Apprentice portraitist Rhennthyl begins training as a covert operative after he discovers that he has the magical ability called Imaging. When his martial training kicks into high gear though, an unknown assassin tries to kill him.

Khari is the best cooper in Brysta, one of the major cities in Nordia, and his life as been as ordered and dependable as his barrels. His trouble begins when he saves a neighbor's daughter from the violent advances of two upper-class men. Then he rescues an actual rape victim he finds unconscious in an alley, a blackstaffer, a young expatriate mage, from Recluce, and that makes his wife very uneasy. The culprit in both cases turns out to have been...