When Aly comes home to Pirate's Swoop to visit her father, she finds that her mother, the Lioness, is on her way home, too. Frustrated by both parents, Aly makes an escape. But things go horribly wrong. Instead of enjoying a few days at sea in her boat, Aly is captured by pirates and sold as a slave to the noble Balitang family of the Copper Isles, where she is immediately enmeshed in royal family intrigues. When the Balitangs are sent into exile, Aly goes with them. But not before entering into a life-and-death wager with the Trickster god, Kyprioth: keep the Balitang children alive until the end of summer, and she will be returned home safe and sound. Can Aly do it? In this sweeping saga by best-selling author Tamora Pierce, Aly is caught up in a world where nothing is what it seems, and where she must hide her identity. Will Aly win the wager and return home? Or will the treachery and conspiracy of gods and men prove too much for her?