Three stories set in Meviel, a great city-state where manners and status—and the family luck—can steer a person's fate—or change it utterly. In "Virtue and the Archangel" a woman is hired by a former friend to find a fabled luckstone—the loss of which would be a catastrophe. "Writ of Exception" follows two young women forced by their parents to unite their inheritances in marriage. And in "Wreath of Luck" a stowaway on a pirate ship learns a lesson about the nature of love.