With the Assassins' Guild functioning again after a year of upheaval and rebellion, Bren Cameron takes a position on the court to champion a trade agreement, but tranquility in the atevi world is transient.

"Alpha Station, orbiting the world of the atevi, has taken aboard five thousand human refugees from a destroyed station in a distant sector of space. With supplies and housing stretched to the breaking point, it is clear that the refugees must be relocated down to the planet, and soon. But not to the atevi mainland: rather to the territory reserved for human, the island of Mospheira. Tabini-aiji, the powerful political head of the atevi, tasks his...