<b>From the front flap of the Gollancz first edition:</b> "In the fair land of Vonahr the Exalted rule supreme, exercising absolute control over the peasants on their lands. But the magical powers of the Exalted have been fading for generations - only a few can now create more than the most superficial illusions. And all over Vonahr, revolt is in the air as seditionists fulminate against the tyranny, greed and corruption of the Exalted, cursing the oppressors of the people.
<p>Eliste is the pampered young daughter of the vicious Marquis vo Derrivalle. Her arrival in Sherreen, Vonahr's glittering capital where she is to be maid of honour to the Queen, is the culmination of her adolescent dreams. But Sherreen is a city waiting to explode; and when it does, the old order is violently and brutally overthrown, Eliste finds herself a fugitive, alone and penniless in the festering underworld of the capital. Led by Whyss Valeur, an orator of genious with access to Exalted powers, the revolutionaries have revived ancient machines of magic - one to detect any Exalted attempting to escape the city, one to spy on the populace by means of tiny, matallic flying insects and, most terrible of all, the Kokotte, the devourer of the enemies of the people.
<p>Assailed by cold, hunger and filth, and terrified of capture, the city around her in the grip of an orgy of death and vengeance as Whyss Valeur's crazed bloodlust becomes uncontrollable, Eliste prepares for Sherreen's madness to overwhelm her..."
