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 Yanamari plots to escape the royal city and her father's iron control. King Morfran seeks a smith who can recreate Azrin, the lost sword, as false proof of Morfran's right...