Some Terrible Black Luck

Disgraced, half blind and hardly what you'd call alive, Tristain Follingsworth, is turned loose onto the streets of Cloud Nine, the floating husk of a city he calls home. Shunned by family and friends alike, he's got little left to do but find a bottle and drink himself to death. Then he's shanghaied and brought to the Yard, a lousy little prison just this side of Hell. The slavers there tell him he's to work 'til he dies, digging for salvage on the Ground below, a lethal job where the best workers only last a scant few days. Stuck between the choice of dying on land or in the air, Tristain is forced to come to terms with himself and his past, and forge an escape plan on the side. His only allies are a madman, a pair of felons and his best friend, who wants him to die slowly and badly, if at all possible. It's not the best recipe for success. But amidst the terrors of the Yard and the worse things that lurk on the Ground below, the first gunwitch discovers he's not ready to die just yet.