One man's escape is another's prison...

Midwinter break provides the aristocratic boys of Harlebone School with eight weeks of freedom from their studies, harsh schoolmasters, and each other. But Wilstaire Cathermay-Gravence plots a more permanent escape. With one brother dead in a foreign war, his father succumbing to madness, and fears over his own sanity looming, Wil runs away from the school and from his family. But the escape he dreamed of is not the one he finds. Plunged into life amongst the nomadic and mysterious canal folk known as the Rivane, Wil must discover the path he wants to follow before fate conspires to force him down another.