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wound with copper wire, at least athousand turns, like a voltage multiplier. He whistled for a message lizard, then sent it to fetch his men, but didn’t wait for them.
    In a way it was easy, guessing how the pieces fit together. He’d spent a month helping to keep his Stormwalker running in the wilderness with repaired, stolen, and improvised parts. And the metal and glass pieces before him were hardly improvised—they were elegant, with lines as sinuous as the
Leviathan
’s fabricated wood furniture. As Alek worked, his fingers seemed to grasp the pieces’ connections, even though he didn’t know the purpose of the whole yet. By the time Klopp and Hoffman had arrived, he’d made a fair start of it.
    Perhaps His Serene Highness Aleksandar Prince of Hohenberg wasn’t such a waste of hydrogen after all.

 
    By early the next morning the device was nearly done. The few remaining parts—the knobs and levers of the control panel—were spread across the floor. The dried beef had been removed from the cargo bay to make room, but the scent of new leather remained.
    Alek, Dylan, Bauer, and Hoffman had worked without sleep, but Master Klopp had spent most of the night snoozing in a chair, awakening only to shout orders and curse whoever had designed the device. He had declared its graceful lines too fancy, an affront to Clanker principles. Bovril sat on his shoulder, memorizing new German obscenities with glee.
    Since the night of the Ottoman Revolution, Klopp had used a cane, grimacing whenever he had to stand up. His battle-walker had fallen during the attack on the sultan’s Tesla cannon, struck by the Orient-Express itself.

“ASSEMBLAGE OF THE DEVICE.”
     

Dr. Busk, the
Leviathan
’s surgeon, had said it was lucky the man could walk at all.
    The revolution had lasted only one night, but the cost had been high. Lilit’s father had been killed, along with a thousand rebel soldiers and countless Ottomans. Whole neighborhoods of the ancient city of Istanbul lay in ashes.
    Of course, the battles going on in Europe were ten times worse, especially those between Alek’s countrymen and the Russians. In Galicia a horde of fighting bears had met hundreds of machines, a vast collision of flesh and metal that had left Austria reeling. And, as Dylan kept saying, the war was only just beginning.
    Newkirk brought them breakfast just as sunlight began to trickle in around the edges of the cargo door.
    “What in blazes is that contraption?” he asked.
    Alek took the coffeepot from Newkirk’s tray and poured a cup.
    “A good question.” He handed the coffee to Klopp, switching to German. “Any fresh ideas?”
    “Well, it’s meant to be carried about,” Klopp said, poking at its long side handles with his cane. “Probably by two men, perhaps a third to operate it.”
    Alek nodded. Most of the crates had been full of spare parts and special tools; the device itself wasn’t so heavy.
    “But why not mount it on a vehicle?” Hoffman asked. “You could use the engine’s power and save fiddling about with batteries.”
    “So it’s designed for rough terrain,” Klopp said.
    “Lots of that in Siberia,” Dylan spoke up. After a month among Clankers in Istanbul, the boy’s German was good enough to follow most conversations now. “And Russia is Darwinist, so vehicles have no engines.”
    Alek frowned. “A Clanker machine designed for use by Darwinists?”
    “Custom made for wherever we’re headed, then.” Klopp gently tapped the three glass spheres at its top. “These will react to magnetic fields.”
    “Magnetic,” Bovril said from Klopp’s shoulder, rolling the word around in its mouth.
    Ignoring the engine grease under his fingernails, Alek took a piece of bacon from Newkirk’s tray. The night’s work had left him ravenous. “Meaning what, Master Klopp?”
    “I still don’t know, young master. Perhaps it’s some kind of navigating machine.”
    “Awfully big for a compass,” Alek said. And far too