Rejected by his aristocratic family, Gil Irichels has been content to make his living as a traveling curse-breaker, working with his lover, the feral mage Envar Cassi, and their bodyguard, swordswoman Arak min'Aroi. After a series of deaths leave him the sole heir to the family's house and fortune, Irichels's main concern is to do whatever he must to settle the estate and return to his previous life. But these is something very wrong in seaborne...