[Daniel Quare 01] • The Emperor of All Things

_Tempus Rerum Imperator:_ Time, Emperor of All Things

1758\. England is embroiled in a globe-spanning conflict that stretches from

her North American colonies to Europe and beyond. Across the Channel, the

French prepare for an invasion — an invasion rumored to be led by none other

than Bonnie Prince Charlie. It seems the map of Europe is about to be redrawn.

Yet behind these dramatic scenes, another war is raging - a war that will

determine not just the fate of nations but of humanity itself...

Daniel Quare is a journeyman in an ancient guild, The Worshipful Company of

Clockmakers. He is also a Regulator, part of an elite network within the guild

devoted to searching out and claiming for England's exclusive use any

horological innovation that could give them an upperhand, whether in business

or in war.

Just such a mission has brought Quare to the London townhouse of eccentric

collector, Lord Wichcote. He seeks a pocket watch rumoured to possess

seemingly impossible properties that are more to do with magic than with any

science familiar to Quare or to his superiors. And the strange

timepiece has attracted the attention of others as well: the mysterious masked

thief known only as Grimalkin, and a deadly French spy who stop at nothing to

bring the prize back to his masters. Soon Quare finds himself on a dangerous

trail of intrigue and murder that leads far from the world he knows into an

otherwhere of dragons and demigods, in which nothing is as it seems . . . time

least of all.