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sabotaged both suits. Hers will glide for a while, but the boosters are dead. There’s no uplift or steering.”
    â€œOh, my boy.” I laughed, the sound more like a wheeze through my cold-­clenched throat. “You out-­Daggered the Dagger.”
    That accursed box would be buried in some high crest where the snow never melted. Maybe, after a time, the enchantment would dissipate and those captured screams would silence.
    It took several minutes of precarious teamwork for us to shut the hatch. The hold secure, all of us near frozen solid, we retreated into the ship. The crew saluted me as we entered the control car. Their grins were grim, with reason. We’d vented a great deal of gas to control our ascent, and now skirted a mere hundred feet over the ground.
    Dead ahead, the green-­sliver of Caskentia shone in the weak dawn light. Clouds thickened the sky. A storm was sweeping in from the ocean. If we’d gone all the way to the divide, our fates would have been guaranteed.
    â€œThe old gal is mine,” I said to Ramsay at the rudder. “I’ll take her down.”
    The metal wheel was warm from my co-­pilot’s hold. “Crew, it’s been an honor to serve with you tonight. If we live past dawn, Caskentia may well hunt for us to find out what transpired here. It may be a sorry life, but—­”
    â€œPardon, sir,” called the navigator. “It’ll be a life.” Grunts around the cabin backed him up.
    â€œVery well,” I said. Sheridan stood beside me, his legs braced. I wanted to order him away from this glass-­and-­steel cage that would likely crumple upon impact, but I knew he’d disobey. Feeling the pressure of my gaze, he glanced over with a small smile.
    Oh, God. He trusted me, that we’d survive.
    I gripped the wheel harder, willing my thoughts into the Argus .
    You’ve been good to us, old gal. I’ll do my best to be kind in these next minutes.
    The sunlight from astern illuminated the skies ahead in brilliant purple and grey, the sprawling valley below an unreal, verdant green. I smiled. Views like this were why I’d taken to air as a boy, why I rarely stayed aground long.
    What a beautiful, perfect dawn to share with my son.

 
    ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
    S ome stories flow forth with little need for revision. This was not one of those stories. Many ­people provided me with feedback through multiple brain-­breaking revision stages: Setsu Uzume, Nancy Fulda, Kat Otis (twice over!), Aaron DaMommio, Leo Korogodski, Daniel Bensen, Pam Wallace, Gwen Phua, J. Kathleen Cheney, Sara Dobie Bauer, and Rhonda Parrish. I’m forever grateful for the supportive bunch at Codex Writers.
    If you want to learn more about real airships, I highly recommend Airships.net. That site helped a great deal as I tried to make the Argus as realistic as possible . . . with the addition of some magic, of course. Magic makes everything better.

 
    Don’t miss the latest Beth Cato novel, coming August 2016!
    Breath of Earth
    Available in paperback and ebook!
    After the earth’s power is suddenly left unprotected, a young geomancer must rely on her unique magical powers to survive in this fresh fantasy standalone from the author of acclaimed The Clockwork Dagger and The Clockwork Crown.
    I n an alternate 1906 San Francisco, headstrong Ingrid Carmichael is assisting a group of powerful geomancer wardens who have no idea of the depth of her power—­or that she is the only woman to possess such skills.
    When assassins kill the wardens, Ingrid and her mentor are protected by her incredible magic. But the pair is far from safe. Without its full force of guardian geomancers, the city is on the brink of a cataclysmic earthquake that will expose Earth’s powers to masterminds determined to control the energy for their own dark ends. The danger escalates when Chinese refugees, preparing to fight the encroaching American and