The seeds of war are best sown in the season of peace. A pirate-queen discovers the only gold around is in the bars of her cage... A temple-courtesan's heart dances for the archer she was tasked to destroy... A librarian-princess learns how to steal to save the world from an ancient plague... While the battle for Mathura rages in the West, the great powers gather in distant Kamrup - the lush and mysterious Tree City of the East - to thrash out the political future of the realm. Their aim: to secure prosperity and a lasting peace. But at this magnificent conclave, deaf swordswomen and exiled snakelings, spoilt heroes and lovesick princes, immortal assassins and their apprentices will find no sun to light their way. For the Son of Darkness rises, boiling over with a wrath that all the oracles in the world cannot hope to forestall. After all, seeing the future is one thing, changing it is quite another?