight bow. “I felt it important to the experiment for you not to know what might happen.”

  “Athena didn’t mean any harm to your magister friend,” Adonis said, favoring me with a smile that might have made me melt a few months ago before I’d become wise to the Mechanics’ ways. To be perfectly honest, it still gave me a little flutter, and I was sure he’d calculated to get exactly that response. That made me trust him even less.

  Henry stood and approached the inventor. “In the future, please just ask me for help directly. You’ll find that I’m generally game for almost anything. But for now, what do you need to me do?”

  “First, a control. Is there some bit of magic you can do to demonstrate that your powers are working normally?”

  I made sure my magical shielding was intact. One of the first things I’d learned about magic was that a magic user could feel it when someone else nearby was using magic, and it was essential to learn to shield oneself from the sensation, especially if your magical abilities were a dangerous secret.

  Henry held out his hand, and his cup of chocolate flew into it. He raised an eyebrow as he took a nonchalant sip. Athena smiled. “So, your abilities are working normally?”

  “They appear to be.”

  “Now let’s see what happens with the device operating.”

  He placed the cup back on the table in front of the settee and returned to his position. I braced myself as Athena turned on the machine and the tubes began to glow. Fortunately, the Mechanics were all too focused on Henry’s reaction to notice what I did because I couldn’t quite stop a small gasp when the machine took effect.

  Henry reached out his hand for the cup in the same gesture he’d used before, and I felt the ether becoming excited. It just didn’t seem to work at his command. The cup only twitched slightly. The sense of the excited ether was like pinpricks all over my body, too faint to be truly unpleasant, but strong enough that I was glad I’d known to brace myself or I might have given away my secret heritage.

  “You are trying and it is not working?” Athena asked.

  “I’m doing the exact same thing I did before, but with different results,” Henry confirmed.

  With a satisfied nod, she turned a knob on her device, and I fought not to let out a relieved sigh as the atmosphere returned to normal. The cup suddenly flew toward Henry, and he barely caught it. “I suppose I should have stopped trying before you turned your device off,” he said with a sheepish grin.

  Adonis jumped out of his seat. “It works!” he said. “This calls for a round of drinks. Let’s open that bottle we’ve been saving.”

  While the Mechanics celebrated with hugs and slaps on the back, Henry came over to me. “Are you all right?” he whispered.

  I nodded just enough for it to be barely visible. “Yes. It wasn’t bad, just…strange.”

  Our host brought us glasses of fizzing wine and turned to face Athena. “Here’s to our brilliant and beautiful inventor, who may have just won us the revolution.”

  We raised our glasses and drank, but I felt somewhat unsettled. This surely changed the landscape entirely. While it wouldn’t matter against nonmagical weapons and soldiers, it might be enough to allow the ragtag band of Mechanics to stand up to the Empire’s magical might. I could also imagine less savory uses.

  Although Henry went along with toasting the inventor, I could see that his smile didn’t quite touch his eyes, which were troubled. Our handsome host also appeared serious when he returned to his seat and addressed Henry. “I’m sure you can see how important this device is. If anything we have needs to be mass produced, it would be this. But I don’t imagine that’s something you could get your magister friends to fund.”

  “It might be more challenging than getting them excited about steam engines and airships, yes,” Henry said. “There would have to be safeguards in place about how and when it can be used, and how it might be used in the aftermath.” I could see that he’d had the same misgivings I’d had.

  Athena came over to sit in a straight-backed chair adjacent to the settee. “We have to live without magical powers. Why can’t you?” she asked.

  “Because that device doesn’t merely render me the same as you. It alters me. I was born with my abilities. Dampening them is like me blindfolding you and forcing you to go without your eyesight. While it wasn’t truly painful, I can feel the difference that device makes, and I suspect you could make it work in such a way that it would be painful.” He raised an eyebrow. “And if that sort of thing were to happen, well, you’d not only lose some valuable allies, but you’d make some enemies.”

  “I would not use it to cause harm,” she said solemnly, her words sounding like a vow. “But I might need to test it further to determine the precise thresholds at which power is affected with minimal other impact.”

  “What about the rest of your organization? You can understand why I might have concerns.”

  “Yes. That is why I must test and calibrate it precisely before I allow this device to be replicated, so it can’t be used to cause harm.”

  Henry frowned, weighing this for a moment before he said, “I may be able to find you some test subjects among my local friends. You should test it on more than one person. All of us are different. I use my powers more than most, so the effect on me may not be the same as on someone whose powers are merely latent.”

  “That is good to know.” She stood and nodded her head like a queen acknowledging her subject. “Thank you for your assistance.”

  Henry put down his glass. “Now, was there anything else you wanted to discuss tonight, or did you merely need a laboratory rat?”

  “If you could get us some willing test subjects, that would be grand,” Adonis said, rising from his seat. Now that Henry had served his purpose, our host was much less genial. He gestured for one of the others to bring our coats and Henry’s hat.

  “I really am sorry if I offended you, miss,” Mary said as she helped me with my coat. “Perhaps I should have told you it wasn’t a social occasion.”

  “I understand how important secrecy is,” I said. “But if we’re all going to work together, trust is equally important.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind,” she said. We made our way out into the dark vestibule, where she paused with her hand on the outside door. “Now, I’d better make sure it’s safe.” She was only out for a second or two before she stuck her head back in and gestured to us. “Can you find your own way back?”

  “I believe so,” Henry said. “I’m familiar with Boston.”

  “Good. Then I’ll get home, myself. I have an early start in the morning. Take care not to get caught out by any patrols. Your name might get you out of trouble, but I don’t think you want His Grace knowing what you’ve been up to.”

  I barely had a chance to ask, “Patrols?” before she was gone.

  Chapter Nine
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  In Which

  Henry Offers Advice

  on Larceny

  “Patrols?” I repeated to Henry.

  “Things can get a bit…volatile here, so there’s a sort of curfew.”

  “And we’re out after curfew?” Panic made my voice shriller than I would have liked.

  “It’s not a very tight curfew. At least, it wasn’t the last time I was here. It’s mostly to give the authorities an excuse to question anyone who looks suspicious.”

  “No wonder there’s a revolution brewing,” I muttered.

  “We look respectable enough, so as long as we appear to be ordinary people going about our business and don’t give any indication that we’re about to throw a rock through a window or start a riot, we should be fine.”

  “We were just helping plot a revolution,” I reminded him.

  “But we don’t look like that’s what we were doing. Now, shall we return home?” He held his arm out to me, and I took it. As we walked, he said, “Do you want to tell me why you reacted the way you did when they tested that device? It seemed like a rather strong response to a minor faux pas.”

  I winced. I preferred not to let him know how easily I’d been duped, but if he was going to deal with the Mechanics, he needed to know how they worked. “This wasn’t the first time I’ve seen them hide their true intent behind a veneer of friendliness. When they learned I was working for you, they decided I was in the perfect position to be an operative, so they created an elaborate scheme to recruit me. They set up situations to make magisters look bad and acted like they were rescuing me from those situations so that I’d side with them. It’s quite appropriate that they were headquartered in a theater because they always seem to be playing roles.” I couldn’t keep the bitterness out of my voice, nor the faint tremble as I recalled how hurt I’d been by Alec’s betrayal.