House Jhereg, Dragaera's organized crime syndicate, is still hunting Vlad Taltos. There's a big price on his head in Dragaera City. Then he hears disturbing news. Aliera - longtime friend, sometime ally - has been arrested by the Empire on a charge of practicing elder sorcery, a capital crime. It doesn't make sense. Everybody knows Aliera's been dabbling in elder sorcery for ages. Why is the Empire down on her now? Why aren't her powerful friends - Morrolan, Sethra, the Empress Zerika - coming to her rescue? And most to the point, why has she utterly refused to do anything about her own defense?

Once, Vlad Taltos knew his trade: he killed people for a living. That skill got him his foothold in House Jhereg, running the rackets for a chunk of urban Adrilankha. Later, things happened that left Vlad a changed man, on the run from the Jhereg and frequently involved in the affairs of Dragonlords, Empresses, and even Jenoine. Far more involved than the average human. Meanwhile, in the very distant past, one of the gods fashioned an artifact - a silver figurine of a tiassa, a winged panther-like animal.

Years ago, Vlad Taltos came from the East, to make his way as a human amidst the impossibly tall, fantastically long-lived natives of the Dragaeran Empire. He joined the Jhereg, the Dragaeran House (of which there are seventeen) that handles the Empire's vices: gambling, rackets, organized crime. He became a professional assassin. He was good at it. But that was then, before Vlad and the Jhereg became mortal enemies. For years, Vlad has run from one end of the Empire to the other, avoiding the Jhereg assassins who pursue him.

Vlad Taltos, short-statured, short-lived human in an Empire of tall, long-lived Dragaerans, has always had to keep his wits about him. Long ago, he made a place for himself as a captain of the Jhereg, the noble house that runs the rackets in the great imperial city of Adrilankha. But love, revolution, betrayal, and revenge ensued, and for years now Vlad has been a man on the run, struggling to stay a step ahead of the Jhereg who would kill him without hesitation.

Now Vlad's back in Adrilankha. The rackets he used to run are now under the control of the mysterious "Left Hand of the Jhereg" - a secretive cabal of women who report to no man.

Okay, so maybe I've been living in the woods too long, where you can't even get a decent cup of klava first thing in the morning. So who should turn up but Lady Teldra, the courtly servant of my old friend the Dragonlord Morrolan? Teldra wants my help, because Morrolan and Aliera have disappeared, and according to Sethra Lavode, it looks like they may be in the hands of the Jenoine. Do I want to mess with them? The guys who made this place? And I thought I had problems before...Oh well, what's a little cosmic battle?