In a world where people born with an exceptional skill known as a Grace are feared & exploited Katsa carries the burden of a skill even she despises: the Grace of killing. She lives under the command of her Uncle Randa King of the Middluns & is expected to carry out his dirty work punnishing & torturing anyone who displeases him. Breaking arms & cutting off fingers are her stock-in-trade. Finding life under his rule increasingly unbearable Katsa forms an underground Council whose purpose is to combat the destructive behaviour of the seven kings
- after all the Middluns is only one of the Seven Kingdoms each of them ruled by their own king & his personal agenda for power. When the Council hears that the King of Liend's father has been kidnapped Katsa investigates.. .and stumbles across a mystery. Who would want to kidnap him & why? & who was the extraordinary Graced fighter who challenged her fighting skills for the first time as she & the Council rushed the old man to saftey? Something dark & deadly is rising in the north & creeping across the continent & behind it all lurks the shadowy figure of a one-eyed king.. .