The world of Rengas is tearing, but it's the people below who will suffer — the wars of the Forbringrs care not for the misgivings of the beings below.

Kyira, a Nordun Pathwatcher, returns from a fight on the ice but her father and brother are missing. As she searches frantically to reunite her family she is drawn into a war between the humans and the Bohr, leaving the cold familiar lines of her frozen home to venture the narrow, winding streets of Tyr, where games are played and battles fought. The stories of Kyira, Fia (a companion like Inara in Firefly), Jagar (a deadly assassin), Captain Laeb (the foreign tactician who against all the odds keeps besting the Bohr in combat), and even the Forbringr herself converge in an explosive ending.