Krea is seven years old and a slave. With a ragged troupe of tumblers and jugglers, she travels from town to town in Folger, now a part of the kingdom of Bracken. Every day of the year she is walking or working, and she is always lonely. Then, as winter takes hold of Folger, the troupe realizes that an old woman is haunting their footsteps, and that she has her eye on Krea. In the last book of the Bracken Trilogy, the wise woman returns in a time when war is looming, slavery is legal, and the league of robbers is more powerful than ever.