After years in exile, Nyxnissa so Dasheem is once more a bel dame, part of a sisterhood of elite government assassins trained to cut a target's head off without remorse. But the end of a centuries-long war has thrown her native land of Nasheen into turmoil. A huge influx of unemployedand unemployableyoung soldiers have brought Nasheen to the brink of civil war, even as an alien spaceship stations itself in orbit above the capital. Nyx figures it's a good time to get the hell out of Nasheen, so she assembles a team of renegades, shape-shifters, magicians, and mercenaries to rescue a missing political leader who may be the difference between peace and bloodshed. Just one problem: the politician is an old enemy whom Nyx once left to die in a ditch . . .