Burning Up

attached to the glass disks rotating past the discharge brushes and collection combs. Ivy tapped the fingers of her left and right hands together, as if testing.
    “Faster,” she said.
    The clicking became a whir. After a moment, her fingertips seemed to stick before she pulled them apart. She flattened the hand of her copper-encircled arm against the front of the tank. The metal kraken inside suddenly tilted and skidded across the bottom. It smacked into the thick glass opposite her palm.
    “By da Vinci’s blessed pen!” Eben couldn’t contain his astonishment. His hand faltered on the handle.
    “Don’t stop spinning.” Slowly, she began to slide her hand up the side of the tank. The kraken followed, as if glued to her palm. “If the current fails, she’ll drop straight to the bottom again.”
    And she’d just made her arm into the most powerful magnet he’d ever seen, Eben realized. When the kraken was almost to the top, she reached over the glass with her opposite hand and plucked the machine out of the water. Eben stopped spinning and reached for the clamps.
    She pulled away. “Mind the wire—it’s blazing hot. Take this instead.”
    The wriggling kraken landed in his palm. He looked for the stop mechanism and didn’t see one.
    “How is this powered?”
    Ivy began unwrapping the copper wire. “Electrostatic machines. When I have the mechanical flesh, it needs electrical input—but for now they’re to power the propulsion pumps.” When he looked at her blankly, she said, “The squid moves by squirting out water.”
    “Like puncturing an airship’s balloon pushes it the opposite direction?”
    “Much like.” Her lips twisted. “It won’t work when the squid is metal. It’s too heavy.”
    “Kraken are armored.”
    “They have an armored shell . They aren’t metal all the way through.”
    “Find a way to make it work, Ivy.”
    Temper reddened her cheeks, but if she snapped at him, Eben didn’t hear a word she said. He’d found the hatch that opened the kraken’s body, and was staring inside at three tiny automatons, each nothing more than a couple of gears and metal pegs made to resemble legs. They pedaled influence machines, the whir audible.
    Jesus Christ. Everyone who came out of the Blacksmith’s guild was skilled, but the short time she’d worked on this suggested a talent beyond anything he’d seen. Each arm and tentacle meticulously crafted, she’d created a near perfect, watertight submersible. Even something nonfunctional like this would fetch a hefty price in London or the New World, where automatons and clockworks were all the rage. Within a month or two, she could have been living like a queen anywhere she chose to go—yet she’d been creating egg-crackers and singing birds for a town that couldn’t afford them.
    The night she’d fled London, Eben had visited the Blacksmith, who’d said she’d already paid for her arms. Knowing how much Barker still owed for his leg, Eben hadn’t understood how it was possible; looking at the automatons now, he suddenly did. The work she’d done for the Blacksmith must have brought him a fortune.
    Yet she only had one damn coin. “What the hell were you doing in Fool’s Cove?”
    “Hiding from you.”
    His gaze snapped up, but she’d turned toward her worktable. His heart beat sickeningly for a few long seconds.
    “And Netta’s husband was killed when a steamcoach boiler exploded in Port Fallow. Netta and I pooled our resources, and we made it as far as Fool’s Cove.” She tossed the coil of wire onto a hook. “What did you come here for, Captain Machen. A progress report?”
    For you. Like a lovesick fool. And now he found the flimsiest excuse to stay a little longer.
    “No,” he said gruffly. “My Achilles tube.”
    She hesitated for an instant, and he realized she hadn’t forgotten, as he’d assumed. She’d delayed it, hoping to use it later—perhaps after her coins were gone.
    Then he’d be damned if he left without her repairing it. She had one denier left. Tonight would be the last she kept him from touching her.
    After a long second, she nodded and took the kraken from him, gesturing to his foot. “Remove your boot, then.”
    He did, without glancing down at the prosthetic. Though steel, the skeletal leg appeared thin and weak. He hated looking at it.
    Ivy crouched behind him. “Brace your weight on your left leg. You’ll lose your balance when I take this out,” she said, and he heard her