Glass rained down across the waxed floorboards like shattered salt crystals as the front gates of Cogwater dissolved under a salvo of thermite rounds. "Loria, behind the desk," Garrond said. His voice was steady, dropping an octave into the subterranean rumble that had earned him his monstrous reputation across the capital. "Garrond, wait—" He didn't. He kicked open the reinforced iron locker behind his portrait. The burnished chassis of the Mk-IV harness gleamed beneath the gas lamps. Plates of iridescent cobalt-treated steel fit around his torso in an unbroken snap of pneumatics. He slammed his forearms into the gauntlets, and the whole apparatus sang a high, sweet chord of pure torque. In the courtyard, three smoke-belching ironclad warmachines bore the seal of the Iron Scepter Guild. Behind them stood Vondra, swathed in white ermine, brandishing an ink-stamped scroll toward the shattered bay windows. "Drag that counterfeit bride into the street!" Vondra shrieked, her face flushed with victorious venom. "Tear her limb from limb for unlicensed fabrication, then chain that brute to his own refuse heaps! Cogwater's assets revert to my house under the emergency conservatorship order!" Inspector Brand of the Guild Executioners took a heavy step forward, his four-barreled steam cannon whining as it spun up. "Surrender the unregistered artisan, Skall. We know she built the core. You have ten seconds before we level the foundation." Garrond jumped. He did not stumble. He did not lurch like the broken cripple the high-society tabloids loved to mock. The revised knee joints pivoted on twin ball-bearings of sapphire-coated brass, vaulting him eighty feet through the air. The jet-thrusters in his boot soles roared, spitting twin cones of violet sparks. He touched down directly atop the lead ironclad. The impact peeled its iron armor like an overripe plum. "You want my wife?" Garrond’s mechanized voice boomed through the manor grounds, deep enough to rattle the fillings in Vondra's teeth. "You will have to walk over my remains." A Guild enforcer leveled an electrified halberd at his throat. Garrond didn't flinch. He swiped an arm sideways, catching the halberd’s shaft. The integrated counterweights Loria had tuned down to the millimeter distributed the kinetic shock into his shoulder blades; with a wrist flick, he snapped the tempered steel shaft in two, drove his palm into the enforcer's chest plate, and sent the man skittering across the flagstones into a decorative birdbath. The second crawler fired a net of barbed wire. Garrond pivoted on his left heel—a smooth, impossible pirouette that belonged in the royal opera house rather than a brawling scrap field—and snatched the net mid-flight, swinging the weighted mesh back into the cannon's muzzle. The barrel choked. Back-pressure erupted. The war machine collapsed onto its axles with a pathetic wheeze of steam. Up on the balcony, Loria gripped the stone rail, her knuckles white against the granite. Her pride in his agility vanished behind cold, hard math. *The bypass line. The auxiliary copper valves.* "The cooling cowls!" she shouted, though the clash of metal drowned her out. "I left the intake cowls on the workbench!" The sapphire-treated chassis was glowing cherry red along the spine. Garrond was flying on pure internal compression, but without the heat sinks to discharge the arcane friction, the boiler under his ribs would boil him alive in less than three minutes. Smoke began to curl from the shoulder seams. Garrond leaped again, dropping both knees into the third rig's cupola to buckle the rotation ring, but when he landed, his right leg hitched. A burst of scalding vapor hissed through the exhaust gasket, charring his jacket. "Garrond!" she screamed. She looked down. Sitting in the corner of the veranda was the six-legged clockwork tea crab, its brass carapace buffed to a mirror finish, clutching a silver tray of cold scones. "Empty the tray," Loria barked at the automaton. She snatched a twelve-inch pipe spanner from her petticoat pocket, hiked her lace skirts up past her knees, and climbed directly onto the bronze abdomen of the six-legged construct. Her thumbs dug into the automaton's main clockwork spindle, manually popping the governor spring. "Override primary drive," she barked, her sweet dummy voice entirely erased by raw mechanical authority. "Full gallop!" The crab chattered, lowered its brass legs, and plunged straight over the balcony railing. They hit the lawn at a flat run. Loria clung to the steering gears with her thighs, ducking beneath a stray bolt of arcing lightning that scorched the ivy behind her. The construct skittered across the cobbles at thirty miles an hour, weaving through fallen plating like a beetle through tall grass. Vondra stepped back, mouth falling slack. "What is she doing? Shoot her! She’s riding the upholstery!" Brand whirled, his sidearm clicking into place. "Die, little rat—" Loria didn't even look at him. She whipped the heavy iron spanner through the air. The tool spun three times, catching Brand square on the temple with a satisfying *clonk*. The officer stumbled back, groaning, his shot discharging harmlessly into an ornamental rhododendron. She pulled the crab up beside Garrond just as his left knee seized completely. Smoke billowed from his breastplate in choking gray plumes. His teeth were bared in agony, skin blistering beneath his collar. "Loria... get back..." he gasped, vision clouding. "Too hot... core is going to breach..." "Shut up and lean down, you idiot!" she yelled. She kicked off the brass carapace, vaulting directly onto his armored chest. With her bare hand, she seized the auxiliary valve lever—ignoring the bite of scorched brass that singed her palm—and jammed the spanner deep into the primary steam exhaust port. She leaned all her body weight into the lever, forcing the seized gear thirty degrees counter-clockwise. *CLACK.* A jet of scalding blue vapor screamed straight up into the night sky, blooming like an artificial flare. The cherry-red hue faded instantly from Garrond's chest. The temperature plunged back to safe tolerances, the smooth hum of the turbine settling into a contented purr. Loria slid down his front, landing on her boots, her gown shredded, her hair full of machine oil, her tool dripping condensation. Silence crashed down over the ruined courtyard. Every surviving Guild guardsman froze, staring at the diminutive young woman who had just dismantled an overheating class-four military furnace with a single hand. Vondra stepped through the debris, trembling with rage. "Did you see that?" she screeched at Brand, who was struggling up from the dirt. "Did you see her hands? She’s an unregistered rogue artisan! That’s capital treason! Kill them both! The annulment is signed by the municipal magistrate! Skall has no legal authority to defend her!" Brand leveled his steam cannon once more, blood dripping from his brow, a sneer twisting his mouth. "End of the road, Lord Skall. Patent infringement, treason against the Iron Scepter, and harboring an illegal artificer. We take your head, and then we take hers." Garrond pulled Loria behind his bulk, his restored armor locking into a protective fortress around her. His fists hummed with kinetic energy. "You touch her, and none of you leave this soil." "How heroic," Brand spat, thumbing the ignition hammer. "Too bad you're out of paper." "Actually, gentlemen, you are the ones suffering from a severe clerical deficit." From the shattered doorway of the manor, Brixen strode leisurely into the courtyard. The butler was carrying a silver tray with a single, pristine crystal flute of champagne in his left hand. In his right, he held a shimmering, velvet-lined parchment bearing the embossed, wax-stamped seal of the High Crown of Oakhaven. The paper glowed with the unforgeable, luminous gold ink reserved solely for Sovereign Inventors. Brixen stopped three paces from Brand, tilted his head with infinite disdain, and raised the document. "I believe you will find that Her Ladyship’s patent was officially approved thirty-eight minutes ago, accompanied by an absolute royal decree of marriage validation and an immediate execution warrant for anyone interfering with the Crown’s newest Grand Architect."

The Beast Unleashed