When a small staff of scoundrels, would-be heroes, deviants, and ruffians discover a map that they believe will cause them to a fabled sword buried in the barrow of the long-dead wizard, they think they’ve struck it rich. But their expectations are dashed when the map actually is cursed and then is destroyed in a marvelous ritual. The loss of the map leaves them fantasizing of what may have been, until they rediscover the map inside a most uncommon and unforeseen place.

Stjepan Black-Heart, suspected murderer and renegade royal cartographer; Erim, a woman masquerading as a man; Gilgwyr, brothel owner extraordinaire; Leigh, an exiled magus under an ignominious cloud; Godewyn Red-Hand, mercenary and troublemaker; Arduin Orwain, scion of a noble family brought low by scandal; and Arduin’s sister Annwyn, the stunning cause of that scandal: collectively they form a cross-section of the center Kingdoms of the Known Globe, united unintentionally and dark design, on a goal that will either get them all in the history books or have them all killed.