Stormflyer

Trinwald "Trin" Kalibur holds an Imperial title of nobility he never asked for and a passion for technology that has been outlawed.

More than a thousand years after the Shattering, a cataclysm sparked by ambition and unchecked quantum manipulation, the world remains under Imperial Aethyri control. The Shattering reshaped the world and changed its people. Some emerged with the Quantum Arts, an innate ability to bend reality at will. The Aethyri Empire, built on the power of those gifted few, has used the Arts for centuries to crush technological progress and preserve its supremacy.

Fifty years ago, the technologically advanced Republics lost the Great War and were forced under Aethyri rule. Now permitted only basic technology, steam engines and airships, but forbidden from innovation beyond those limits, the Republics strain against restrictions designed to keep them weak and dependent.

In the Republic of Tynsdel, Trin wants nothing to do with politics or titles. He would rather spend his days in the workshop, tinkering with engines and chasing the next breakthrough. He has thrown everything into Stormflyer, an experimental airship fitted with radical electric motors and fixed wings that skirt close to violating Imperial law. His work has made him a target.

Powerful forces are moving against him. His airship is sabotaged. Assassins from the Red Scorpion guild stalk the city's streets, yet someone is killing the killers before they can reach him. Who wants him dead, and who is keeping him alive?

Then Lady Tansyl arrives, a university student from the Imperial capital who is too clever and knows far too much about Tynsdel's enemies to be just a visiting scholar. She says she has come to study technology and engineering, but her own secrets may be as lethal as the threats surrounding Trin.

Pulled into a reluctant alliance, they stumble onto a conspiracy that reaches from a powerful banking dynasty, through a zealot cult, to shadowed figures in the highest circles of Imperial power, all brewing threats not just to him, but to their very way of life. Trin must expose the truth before he is buried with it. His hardest problem, though, may be the woman at his side. Can he trust Lady Tansyl, or will her secrets be the thing that kills him?