Excerpt:

Katherine walked down the busy street, and turned the corner onto a broad street that ended abruptly at a massive gate. The gate was enormous, as tall as three buildings. It was made of beaten brass, detailed in bronze and silver. The gears inside were easily as tall as she was, and gleamed mutely in the afternoon sun. Katherine walked up to the gate, and smiled at the man standing guard.

"Yes, miss? Lost?" he asked, and Katherine held up her card. The man took it, and looked at the neat script that identified her as a member of the Engineer's Auxiliary. Which was true. The man nodded, and handed her back the card. Katherine unlocked the smaller door- within- a- door, and went into the Steam Quarter. Her shoulders tightened, and she breathed deeply in and out. This was the safest place in the entire city, safer than the Council Hall or the Oubliette. It was a haven for those who spent their lives buried to the elbows in machinery, listening to the heart of the engine and the soul of the wires. These were the people who spoke the language of machines, who knew the scream of steam and the shriek of steel and the hum of arcing electricity. It was a haven of academics and inventors, mad men and gods.

And here, she was always an inch away from disaster.

There was precisely one woman who had stood on the steps to the Advisory Board, Abigail Breland. She had been murdered a week after she got the position.