When Ingram and Quester had seen their clients, Lady Victoria Vantage and her young niece Urelle Vantage, safely to their new home, they had thought their work finished, the time come to find new Adventures – despite the not-well-hidden interest between Ingram and Urelle. Then Ingram receives an impossible message: he, a fugitive and exile from Clan Camp-Bel, is desperately needed by the Clan in distant Aegeia, a thousand miles and more away, for a mission so secret it cannot be included in the recall. And the very night he and Quester set out, Urelle discovers there are assassins already on their trail and rushes to warn them – and following her, Victoria, a retired Adventurer forced once more into the field. But more is at stake than they can realize, for the ancient Cycle of Aegeia – the living morality play between the Reason of Athena and the Passion of Ares – is in peril of destruction; a monstrous impostor has taken the place of the God of War, and begins to orchestrate an ending to Aegeia itself. And the false Ares knows that one of the four travelers is the only thing standing between him and the downfall of the gods...