The powerful new novel from World Fantasy Award-winner K. J. Parker and the start of a sweeping new epic fantasy series. A siege is approaching, and the City has little time left to prepare. The people have no food and no weapons, and the enemy have sworn to slaughter them all. Their only chance rests with a colonel of engineers - a despised outsider, a genius, a master of military and political strategy with the wrong colour skin. He is the City's only hope. But nobody, rich or poor, wants to take orders from a jumped-up Milkface. Saving the City from itself might be more difficult than surviving the coming siege.