The automaton’s fingers twitched, and Smudge seared my ear in alarm. As one, Lena and I rose and backed away. I armed the explosive and held my thumb over the button, just in case. The head turned, then started to twitch. I could hear a metal clicking from within the neck as it tried and failed to straighten its head.

“I think we missed a piece,” I said.

“Do you know who you are?” Lena asked it.

The automaton rolled onto its side and slowly pushed itself upright. The hole in its chest was gone, replaced with young, bright wood, naked and unprotected. How many spells lay scattered on the ground, broken and useless?

Even as I asked the question, something crawled over my foot, making me jump. The metal keys were moving through the grass, climbing up the automaton’s body like silver insects. The automaton didn’t move.

On impulse, I stepped forward and touched the metal skin. I could feel the individual spells crackling with magic, but the metal nearest the chest was cold and dead.

“Isaac, what are you doing?”

More letters clicked into place, and I felt another line of magic surge to life. The sensation reminded me of steam rushing through a pipe, all of that energy waiting to be tapped and directed. “He transferred the essence of a living person into another body. Can you imagine what else we could do? You could build prosthetic limbs that respond like living flesh, or entire bodies for people dying of injury or disease.”

“Or living weapons,” Lena said, watching the automaton.

The automaton stared at us in return. Its jaw hung open, giving it a vaguely shocked and dimwitted expression. We hadn’t fixed all of the chains and cables inside. Would those repair themselves with time as well?

“Johann Fust.” I waited, but there was no sign of recognition or awareness. After so many centuries, it might not remember who it was. Gutenberg was the only one who knew the automatons’ identities, and I couldn’t imagine him ever addressing them by name.

“Isaac . . . are you sure we should be doing this?”

“Fixing a wood-and-metal golem that could crush us both? Not at all.”

“No. Trying to save Gutenberg. He enslaved his enemies in these things. He manipulated the minds and memories of people like Charles Hubert. He runs the Porters like his own little dictatorship. Does anyone know what other secrets he might be hiding?”

“De Leon might,” I said.

“What do you think Ponce de Leon was really banished for?”

I had asked myself the same question. All I knew was that de Leon had been a Porter for centuries. He had been one of the original twelve, and he had left the organization at some point during the twentieth century.

Maybe he had been right to do so.