The colony is starving. The Queen won’t say why. And the kid sorting seeds is the only one asking the right questions.

Cinder Marlowe has wanted to be a scout since the day he could walk. Instead, he sorts seeds with his two best friends...Blaze, the strongest ant in their cohort; Thistle, the smartest...and watches Captain Selwick’s patrols...

The Widow-Maker knows Gunnar’s touch. She shouldn’t — engines don’t have souls. But the Veilstone under her boiler is older than the railroad itself, and something has to explain why she responds to a fourteen-year-old boy the way she never responded to any man.

Gunnar Harlan keeps records. Not just the manifests and route logs — those are the...

Marcus took the Roman oath at sixteen. By sundown, he was certain he had made a terrible mistake.

Marcus Aemilius Corvus is a farm boy from Mediolanum who joined the legion to get out from under his father’s olive press. By his second day of training, his body is doing things he didn’t know it could do, and refusing to do things he assumed it...