Wearing a brown tunic with sea blue arm bands and Greek symbols on the shoulders, he looked like a soldier in uniform—but not a uniform she’d seen before. He nodded, then turned to a heavyset, gray-haired man who was seated in the middle of several machines that filled the wide room. In a voice loud enough to be heard above the clatter and squeal of the machines, he announced, “Master, the girl with the pie is here.” Right away, the heavyset man looked up from a table covered with machine parts where he was working. Putting aside a large gear and some sort of tool he was holding, he stood up and wiped his grimy hands on his apron—a rather wide one, given the size of his waist. Shangri noticed that it resembled the aprons worn by her father and other bakers. Yet this one had lots more pockets and smudges from grease instead of fruit preserves and flour. The man approached Shangri, walking with a pronounced limp that made him wobble like a misshapen gear.
