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Informationen zum Autor Jim Butcher Klappentext An instant New York Times bestseller! The fate of the Cinder Spires may be decided by crossed swords in the next exhilarating fantasy adventure from the author of the Dresden Files, in this New York Times bestselling series of noble families, swordplay, and airships. For centuries the Cinder Spires have safeguarded humanity, rising far above the deadly surface world. Within their halls, aristocratic houses rule, developing scientific marvels and building fleets of airships for defense and trade. Now, the Spires hover on the brink of open war. Everyone knows it's coming. The guns of the great airship fleets that control the skies between the last bastions of humanity will soon speak in anger, and Spire Albion stands alone against the overwhelming might of Spire Aurora's Armada and its new secret weapon--one capable of destroying the populations of entire Spires. A trading summit at Spire Olympia provides an opportunity for the Spirearch, Lord Albion, to secure alliances that will shape the outcomes of the war, and to that end he dispatches privateer Captain Francis Madison Grimm and the crew of the AMS Predator to bolster the Spirearch's diplomatic agents. It will take daring, skill, and no small amount of showmanship to convince the world to stand with Spire Albion--assuming that it is not already too late. Leseprobe Chapter 1 AMS Predator, Colony Spire Dependence Captain Francis Madison Grimm, commander, AMS Predator, strode down the length of the deck, doing what an airship's captain all too often found a necessary duty-waiting calmly. The ship's crew had gone to general quarters in predawn, nearly eight hours before, with breaks for no more than two men at a time, and those only for biological necessity. Mists hovered thickly over the ship, for it was barely more than a thousand feet above the lithosophere-that elevation where the growing things of the hellish surface world reached out branches, tendrils, and various other structures that could threaten a ship's physical integrity. Grimm could scarcely see from one end of Predator to the other, much less what might be happening to the armed away team of the Spirearch's Guard currently deployed to the colony Spire below. Grimm climbed the steep ladder to the bridge and strode over to where the ship's pilot, Mister Kettle, leaned easily back against the pilot's brace, his wrists draped over the ship's steering grips, fingers hanging loosely. He was relaxed despite the hours of waiting. Kettle was a brawny, bearded veteran aeronaut. The skin around his eyes was permanently a bit lighter than the rest of his face where his goggles had shielded him from the glare of the light of the open sky far above. His forearms looked like ham hocks, and he wore his fleece-lined cold-weather aeronaut's coat unbuttoned and open in the warmth at this altitude. Sweat had run tracks down his face and neck. "Skip," Kettle drawled easily as Grimm approached. "We should have seen or heard something from the team by now." In response, Grimm calmly, deliberately removed his pocket watch from where it resided in his waistcoat, and he consulted its face before polishing it, closing it, and returning it to its pocket. "They're barely outside the mission window, Mister Kettle," Grimm said. "I think we shall not wail and gnash our teeth quite yet." "Aye, Skip," Kettle replied. "But beggin' the captain's pardon, I'd be happier if Sir Benedict had sent up a rocket by now." "I'm sure if Sir Benedict had need of us, he would have done so," Grimm replied. "Meanwhile, I'll not leave us sitting fat and happy on an unguarded docking platform. Any Auroran who ran a patrol past it would blow us to splinters." "If they could see us in this soup," Kettle growled. A boarding ax, his weapon of choice ...
