Kalim na Savarre, a young merchant from the backwater province of Sayanath, has come to the city of Moranath, on the border of a great empire, the Essetrian Principate, with a trading caravan, hoping to get rich with an illegal scheme to sell birds of prey. A misfit in his homeland due to his mixed race, his anarchic and misanthropic attitude has grown out of the resentment he feels towards the prejudice which he believes has unfairly held him back in life. His darkest secret, however, is that he is a misfit of a more serious kind. Since childhood, he has been hiding and suppressing arcane mental powers, forbidden by imperial law and the Church, and which are becoming increasingly difficult to control.

When his plans go wrong, his ill-conceived attempt to salvage them leads to him being falsely implicated in the murder of a local aristocrat, and he becomes reluctantly involved drawn into an uprising against the imperial authorities. Surrounded by enemies and with no-one he can trust, his only escape seems to be through harnassing the powers he has always tried to deny.