“But they steal from the government and give the money to commoners. The shop that makes my machine parts would have been closed if it hadn’t been for their help. They’ve also contributed money to the cause. Sometimes they even help people pay their taxes.”

“Really?” That explained why someone like Lord Henry would commit crime, and I felt giddy with relief to know that he wasn’t wicked.

“Our movement would have collapsed without them. But why would magisters go against their own people?”

“They’re not all evil. They’re like anyone else. There are good and there are bad.”

I waited to see how he’d respond, if he’d accept that truth—and possibly accept who I was—or argue against it, but he merely went back to watching the events below. I anxiously chewed my lower lip. Oh, Henry, I thought. No wonder he’d been so tense at dinner. But it was such an enormous risk, going right into the British military stronghold.

With a groan of frustration, I snatched Mick’s binoculars away from him. He protested, but I ignored him. We were almost directly over the fort now, so I had to move around the ship to keep my eyes on events at the pier. The bandits had come out of their hiding places and were prying the chest from the hands of the entranced couriers.

I thought the lead bandit must be Henry. He was taller than the others and his bearing looked familiar, like the way he carried himself when he forgot to be clumsy. Two of the bandits carried the chest toward their boat. The couriers remained totally still as the remaining bandits—including the one I thought was Henry—slipped an identical-looking chest into their hands. Then they ran off toward the boat, leaving the couriers behind with the fake chest.

It looked like the bandits would get away with it and the couriers wouldn’t realize anything had happened until the fake chest was opened, but before the bandits reached the boat, a soldier came out of the fort and spied the motionless couriers. A second later, he called out an alarm loud enough for us to hear in the airship. Before I could see what happened next, Mick snatched the binoculars away from me. “I want to see!” he said.

“Did no one teach you manners?” I huffed.

“Nope, not at all,” he replied, without moving the binoculars from his eyes.

I turned to Alec, who was also watching intently. “We’ve got to help them!” I cried.

“What do you propose we do?” Alec asked me.

“We could create a diversion.”

“And get ourselves caught?”

“Just enough to lead them in the wrong direction until the bandits can escape.” I scrambled desperately for an idea, well aware that we were running out of time. Something from one of Rollo’s discourses on airships struck me. “What kind of ballast do you carry?”