When one man changes history, history changes everyone. London, 1861. Burton and Swinburne stand at a crossroads in their lives and are caught in the epicenter of an empire torn by conflicting forces.

Returning from his failed expedition to find the source of the Nile, explorer, linguist, scholar and swordsman Sir Richard Francis Burton finds himself sucked into the perilous depths of this moral and ethical vacuum when the Prime Minister, Lord Palmerston, employs him as 'King's Spy'.