He should have employed it before the horse went berserk, Karigan thought.

A red-uniformed Inspector also stood nearby, his hands on his hips. She almost forgot the horse when she spotted the bizarre mechanical crouched beside the Inspector, a metal orb about the diameter of a large barrel, with brass fittings and six spiderlike legs, an oily ichor oozing around its joints and staining the metal like blood. A spyglass eye lengthened and retracted as though to focus on the scene before it. Karigan staggered back into the professor.

“What is that thing?” she asked him.

“An Enforcer. Most Inspectors work with one.”

Karigan’s knees weakened, and she was glad to have the bonewood cane to support her.

“They are some of the most advanced machines in the empire,” the professor explained with a shudder. “Avoid them at all costs.”

Karigan did not have to be told. Her shudder echoed the professor’s as the Enforcer lifted one of its long, jointed legs and stretched it forward as if to sense something in the air. Steam puffed from a short pipe that protruded from the top of the orb. It was a nightmare, she thought, such as only Mornhavon the Black could devise.

The horse reared, and the assistant with the twitch retreated again, eliciting laughter from the audience.

“If you cannot control that horse,” the Inspector shouted, “I will shoot it. You are disrupting traffic.” He settled his hand on what Karigan took to be a tool sheathed on his belt.

“What does it mean he’ll shoot the horse?” Karigan asked the professor desperately.

“He will fire his gun at the horse to kill it.”

Fire? Gun? But Karigan did not ask for an explanation. Knowing it meant the horse would be killed was enough. The poor beast was simply enraged by, and fearful of, the whip, and the commotion of the crowd was not helping.

The bay scraped his hoof on the cobbled street. The Inspector grasped the handle of his tool—gun—whatever to pull it from its sheath.

“No!” she cried.

The professor gripped her arm hard as if to silence her, but it was too late. The Inspector darted his gaze at her, and so did many others, including the horse whose ears went to point. The dark molasses brown of his eye caught hers. She was fixed by his gaze to the exclusion of all else. She became oblivious to the shouting of the handler and the Inspector drawing his weapon, the murmur of the crowd, the Enforcer riveting its telescoping eye on her.

The bay lifted his nose to the sky to scent the air, still watching her. Something passed between them, a warmth, an understanding.

Suddenly the horse half-reared and surged toward her, dragging his handler behind him. In her peripheral vision, she saw the Inspector raise his odd weapon and aim it at the horse.

“Nooo!” she screamed.

The professor tried to pull her away, but she’d the strength to resist.

“Don’t shoot!” cried an authoritative voice. “The horse is mine, and I’ll deal with it.”

The Inspector paused, then lowered his weapon. After that, Karigan heard no more, for the bay had reached her, halted, and placed his velvety nose in her hands. He blew gentle breaths into her palms, and she saw herself mirrored in his eye. The handler jerked on the lead rope.

“Give that to me!” Karigan snatched it right out of his grasp. He waggled his whip. “If you raise that whip again,” she told him, “I shall take it from you as well and break it.”

The man paused, seeming to debate the level of threat she posed. The professor stepped between them. Karigan concentrated on stroking the bay’s sweat-slicked neck.

“Good boy,” she said in soothing tones. “Good, good boy.” The horse’s eyelids drooped, and his ears flickered as he listened to her. Then everything stilled for her and the image of immense black wings brushed through her mind, the echo of distant hoofbeats. “Raven,” she murmured. “Your name is Raven.” She did not know how she knew this, but she did with a firm certainty.

“Actually,” said the owner of the authoritative voice who’d stopped the Inspector from using his weapon, “his name is Samson, and he belongs to me.”

The professor groaned beside her and whispered to her, “Now you’ve done it. Let me do all the talking.”

Karigan looked up. The crowd had begun to disperse, the Inspector shooing people along, his Enforcer prodding them with the tip of one sleek leg. Again she couldn’t help a shudder of revulsion. Traffic began to move around them, and Samson’s owner stood before them, his arms folded across his chest.

He wore a finely tailored gray suit and the tall style of hat that seemed so popular here. His cravat was a matching silk, and diamond cufflinks winked in the sun. He wore a gold brooch shaped in the emblem of the empire on his lapel—the dragon with tail wrapped around its neck. Tucked beneath his elbow he carried a slim and elegant walking cane topped by a golden knob. Even as she took in these details, one above all others caught her attention: his specs. The lenses were a smoky dark that hid his eyes.

The three of them and the bay became an island in the traffic, the Inspector directing carriages, wagons, carts, and pedestrians to flow around them. They were not asked to relocate, all else was required to move around them. It spoke to the man’s importance.

The bay remained calm beside Karigan despite the activity on all sides However, if any of his handlers attempted to approach, he laid his ears back and stomped.

“Samson likes you, young lady,” the man with the dark specs said, “and I did not think him capable of liking anyone.”