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brilliant.”
    “And yet, I have made all this,” Brunel swept his hand through the air, indicating the clanging elevator, and the Chimney, high above. “The King believes in broad gauge, Aaron. That’s why he allowed me to build all this. That’s why he sent Banks here tonight to spy on me.”
    “So you saw him, then?”
    Brunel ignored Aaron’s question. “King George created the gods and the churches and the Royal Society, so he can bend them as he wishes. And if I could win—”
    “You hope for too much.”
    But Brunel wasn’t listening. “Presbyter!” his eyes danced. “Imagine one of the Dirty Folk being able to jump to the rank of Presbyter! The winner will sit on the Council of the Royal Society — imagine that! The result of this competition could alter the course of Stoker history.”
    The elevator creaked to a halt, and Brunel pulled the grating open. Aaron followed him across the tiny landing to the heavy iron door, which stood open most of the time (being rather difficult to move) but was now shut and bolted.
    “I didn’t want any prying eyes to steal my idea,” he said. He unlocked the door, slipped off the bolts, and he and Aaron each leaned a shoulder against the door and pushed.
    The door creaked open to reveal the high, airy chamber, at odds with its underground location. Ventilation shafts carried fresh air from the city (if any air in London could be defined as fresh ), and a system of pipes discharged waste and fumes into rubbish pits behind Engine Ward. Long workbenches lined every wall and stretched across the centre of the room, covered in every manner of contraption imaginable. In the far corner, a furnace flared, sending flickering shadows across the room.
    Aaron had visited many times before, but still he found himself in awe of the expansive space. Isambard seemed utterly at home here, as though he had become part of the machinery himself.
    Brunel strode across the workshop and pointed to a model spread across the central workspace. “Look!” he cried, his eyes dancing with excitement.
    Aaron bent over the model, seeing immediately it represented an exquisite miniature cityscape of London, perfectly rendered in clay and metal. Around the entire boundary of the city proper, a great wall towered, the smooth sides high and imposing even on such a small scale.
    “It’s a wall ,” he breathed, at once grasping the simplicity of Brunel’s plan. “A wall to keep out the dragons.”
    “Not just any wall. One-hundred foot high, made of iron, and powered by steam. With controlled entry and exit points, not only will she protect London from further dragon attacks, but she’ll help with crowd control and the checking of goods coming in and out of the city. And when the French finally get up the balls to invade, she’ll help our army to protect and defend the city. And the best news of all, she’ll be wide enough to run a rail line around the city. A broad gauge line.”
    He showed Aaron the working model of a locomotive and two carriages, which he placed on the rails on top of the wall. Aaron watched in awe as the train wound its way around the model, passing tiny stations in each district.
    A wall — so simple, yet so ingenious. A solution employed by cities for thousands of years. Aaron smiled at his friend and said, “You’re sure to impress the King with this design, Isambard.”
    “I pray you speak the truth, friend.”
    “Do you have any idea what Stephenson plans?”
    Isambard spat. The very mention of Stephenson’s name induced a deep fury within him. While Brunel toiled in the Engine Ward, building his first locomotive engine from stolen plans and snippets of overheard lectures by the eminent locomotive engineer and Messiah, Richard Trevethick, Stephenson, son of a wealthy civil engineer, had built his locomotives using his “standard gauge” of four feet, eight and a half inches, and had laid down track for a line between Stockton and Darlington in the north of