Available now: The Powers Alone - The First Principle by Mark Everett Stone

THE POWERS ALONE
The First Principle
The Powers Series, #1
Mark Everett Stone

$5.99

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(99c through 11 February)

Two-thousand years ago, Rome fell to an ancient curse called the Scourge. It took the Collegium—a cabal of powerful wizards—to finally eradicate the menace. Two millennia of expansion and reconstruction saw humanity once again ascendant in the world while the Collegium faded from glory, slowly becoming a relic in the eyes of a society that thought it no longer needed them.

Sejanus Antius Macro, known as the wizard Diamondfang, is the embodiment of the First Principle of Magic, Ritual and Repetition. Armed with a certainty that the Scourge will return and uncertain whether the faded remains of the Collegium will be strong enough to drive it off, he and his comrades seek the heir to the greatest wizard of the Collegium, the One of All.

For centuries wizards have scoured the known world for The One but to no avail. Sejanus believes that his only recourse is to travel beyond the frontier to the lands of the savage red men, the people who have successfully resisted the Empire for four-hundred years. Armed with his raven familiar, Lucius, and centuries of experience, he undertakes a journey in an effort to save the empire he swore to protect. But can even a near-immortal wizard survive in a land from where the great Legions of Britannia never returned?

• • •

New Londinium looked far cruder than the original, or so the killer reckoned, but it also had a vibrancy the other had long since lost. The people seemed more alive, more excited about the prospect of going about their daily lives than those in the heart of the Empire. This new world, so close to the frontier and its red barbarians, lent a sense of danger that heightened the energetic humors in the populace. Yes, that was it. Being so close, death gave life a taste not found elsewhere.

He opened a large, black leather case exposing a new rifle purchased at a dear cost on the far side of the Atlanticus from a one-eyed Serenian merchant who smelled of exotic spices and opium. One hundred fifty gold royals, a fortune in the New World, enough to buy a goodly sized house or farm. The weapon shone nice, clean, and perfect. A beautiful, long, precision piece of murder.

Lifting the rifle, the killer fitted the new sighting lens to the top of the barrel, the brass tube carefully dulled so no telltale gleam of light could give away his position. Like the tube, his face was darkened, and his clothes lay black against his stout body. Staring at the deepening sky, he figured on a few short minutes before the mark made it home.

The killer marveled that the most powerful man in the Empire outside the Emperor himself chose to live in a rundown little brownstone in the middle of the lower east side of town. Why, the place was not even a stone’s throw from the Tenderloin, the area better known as Bacchus’ Temple where the unwary tended to both disappear in the evening and reappear in the morning, often without accompanying valuables.

It had taken the assassin nearly a year to run this mark down, exhausting a small fortune to find the First Principle, but find him he did. The reward for the wizard’s head would beggar the royals already spent on the hunt.

There were quite a few assassins in the Empire (it was a lucrative business, after all); but out of all them only a few were competent enough to successfully kill a wizard, and maybe only three who had the ability to tackle a full Principle. That being said, there were always those willing to beard the lion in his den if the royals were stacked high enough. Nothing, not the gods and their priests, not the Senators or even the Emperor, spoke louder than the satisfying clink of a sackful of royals.

Whoever wanted the Principle dead had deep pockets and vast influence, influence enough to contact the Shadow Guild of Assassins through several different cutouts to reach the best hired killer in the Empire. That told the assassin more than the amount of the award. It told him that the person who wanted the Principle dead was either a member of the Mercantile, or a Senator. Perhaps both. If it was indeed both, then it could be only one man: the third most powerful man in the Empire, a treacherous blagger, but one who always paid debts.

But that made no matter to an assassin of the Shadow. Only the contract mattered, above all else. So he had been taught, so he believed, and for a member of the Shadow, the mark was a dead man who simply hadn’t come to the realization yet.

• • •

Transplanted from Helsinki, Finland, he came to the US at a young age and promptly lost his accent.

Currently he lives in California where he writes and plays Mr. Mom to two wonderful but annoying boys and three even more annoying cats.

Writing consumes most of his free time, as well as the editing of several of his books awaiting publishing. When he’s not losing sleep and writing, he’s stalking his eye doctor.

Find Mark Online:

Website - https://www.markeverettstone1.com
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/MarkEverettStone
Twitter - https://twitter.com/M3verettStone
Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/stonehenge1217
Tirgearr Publishing - http://www.tirgearrpublishing.com/authors/Stone_MarkEverett

Available Now: Fires of Hell by Maureen L. Mills

FIRES OF HELL
The Alchemystic
Maureen L. Mills

Length: Novel
Genre: Steampunk

Digital Price: $3.99 (99c/99p through 21 August)

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When her captain is murdered and her airship suffers a series of sabotages, airship engineer and rogue pyromancer, Amelia Everley, must put aside her dislike of her new employer, Josiah, and help him save her airship and crew.

