When Jeniche, a sometimes successful thief, found her prison cell collapsing around her, she knew it was not going to be a good day. Certainly, the last thing she wanted once she had escaped into the war-torn city was to become involved with a group of monks and nuns on pilgrimage. Even less did she want to help them escape and guide them through the desert and into the mountains so they could get home. Of course, the last thing you want is often the first thing you get.

In a world growing painfully from the ruins of a long past catastrophe, it is not just the Imperial ambitions of the Occassan nation that worries people; it is the all too real danger of the past rearing its vicious and mysterious head. What did happen all those centuries ago? What has it do with a thief? And why are the Occassans so interested in her skills?