Many thanks to Tor.com for giving this book its proper setting. To my editor, Patrick Nielsen Hayden, and to Irene Gallo, for their vision; to Lee Harris, Mordicai Knode, Tommy Arnold, Christine Foltzer, Carl Engle-Laird, and Lauren Hougen.
To Paul Race and to Chris Wagner, who let me mess about with metals, stones, and oxygen-acetylene torches. To Tom Wilde, who won’t let me have an oxygen-acetylene torch in the house but who answers any chemistry question put to him and only then asks, “Why do you want to know?”
To E. Catherine Tobler, Kelly Lagor, Nicole Feldringer, Chris Gerwel, Lauren Teffeau, Alex Shvartsman, Siobhan Carroll, Rachel Winchester, and A. C. Wise, who were all very patient with facets of this story.
To anyone who dreams about the layered histories of a familiar place, or an unfamiliar one, this is for you.