Lebasi has forced his father to reveal his his great-great-great grandfather led a rebellion and was exiled into the wilderness, and his grandfather is plotting a new uprising. At the edge of the kingdom, Lebasi finds a branded man, a descendant of the exiles, carrying a death sentence into Xessus. The struggle to save Xessus from destruction tests his ingenuity and his courage to breaking point. Tik has waited all her life for the return of the exiles, her kin beyond the wall. Yet the arrival of the branded man leads her to question her loyalty to a family with a terrible secret.