The Last Wind-Caller of Skyhook Bazaar

Above a drowned world, the Skyhook Bazaar drifts on tethered balloon-barges, and every stall depends on the trade winds that no one has been able to summon for forty years. Ossa Venn, 24, a scorned gust-sweeper who clears ash from the canopy rigging, discovers she can still call wind the old, forbidden way. The rule is hard: each gust she summons steals one of her own memories. The larger the wind, the deeper the loss, starting with the most recent and working backward. When a dead calm strands the market over a storm wall, Ossa must decide how much of herself to spend to keep ten thousand people aloft. Her rival is Castor Idris, 31, chief engineer of the Bazaar's steam-fan guild. He is brilliant and principled, and his mother was the last wind-caller, who forgot her own son before she died. Castor believes calling wind is a slow suicide the market must never depend on again, and his untested engine could free everyone from it. If Ossa is right, his guild falls. If he is right, she erases herself for nothing. Then Ossa finds a note in her own handwriting that she no longer remembers writing: "Don't trust the calm. Someone is making it."