Rath is not a family man. The son of Handernesse, an old and honored line, he has disavowed all blood ties, disappearing into the hundred holdings which the nobility barely acknowledge.

Jewel Markess is also without family—but not through choice. Orphaned at ten years of age, she’s learned the hard way that honesty doesn’t put food in her stomach or a roof over her head. She needs to eat if she’s going to survive, and in desperation, she chooses to steal a well-off man’s satchel.

Rath’s been around. He can spot the girl a mile off. He’s seen a hundred like her. He doesn’t expect her to succeed—but she does. What Rath doesn’t know is that this starving urchin is seerborn.

What neither know is that without her peculiar and intermittent vision, the city—and the Empire it guides—will fall to the ancient forces that are even now gathering beneath her streets.