But is the destruction aimed at their mysterious government passenger, or is the captain’s killer now after Josiah?

All Amelia knows is, if Josiah can’t learn to respect her skills, she may have to resign herself to working for his rival, Edmund Fairlane.

If, that is, she can bring herself, her crew, and her ship home in one piece.

• • •

I swayed in the mouth of a filthy alley not far from the Galata Bridge in the Fatih district of Constantinople, staring down at the man who’d served as my surrogate father for as long as I could remember. The toes of my boots nudged the dark puddle spreading around his head. The slit in his throat gaped black in the moonlit night, a macabre echo of his slack mouth.

No. I must be mistaken. Captain Rollins had remained at the airfield. This couldn’t be him.

But it was.

Bile rose in my throat.

“Melly, lass! What’re you looking at? We have to get back to the ship!” Obadiah’s slurred voice barely registered through the pounding echoes in my head. He staggered from the next alley over, where I’d left him pissing against the wall.

“Obadiah,” I said, sounding hollow even to my own ears. “It’s Captain Rollins. I think… I think he’s…”

“What, drunk? Not he, lass. Captain Rollins knows his limits.” Obadiah peered blearily over my shoulder at the captain’s still form.

“Not drunk.” My head reeled. Too much fermented raki. Too much shock. “He’s dead.”

I sank to my knees, feeling the hot blood seeping through the wool of my uniform’s trousers. My hand shook as I reached for the slash on Captain Rollins’ throat. I needed to stop the flow.

But the captain wasn’t bleeding anymore; not really. No more than a sluggish trickle oozed from the gaping wound, soaking into his normally pristine collar. His eyes stared sightlessly up into the clear night, as if, at the last, he longed for one more glimpse of the sky that had been his home for so many years.

He still felt warm, whether because he hadn’t been dead long or from the stifling, near blood-temperature air, I couldn’t tell.

Obadiah put a hand on the mud-brick alley wall to steady himself and rubbed at his chest, a habit he’d acquired in the last few months. With a name like Obadiah Butterfield, one might expect a round, jolly old man, but he carried corded muscle under his baggy uniform trousers and coat, and could be considered jolly only well after he’d passed three sheets to the wind on his way to unconsciousness.

He’d been nearly in such a state tonight, but now any chance of jollity had fled.

Obadiah stared at the captain’s mortal remains and cursed, using at least five languages and great creativity. I hardly heard him.

I looked over my shoulder at the street. Deserted at this late hour, but for Obadiah and me. If anyone had seen who had done this, they were gone. Impossible to find in Constantinople’s maze of streets.

Obadiah scrubbed a gnarled hand over his age-spotted face. “I always thought I’d go first. That’s how it shoulda been, him being younger and all. He was a good man, our captain. Who would have done this?”

“Captain Rollins was as fine a man as any I’ve ever known. I have no notion who could possibly have hated him at all, let alone enough to slash—” My voice gave out, and I shook my head without looking at Obadiah, unwilling to reveal the moisture filling my eyes. Doughty airmen didn’t cry. I hadn’t when I’d left Maman to join the Mercury’s crew at twelve years of age. I wouldn’t now, ten years later.

“Come away, lass. Naught we can do now, but call the watch.” Obadiah grasped my shoulder, his voice gruff.

I shrugged him off. “You go. I’ll stay with him.”

A small scuffle rose from the depths of the alley beyond me, as of an empty basket tipping over and rolling. Obadiah froze.

“Who’s there?” I called in Turkish, my voice harsh.

• • •

Maureen Mills lives in Draper, Utah, and is the happily married mother of five grown children, all of whom are proud geeks, like their mom and dad. When she’s not playing with her imaginary friends, she enjoys knitting, reading, and sewing cosplay outfits for her kids, who look a lot better in them than she does. Along with her husband, she is in the process of creating a steampunk truck camper from scratch. She also enjoys teaching beginning fiction writing for the local school district’s continuing education program.

