Captain Gaerbith is heir to a secret: the location of a lost sword he cannot touch. In a village far from the battlefield, Kieran the blacksmith remembers nothing before the day when he was found as a young boy, dagger in hand, standing beside a dead man. Maggie is a healer's apprentice, and earns her way as a laundress. Her shadowed past and crippled hand make her an object of suspicion and ridicule. Far to the north, Lady Yan mari plots to escape...