A foreign sea captain is murdered at a Samaran inn. Two of his crew are stabbed to death in a back street. But the captain's ship is missing and there's a strange note hidden in the dead man's boot.Sam Hekman, Samara's dour chief lawkeeper, thinks there's more to the case than meets the eye, so he dispatches his agents to backtrack the captain's trail, to find his ship and to discover just exactly what his last voyage was all about.With a royal wedding in the offing he must find out if there is a threat to the Princess Calaine, or is it all just the shadow of a bigger plot?