Prologue

Regrets are the instruments by which we learn. We tend not to repeat those things we regret. A remorse, I think, is a much deeper thing. I tend not to dwell on regrets. For all the pain they’ve caused me, they have allowed me to grow and become a better man, sometimes despite myself. I regret how I treated my first love, but it taught me how to better live with my wife. I regret not working very hard in school, but now I know to apply myself in my work. I feel bad about the thin. . .

Prologue

Regrets are the instruments by which we learn. We tend not to repeat those things we regret. A remorse, I think, is a much deeper thing. I tend not to dwell on regrets. For all the pain they’ve caused me, they have allowed me to grow and become a better man, sometimes despite myself. I regret how I treated my first love, but it taught me how to better live with my wife. I regret not working very hard in school, but now I know to apply myself in my work. I feel bad about the thin. . .

“Tommandros, put those clouds back where you found them,” his mother called from the doorway of their cottage. “Can’t you see I’ve got clothes on the line? How do suppose they’ll dry if you keep the fog rolling in like that?”

“She has a point, you know,” Gran’s voice said. But she wasn’t there. Not really. She was dead, lying blissfully unaware of the failure-of-a-summoner her grandson was in her absence. Still, she spoke to him from a shaded corner in the back of his mind, a warm place . . .

“You sure the cloak’s working?”

“I checked it yesterday, it’s fine mate.”

“You only finished installing it yesterday.”

“Ramses. Are we or are we not currently being shot out of the sky?”

“No Sol, we are not.”

“Well, I guess it’s bloody working then ain’t it?”

Cole Traske stood in the back of the cockpit listening to his pilot, Solomon Dane and demolitions man Ramses Barden bicker as they always had. He’d never gotten to the bottom of where the bicker. . .