“Positions aren’t that easy to come by, and having my employer in prison would have hurt my prospects. I have nowhere to go if I fail here. And then I learned what you do with your loot.” I couldn’t quite bring myself to tell him that I liked him too much to turn him in. “But why do you take such risks, especially when you’re responsible for children? Are you that committed to revolution?”

He turned onto another street, and I thought he would avoid the question until he finally said, “It started because I was bored. I know it sounds terribly gauche to complain about having too much privilege, but if you’re clever and ambitious, being the younger son of a nobleman isn’t fun. It would be unheard of to have a career or trade, and yet there’s not even the work of maintaining the family estate because that’s the eldest son’s job.”

“Train robbery was the only other option?”

“We don’t just rob trains.”

“Yes, sometimes there are boats.”

He turned to look at me. “How could you know?”

“I’m a spy. I know a great many things.”

Henry slowed the roadster as we approached a military checkpoint. “This should be interesting,” he muttered.

“Could we go around it?”

“There’s probably something blocking every street heading downtown.”

“Your name should get you through it.”

“Only if you want everyone thinking I’ve eloped with the nonmagister governess.” He turned to me with a grin. “That would get both of us in trouble. I have an idea, though.”

He stopped when the soldiers flagged him down, but before they could speak to him, I felt a wave of magic. The soldiers went still, like the couriers at the fort had, and Henry sent the roadster flying down the street. He took a few turns so that we were no longer visible from the checkpoint, and then he leaned back against the driver’s seat, letting out a pent-up breath.

“There was a gang of us in school, all of us in similar positions,” he then said, continuing his story as though there had been no interruption. “We’d heard of the rebel groups, and to us revolution sounded like a good idea, mostly because if the social order was upset enough, we might get the chance to do something with our lives. We came up with the idea of stealing from the government to finance the revolution, and when we finished school and came home, we decided to see if all our intricately laid plans would work. When they did, we kept doing it. We talked of revolution and made enough connections with the rebel movement to anonymously send money to them, but we mostly did it for fun.”

“How long have you been doing this?”

“Several years.”

“And no one ever suspected?”