Find Maureen online:

Website - http://maureenlmills.com
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/maureen.mills.18
Tirgearr Publishing - http://www.tirgearrpublishing.com/authors/Mills_MaureenL

Available Now: Hellfire by Jeff Provine

HELLFIRE
Jeff Provine

Length: Novel
Genre: Steampunk

Digital price: $4.99 (99c/99p through 12 June)

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Locomotive fireman, Nate Kemp, uncovers a conspiracy around the miraculous Newton’s Catalyst, a powder that makes fires burn hotter than they should—secretly releasing the fires of Hell. Now, more is beginning to slip through, and the Rail Agency tries to tuck him away in a mental institution. Nurse Ozzie Jacey helps him escape. They must warn the capital, Lake Providence, before Hell literally breaks loose.

• • •

The fire threw cinders into Nate Kemp’s eyes. If he hadn’t been wearing his helmet, it would have blinded him.

Sparks flashed against the dark, glass plate that hung down from the thin, metal cap over his head and disappeared. He wore a heavy, leather apron and thick gloves reaching past the elbow. His upper arms, even under his cotton shirt, were covered in pale scars from past burns.

Nate sneered at the fire through smoky stains left on the glass by the burned-out cinders. Through the shadow, he could almost see faces in the flames sneering back at him.

Despite all the burns over the years, the sound of the fire was worse than the pain. It was like a crowd of thousands all screaming out at him. The sound got under his skin and into his head. Sometimes, even when he wasn’t near the fire, he could still hear the screaming.

Nate banged his shovel against the firebox wall.
The fire wailed back at him from its box.

Nate struck it again.

“Easy there,” Jones, the engineer, warned.

Nate turned to face him. Jones was tall and slim with blond hair streaked black with soot. They had worked together for three years on the mail train running freight of all kinds west of the Mississippi toward the Texas Trail and back. The thousand injuries Jones had made through the years suddenly flooded into Nate’s mind. The times Jones had laughed when Nate struck his head on the cab roof. Jones smacking mouth at his lunch with horrible huge bites that anyone would have known were too big for a civilized man. His thin smile sometimes seemed to mock Nate as he spoke.

Nate shifted his shovel in his hands. He could see himself burying it in Jones’s head in one, swift stroke, like an axe. It would come down, crack the skull, let blood spurt and pour. All Nate had to do was kick the body under the wheels of the train. Nobody would be able to tell what he’d done from the mangled mess.

Do it.

Jones pulled up his goggles and blinked his blue eyes. “You all right?”

You will be, something told Nate, when you end his life.

Nate shook his head to chase away the bad thoughts. He’d worked fifteen years without Stoker’s Madness, and he wasn’t about to let it get to him today.

Nate kicked the foot-release at the base of the firebox wall. Two half-circle heavy iron doors fell into place with a clang audible even over the grunting rhythm of the train’s pistons. He couldn’t hear the wail of the fire anymore. Silence settled in his head. The chuch-chuch-chuch rhythm of wheels ground on him.

“That’s better,” Nate muttered.

“You all right?” Jones asked again.

“Just need a minute.”

“Right.” Jones put his goggles back over his eyes and laid his own gloved hands over the lever for the throttle. “It’s been a long day.”

Nate grunted in agreement and let out a long sigh. He set down his shovel in the corner of the train cab. His hands felt almost weightless without it.

Nate stretched his arms above his head, interlocked his fingers and pushed against the sky. The sore muscles tensed for a moment, and then he let them go. Twin sweet waves rolled down his arms as he brought them back to his side.

“I’m going to get some air.”

Jones nodded without a word.

Nate stepped over the low safety rail at the back of the cab and clambered up the wall of the small tender car that rode behind them. It was mostly empty; the coal already shoveled into the hungry belly of the fire that never lost its appetite on the day-long journey.

The small train cab he shared with Jones was one of iron and heat, barely enough room to move back and forth as he scooped up appropriate amounts of coal and fed the firebox. Jones had his gauges and levers to guide the locomotive, but it was Nate’s weary back that actually drove it.

On top of the tender car, the world opened up around Nate. He stripped off his helmet, and the world burst into bright color. The life and beauty of the countryside came alive. Through the dark glass, everything seemed gray and brown, like one of the newfangled photographs everyone was clambering to make.

• • •

Jeff Provine is a curriculum developer and college Composition prof from Oklahoma. He teaches courses, such as the History of Comic Books and the Life and Films of Charles Chaplin. Following a ten-year run of his webcomic, The Academy, Provine is especially active in the local comics community, running the Making of Heroes comic workshop for the Pioneer Library System in 2015. He blogs regularly in Alternate History, and his other books include Celestial Voyages and Dawn on the Infinity.

Find Jeff Online:

Website - http://www.jeffprovine.com
Facebook - http://www.facebook.com/authorjeffprovine
Twitter - http://www.twitter.com/jeffprovine
Blog - http://thisdayinalternatehistory.blogspot.com