A young diplomat and his wife—an heiress of a murdered pasha—find themselves drawn into a magical intrigue in Istanbul. Diplomatic immunity will not be a shield: only friends willing to stake their own lives will help them escape the trap.
Viscount d’Offoua, together with his wife, goes to Istanbul to take up the post of First Secretary at the Gallic embassy in the Ottoman Empire. For a young diplomat, this is an honor that, it would seem, holds no serious trials. If not for one circumstance: his wife is the only lawful heir of the Tunisian pasha, who was once executed by order of the previous sultan. The very fact of her existence interferes with the new pasha and his influential patron in the capital. Their only support is diplomatic immunity, but how effective is it in a magical world so much like our seventeenth century? Not very—especially if their homeland does not remember them in time, the people it has thrown into the grinding gears of a merciless game. And if, nearby, there aren’t those willing to risk their own lives to save them.