Under its cracked and wailing sky, the Misery is a vast and blighted expanse, the arcane remnant of a devastating war with the immortals known as the Deep Kings. Now the enemy is kept at bay only by the existence of the Engine, a terrible weapon that protects the Misery’s border.

When bounty hunter Ryhalt Galharrow is ordered to locate a masked noblewoman at a frontier outpost, he finds himself caught in the middle of an attack by the Deep Kings, one that signifies they may no longer fear the Engine. With the very woman he is seeking, a powerful shadow from Galharrow’s own grim past, he stumbles onto a web of conspiracy that threatens to end the fragile peace the Engine has provided. And Galharrow is not ready for the truth about the blood he’s spilled, or the gods he’s supposed to serve…