Rebel Magisters (Rebel Mechanics #2)(76)

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.