Rejected by his aristocratic family, Gil Irichels has been content to make his living as a traveling curse-breaker, working with his lover, the feral mage Envar Cassi, and their bodyguard, swordswoman Arak min'Aroi. After a series of deaths leave him the sole heir to the family's house and fortune, Irichels's main concern is to do whatever he must to settle the estate and return to his previous life. But these is something very wrong in seaborne Bejanth, starting with the deaths of his kin and spreading into the complex web of politics and magic that holds the city together. As he struggles to discover the truth behind his family's losses, he realizes that there is more at stake than the fall of one house. Someone is unraveling the web of curses on which the city depends, and Irichels is the only person who can stop them-if it's not already too late.