Spire City

Before the infections...Before finding a place with a new family in the Weave...Chels is a twelve-year-old orphan living on the streets of the fabled Spire City. Beetle-drawn carriages pass her by, and chained singers on the roofs sing above her head, but Chels has no time for such wonders or cruelties. She must survive, begging coin by coin.As her hopes are dashed one by one, she keeps running into a boy her own age. He calls her Tatter Girl, and he's probably some kind of criminal, but he seems to have found a place where he belongs. Could she still hope for the same?

The death of Spire City's greatest inventor couldn't come at a worse time.The fabled city of beetle-drawn carriages is occupied by a foreign power, and that country is at war with another.Five people find their lives spiraling together in the aftermath of his death: Temli, an airship captain; XXXXX, an unnamed correspondent from the front lines; Keene, a grizzled beetle hunter; Jensha, a singer chained to one of the city's spires; and Alless, the former apprentice to the late inventor. All will find their lives changed, along with the world around them.