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HAD asked her a hundred times since. “I should have known at first sight you were the love of my life.”
    “The important thing is, you
did
come around, my dear,” she told him. “And, often, love takes its time to strike.”
    Especially for the male, who has to be struck in the head before he can open his eyes…
    T HEY WOULD EVER PAY A PRICE FOR THEIR devo tion, and both knew it well. They might be husband and wife to one another, but never in the public eye. Any sort of intimate relations between a human and a Newlie wasforbidden by the law. While many folk no longer cared just who did what with whom, others were filled with righteous gall, wouldn't stand for habits different from their own, and handed out dread judgment in the dark of night.
    Would it ever be different, Finn often wondered, or would the world always be the same?
    T HE “CHANGE” HAD TURNED THE WORLD UPSIDE down, and many Newlies—as well as humankind— thought turning beasts into something similar to Man had brought great sorrow to everyone.
    Shar and Dankermain, the seers who'd done this deed three hundred years before, had paid for their crime with their lives. The spawn of their sin, though, were left behind to breed in a world where they didn't belong.
    Now, as well as Mycers, there were Bowsers, Snouters, Foxers, Yowlies and Grizz. Vampies, Bullies, Dobbins and Badgie kind, strewn all about the known world.
    And, if the Mycer folk were one of the Chosen Nine, and if a man named Finn fell in love with a being who was, truly, not solely a person at all, what was he to do— shut out his feelings, or sleep with one eye open, in case some loony decided to “purify” them both some dark and sorry night?
    And you
, Finn thought to himself, not for the first time or the last,
why did you do the same, and break such laws as well
?
    For, much like the two mad sorcerers themselves, he had flouted nature himself, giving life to Julia Jessica Slagg, a creature not of flesh, but brass and copper, gold and iron and tin. More that that, he had given his creationthe brain of a ferret, a poor creature caught in a trap and nearly dead.
    And why? He had answered that question long ago. Though his was no act of magic, he had done this deed for much the same reason as the seers: Because he had the talent, the flair. He had dared the act of creation because he could.
    U NABLE TO PUT SUCH THOUCHTS ASIDE, FINN satup, eased himself out of bed, and walked to the window to peer out into the dark. The sky was clear and a million stars blazed with a cold and fearsome light.
    To the west was the river, dark except for a few dim lanterns on the masts of fishing boats. Finn could imagine the men and Newlies there preparing their nets for the day, and wondered what life was like for those who plied their trade on the twisting waterways.
    Not far from the river, up the rise upon the hill, were the heights of the royal palace. Bright lights always burned there. Sometimes one could hear their reveling far into the night. Princes and their toadies didn't have to work the next day; there were lesser fools hired to do that.
    Finally, Finn forced himself to look to the east. There was the glow of the Royal Balloon Yards, a pale, threatening cloud of dirty orange, and below, an eerie yellow light.
    The light, and the pall of dirty smoke, meant the Grounder Crews were stoking the coals in the great hot furnaces there, pits of fire that never went out through the rains of summer or the howl of winter storms. The work went on under the high, timbered roofs, work that never ceased because the war never stopped, and the great balloons must rise every day. Rise, and float out across theriver, past the swampy land where the enemy's balloons waited to meet their foes.
    There, men would fight and men would die. Men would come back bloody and maimed, missing an arm or a leg. Some, who clearly had no luck at all, would live to fight another day.
    And what will I lose, if indeed I do not