A pirate faces the gallows drop. A farmer is given a terrible ultimatum to save her daughter. An acolyte ascends to priestesshood, only to find that a blessing really can be a curse.
These unlikely bedfellows band together with an inscrutable pickpocket and a talking ottercat in pursuit of the most hopeless of causes: to sail into the Maelstrom, a raging whirlpool from which no one has ever escaped, and find the mysterious treasure hidden within it.
The quest will test their fragile allegiance to its limits, but there is more at stake here than getting rich: the magic of the world is in peril, and the barrier between life and death has never been so thin.
And in the Bastion, the seat of power in Paranish, the queen has an unquenchable thirst that threatens the world and everyone in it.
Can there be honour amongst thieves? Without it, they might never see another sunrise.
