Finding a dead body is never good. When it's the son of a deranged, skin-stripping baron, who you've been hired to find alive and well, it's even worse! Drevin knows that to keep his flesh attached to his body, he needs to find out who killed him and why. And for that, he needs help!
Teelan is a young coroner with unique forensic skills and a fascination with death. It is said that he can speak with the dead and can uncover the nature of their demise. But he is precocious and anti-social, preferring his own company to others.
Meanwhile, across the world the rulers of each land are actively seeking those rare individuals with Fragments of magic to serve them. When Drevin and Teelan run into Cali, an unruly dockside girl with extraordinary powers, they become embroiled with the baron's Gatherers, who are hunting people like her.
Can they put their differences aside and work together long enough to solve the murder, placate the baron and escape the Gatherers, in a world where people with special Traits are hunted and persecuted?
