Rebel Magisters (Rebel Mechanics #2)
Shanna Swendson
Chapter One
In Which
Friends Come
to My Aid
I made my way through the greenmarket, pausing from time to time to examine a shiny gourd or plump pumpkin. After chatting with a farmer, I purchased some apples and tucked them into my basket. I hadn’t noticed anyone watching me, but it never hurt to be cautious and act as normal as possible, these days. Finally, I reached the stall that was my true destination.
“How are you this morning, miss?” the young Indian woman working at the stall said in her musical accent as I approached. Someone would have had to be watching us very closely, indeed, to catch her minute flicker of a wink.
“Very well, thank you,” I replied with a polite nod as I moved past the stall.
She jumped out in front of me, impeding my progress. “I have many very fine vegetables and exotic fruits to offer you today, miss,” she said. “My biggest customer is not buying nearly the same amount. And you benefit.”
“How fortunate for me,” I said with a weary sigh, giving in and stopping at her stall.
As we bent together over the bins of fruit so she could help me make my selection, she whispered, “The military has dramatically reduced next week’s order. Unless they’ve found a different supplier, it looks as though they might be moving out.”
“Thank you,” I whispered. We completed our trans-action, and I visited a few more stalls before leaving the market to head farther downtown, toward Chinatown. There I went to a particular laundry and made sure the right person was behind the counter before I took the paper-wrapped bundle out of my basket.
The girl working there was about my age, with a sleek, fat braid hanging over her shoulder, tied with a red ribbon that was the only spot of color on her otherwise gray outfit. She saw me and smiled, but her smile faded instantly when the door opened behind me and another patron entered—a military officer in uniform.
Disregarding me entirely, he advanced straight to the counter and demanded, “Is my order ready?”
“Your name, please?” she said meekly, exaggerating a Chinese accent I knew she didn’t normally have. He handed her a ticket, and she scurried to the back room. Only then did he appear to notice my presence. I gave him a half smile of acknowledgment that didn’t invite further interaction, to which he responded with a cursory nod. The girl returned with a bundle and gave it to him, bowing deferentially. He went to the end of the counter to open the bundle and inspect its contents.
It looked as though he would be there for a while, and if I tarried longer without conducting any business, I would raise suspicions, so I approached the counter with my bundle.
“So sorry,” the girl said. “It will take one week. Very busy right now. Officers choose us to do their laundry.” She flashed a brief smile at her other customer as she said it and squared her shoulders proudly.
“I suppose that will be all right,” I said. “I know the military must take precedence.”
She took my bundle and made a show of filling out a ticket for me, even though we both knew that the “laundry” consisted of a stack of banknotes that would be passed on to the underground rebel movement. I put the ticket in my purse, and the soldier managed to get to the door just in time to open it for me. I nodded a thanks and went on my way.
That had been a close call, but I had to grin at the thrill of passing money from the Masked Bandits to the Rebel Mechanics right under the nose of a British officer without him having the slightest idea of what was happening. Now, in the aftermath, my heart started racing. If I’d followed Henry’s instructions, I would have left rather than take the risk, but I thought it would have looked even more suspicious if I’d entered a laundry without handing over or retrieving anything.
Now, though, my thoughts were on the intelligence I’d gathered. If the officers were suddenly sending out a lot of laundry that they needed done immediately and if the army wasn’t ordering as much food, that surely meant they were removing some of the troops from the city. Perhaps since the departure of the Rebel Mechanics and their machines the authorities had decided that the rebellion had been quashed.
That sounded like a story to me, so I went straight to a coffee shop on Greenwich Square. It was a popular gathering place for the students at the nearby university, but in recent weeks it had been filled with soldiers who were being quartered in the university halls. Today, though, it was much quieter. The waitress who met me at the door gave me a knowing nod before escorting me to a table.
“It seems so quiet in here today,” I said. “What happened, did you drive away all your customers?”
“It sure seems like it,” she said. “Maybe all the soldiers wanted tea.”
To be perfectly honest, what I wanted was a nice cup of tea, but thanks to taxes on tea, that was something the rebels never drank, out of protest. I supposed it would have been a good cover to order it, but I might have lost the loyalty of the waitress if I’d done so. As deep as I was in the rebel movement, there were nuances I still struggled to grasp.
Instead, I ordered lemonade and a slice of cake. While I waited for the waitress to return with my food and drink, I took a couple of sheets of paper and a pencil out of my basket and went to work. I doubted that any of the other patrons were watching me, but if they were, I thought I must look for all the world like a young woman writing a letter.