While liberating a notorious thief from prison, Ferius Parfax encounters an inmate named Chedran, one of the last living members of her people, the Mahdek. Ferius agrees to help him and the Mahdek remnant reach a mystical island where they can live free from persecution. Chedran convinces the Mahdek elders that this refuge is their last chance to repopulate their civilization so they can one day retake their homeland, and so the elders rule that all Mahdek must remain on the island to bear and raise children.

Now Ferius has to decide what debt she owes the society into which she was born before she's trapped on the island forever, and Chedran and the elders lead her people towards a future of tyranny and war.