In a Shellworld - a vast, ancient artificial planet of nested levels, each home to a different civilisation - a king is murdered and his eldest son Ferbin is forced to flee. His younger brother Oramen is left behind, dangerously close to the man responsible. Their sister Djan Seriy Anaplian left this world years ago and became something else entirely: an agent of the Culture's Special Circumstances. Now she must return to a place she thought she had abandoned, concealing abilities that would be incomprehensible to the people she grew up among. A novel about the collision between civilisations at vastly different levels of development, and about what you owe the place you came from.