The Lotus Kingdoms

Elizabeth Bear expands the world of her Eternal Sky trilogy beyond the Steles of the Sky into the southern Lotus Kingdoms. The Gage is an automaton built around a human heart, created by a long-dead Wizard of Messaline. His purpose now is to carry a message to the Rajni of one of those Lotus Kingdoms. With him travels a Dead Man, once the bodyguard of the ruler of the Uthman Caliphate, now fallen. The Dead Man is now a nameless mercenary. But the Lotus Kingdoms are soon to be at war with each other, and Wizardly messages are seldom what they seem to be on the surface.