The town of Rotherweird has been independent from the rest of England for 400 years - to protect a deadly secret. Sir Veronal Slickstone is dead, his bid to exploit that secret consigned to dust, leaving Rotherweird to resume its abnormal normality after the travails of the summer - but someone is playing a very long game. Disturbing omens multiply: a funeral delivers a cryptic warning; an ancient portrait speaks; the Herald disappears - and democracy threatens the uneasy covenant between town and countryside. Geryon Wynter's intricate plot, centuries in the making, is on the move.