Ley Tuner's Oath

In an empire powered by steam, poor dock boy Ned Vale should never have mattered. 

But after a sabotaged Crown skyship crashes at the docks, Ned's strange ability to hear the stress in crystal machinery drags him into Avalon Academy, where noble heirs train for service, war, and empire.

At Avalon, Ned learns magic, makes friends, earns rivals, and discovers that his hands are better suited to making and mending than breaking. But small faults, borrowed game pieces, copied notes, and delayed shipments reveal a quieter danger moving through the Empire. Someone is testing its systems, probing its weaknesses, and Ned keeps getting in the way.

Book 1 of Empires of Brass and Ley begins the story of a boy who wanted a workbench, not a battlefield, and found out that sometimes the smallest gear can stop the largest machine.