"Most of the Church's senior leaders have converged upon the city of Besancon in Burgundy, where Pope Urban's renegade papacy, now on the run from the Vatican's would-be usurper Borja, plans to offer an ecumenical olive branch to the other Christian denominations with which Rome has been at war. Fortunately, Urban has up-time help relying on Cardinal Protector Larry Mazzare's theological savvy, Sharon Nichol's medical skills, and a small contingent...

Seventeen-year-old Anglet Sutonga lives repairing the chimneys, towers, and spires of the city of Bar-Selehm. Dramatically different communities live and work alongside each other. The white Feldish command the nation’ s higher echelons of society. The native Mahweni are divided between city life and the savannah. And then there’ s Ang, part of the Lani community who immigrated over generations ago as servants and now mostly live in poverty on...

Anglet Sutonga, a former Steeplejack, must pose as a foreign princess to catch the thief who stole the government's plans for a secret weapon. Yet Ang has other things on her mind as well. Refugees from the north are trickling into the city, but an ambitious politician is proposing extreme measures to get rid of them, and when Ang discovers that one theft could spark a conflagration of conspiracy that will threaten the most vulnerable of Bar-Selehm,...