The wine in the public fountains tasted sweet, but the ledger on the grand oak desk showed we were going to starve by winter.Down in the lower districts, the shouting went on for three days straight as thousands of weavers, smiths, and miners poured into the streets to burn the white flags of the old administration. They thought the morning sun meant the fight was over, completely blind to the fact that the merchant ships at the eastern stone docks were currently sitting stranded in shallow mud because the artificial tide pools had drained overnight."They are singing your name in the bread square, Ethan," Valerie said, her voice dry as she dropped a heavy bundle of leather bound financial reports onto the center of her new desk. She sat back in the high-backed velvet chair of the Director office, her injured right arm resting in a clean linen sling while her left hand rubbed her temple. "They think you are a god from the wilderness who cured the mountain water with a

The metal ribs of the dreadnought hummed with the sound of a dying woman’s pulse, vibrating straight through the thin soles of my leather boots.I dropped from the overhead ventilation pipe into the dark, greasy shadow of the lower cargo hold. The air inside the belly of the Oriens ship was freezing cold, thick with the heavy stench of oil and old salt water. A row of iron cages stretched along the damp hull, filled with dozens of shivering border citizens who had been dragged from the coastal villages before the dawn patrol could even sound the alarm."Keep your head down, Ethan," Valerie whispered through the copper communication tube pinned to the collar of my tunic. Her voice was faint, distorted by the dense iron walls of the vessel. "I am monitoring the ship's internal energy lines from the dock crane. The main engine room is just past the secondary storage vault. It is not an ordinary coal boiler.""What did you find?" I asked, my voice barely a bre

The stone face looking out from the ancient mud had my exact jawline, but the moss growing in its eye sockets was three thousand years old.The underwater cavern was freezing, illuminated only by the faint, green chemical glow sticks Valerie had strapped to my heavy bronze diving helmet. The harbor water above us was still churning from the destruction of the docks, but down here in the deep, silent belly of the bay, the world felt like a tomb that had been waiting for the sea to pull it under."Ethan, adjust your oxygen valve," Valerie’s voice came through the acoustic copper tube connecting our helmets, her words vibrating through the water with a dull, m