The Drowned Meridian

The empire's magic is built on a stolen god-and Tavra Orrel has found the error that could bring it all down.

Tavra spends her days checking harbor accounts and her nights practicing illegal tide-reckoning. She has one purpose: free her younger brother, Esven, from the debt service that sends him diving into the lethal depths of Lake Nhal.

But the lake is rising by the same volume that rivers are losing across the world.

Tavra's search for the missing water draws her into an alliance with a disgraced cosmographer, an Ossuran spy, a roadless mountain guide and a Warden beginning to doubt the laws she has spent her life defending. Their trail leads to a truth erased from every official history: measurecraft is powered by a celestial intelligence that ancient rulers divided and imprisoned-and Tavra's supposedly dead mother is still alive inside its seal.

Now the second moons are approaching alignment. The revolutionary engineer Ilyr Vos intends to restore the captive being, return the stolen rain and end the empire's magical dominion. His cause is just. His calculation could destroy the world.

And Esven has agreed to become his conduit.

To save her brother, Tavra must reject both the corrupt order that enriched her homeland and the catastrophic freedom offered in its place. Her only hope is an unfinished network hidden across continents, written in scars, forbidden maps and deliberate mistakes.

The Drowned Meridian is an atmospheric epic fantasy of dangerous magic, buried history, sibling devotion and impossible moral choices-the opening volume of The Meridian Scar.