On a distant island

Wrimmad City, the largest settlement on the remote island of Botzis, is in many ways a low technology backwater fishing village, but for one detail: it boasts the seat of Unitism, the world’s second-largest religious order.

Polister Calidon, the leader of that order, has lived a politically complicated but otherwise decently tranquil existence, up until the day an old friend shows up at his door. The friend, Professor Damid Magly, and his companion, Princess Battine Alconnot, are fleeing an international warrant, and demand sanctuary. Denying it would mean sentencing them to certain death, but granting it could mean many more deaths, while risking the independence of the Unital order and the sovereignty of Botzis. As Polister knows better than almost anyone, a House denied is a House to be feared.