The people of Oldenburg hate the new district governor, nicknamed the Iron Colonel. They say that August von Moorungen sold his heart to the devil, and now a mechanism beating in the governor’s chest knows neither love nor mercy.
Maya the clockmaker must either marry an unpleasant moneylender or be forever deprived of her home. But there is a third path: accept a strange offer from von Moorungen and live for a year in his castle, about which there are even more dreadful rumors than about its owner. Maya encounters traps and dangers; secrets from the past surround her—secrets whose solution will determine the well-being of her hometown as well as the life of the governor—and her own life too.