Chief Justice Anthea and High Brother Luc arrive home from their successful diplomatic mission to Jing and find Issura in disarray. Queen Teodora is dead, and her heir Crown Princess Chiara believes her mother was assassinated. The Reverend Father of Light had gone well and truly mad, and a convocation has been called to select his successor. And worse, someone is replacing an unknown substance for pain powder in medical shipments from the Temple of Vintner. A drug that causes the same signs of hysteria and insanity the Reverend Father of Light displays. Magic and mayhem have never been treacherous. Or this demented.