Alit is a girl like any other.
By night, she wards off clumsy advances from boring scribes and functionaries, and dreams of other lives she could have led.
By day, she carries letters across dangerous Numush to add coins to her dowry, and awaits with some trepidation the day when her brother is finally old enough to sign her over to another man.
Her world shatters when her tablet house is attacked, for the second time, by men with knives. They want to know more about her father, who disappeared six years ago.
So does she.
Alit hires a band of mercenaries to chase after the only lead she has, and is drawn into an Ekka she has only glimpsed: a land built on vengeance, crime for coin, and simmering revolution.