" A delightful and promising steampunk adventure." Publishers Weekly London, 1885. A man in wildly improbable shoes dives from the airship of Queen Margaret the Merciful during a party, lands in an alley in New Old London (distinct, of course, from Old New London), setting in motion a complex conspiracy that reaches from the highest levels of the Queen's Court to the lowest street urchins in London's dark corners...and this London, a place of strange contraptions and the unliving creations of unholy alchemy, has plenty of dark corners. _ Now a city already reeling with refugees from the endless wars between the One True French Catholic Pope and the false and profane Imposter Catholic Pope in Rome faces a whole new challenge, brought about by a petty crook and scalliwag, that grows and grows until it envelops the Bodger Twins, Claire and Donny Bodger, who make great iron weapons of war; the Lady Alys, pledged to marry some duke somewhere to cement a political alliance between England and France; the Cardinal, the scheming, tea-hating representative of the Real and True Pope; and Commander Skarbunket of the London Metropolitan Police.