This first volume of a new Eternal Sky trilogy takes readers over the dangerous mountain passes of the Steles of the Sky and south, into the Lotus Kingdoms. The Gage is a brass automaton created by a wizard of Messaline around the core of a human being. His wizard is long dead, and he works as a mercenary. He carries a message from the most powerful sorcerer of Messaline to the Rajni of the Lotus Kingdom. With him is the Dead Man, a bitter survivor of the bodyguard of the deposed Uthman Caliphate, protecting the message and the Gage. They are friends, of a peculiar sort. They are walking into a dynastic war between the rulers of the shattered bits of a once great Empire.