Synopsis
Four years ago, the nation of Holzhyt lost two of its top scientists, the world-renowned duo of Ihczya of Overlook and Axye of None, to a horrific accident involving their would-be magnum opus. In the present day, Axye’s protege, Ysa Yddgru, still wonders if her part in the creation of their building-sized machine helped kill them. She receives an assignment to investigate an eerie letter sent by Axye, in which she had predicted—down to the minute—every detail of her death a month before it happened. The letter had alluded to dangerous secrets, but unlocking them seems impossible: Axye had insisted only Ihczya could do it, and she had failed to predict she would die with her. Ysa’s only hope is Erras of Sea-Garden—investigating claims that their deaths were not an accident after all—who offers the use of her contacts in the underworld. Ysa agrees to an unsteady alliance; all she has to do is provide her knowledge of her mentor and pretend that she doesn’t know Erras’s assignment was forged. To piece together the agent’s ulterior motives, she must withhold what she can, but she risks tipping off the agent (and anyone she might be working for). With every probing question she must answer, Ysa begins to wonder: how well did she know her mentor? How well did anyone know her mentor?
As both dig deeper, they must dodge the attentions of the secrets that threaten to find them, all while keeping their own secrets safe from each other. As if that wasn’t enough, the two had become recurring, non-consensual guests on Eye of the Storm, the talk show hosted by Ruby Caine (your friend and mine)—caught in the gaze of an audience demanding their secrets with escalating vehemence.
Thousands of miles away, across an ocean’s worth of ideological turbulence and seawater, a senator of Adila shambles into the middle of a crowded public square and shoots himself in the head. He leaves behind, on his desk, dozens of candid photos of himself. Bitter, the sex worker featured in the photos, and Eviruda De’Sanya, the intelligence agent moonlighting as the photographer of his blackmail, are immediately hounded by forces that would have their silence permanently secured. The two find themselves embroiled in vortex of little taunting threads: the suspicious death of a weapon’s smuggler and sudden suicide of a police officer join the senator’s in a tenuous pattern of craniocerebral trauma; an unassuming mercenary, charismatic, stilted, and unable to escape their gazes, draws them deeper into the shadows of the secrets looming over her; and the occult forces surrounding them from all sides threaten to doom them in ways worse than killing them—which might be their only chances of survival.
As all logic melts away, all that is certain is that they can’t trust anyone, no matter how wide their smile may be. As if that wasn’t enough, the two had become recurring, non-consensual guests on Eye of the Storm, the talk show hosted by Ruby Caine (your friend and mine)—caught in the gaze of an audience demanding their secrets with escalating vehemence.