Jin Li Tam watched the commotion and wondered about the boy. He’d opened his mouth to speak after Sethbert’s embrace, but all that had come out of him was a rush of words. Muttered lines of what sounded like Whymer text. And though he couldn’t have been older than fifteen or sixteen, his tangled hair was white and his eyes were wide and wild. Of course, when Sethbert realized he couldn’t speak, he’d dismissed him to the care of one of his servants. His only interest in the boy was to hear something firsthand of his handiwork.

It turned Jin’s stomach.

Now, as the day wound down, Jin stood in the shadows and watched the scouts return dragging their nets behind them like proud fishermen. The magicks had burned out and she could see them clearly now, their dark silk clothing gray with ash, their faces and hands covered in soot. Metal twitched and gleamed in the nets they dragged.

She counted thirteen metal men in all, and the Androfrancine apprentice was with them, crouching next to them, poking and prodding them through the mesh of the nets. “We’re missing one,” he said.

“He’s down therh3›„e babbling,” the scout said. “He won’t get far; I took his leg off. We’ll go back for him as soon as we’ve dropped this lot off.”

“If the Gypsies don’t get him first,” their captain said as he approached from the direction of Sethbert’s tent, his eyebrows furrowed. “They’re in the city now. Re-magick and shadow them.”

“And if they see us?”

“We’re not at war with them.” He paused and shot a worried glance back in the direction he’d come from. “Not yet anyway.”

The apprentice was untangling one of the metal men from the net. The mechoservitor clicked and shot steam out of its exhaust grate, its glassy eyes fluttering open and then closing. “Are you functional?” the apprentice asked.