An ambitious young woman has just one chance to secure her future and reclaim her family´s priceless lost artifacts in this stand-alone novel set in the world of Ann Leckie´s groundbreaking, NYT bestselling Imperial Radch trilogy, which won the Hugo and Nebula awards. Though she knows her brother holds her mother´s favor, Ingrid is determined to at least be considered as heir to the family name. She hatches an audacious plan -- free a thief from a prison planet from which no one has ever returned, and use them to help steal back a priceless artifact. But Ingray and her charge return to her home to find their planet in political turmoil, at the heart of an escalating interstellar conflict. Together, they must make a new plan to salvage Ingray´s future and her world, before they are lost to her for good.