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Indrajit Twang is the 427th epic poet of his people, the only person alive to carry their entire epic history and mythology in his head. His people are dwindling in number, and if he can't find a successor in the great city of Kish, their story will disappear with them.

Fix grew up a foundling on the ancient streets of Kish and is making his living as a mercenary. The woman he loves married someone else, and Fix has turned to buying and selling risk on the black market - but is he trying to impress her, or prove something to himself?

Indrajit and Fix have been hired by a powerful risk-merchant to protect the life of opera star Ilsa without Peer for the duration of a risk contract he's taken on. When an attempt is made on Ilsa's life, Indrajit and Fix find themselves hunted by multiple mercenary squads and targeted by some of the most powerful men in Kish. Will they be able to save themselves, not to mention protect Ilsa, in the Palace of Shadow and Joy?

Indrajit and Fix are the founding partners of the Protagonists, a jobber company in Kish. Since the seven great families of Kish farm out all tasks they and the city need doing, a jobber might one day unblock a well; the next, man a tollgate for the fair; and on the third, hunt down a murderer on the loose, all in a corrupt old city that isn't so much governed as kept barely in bounds.

Indrajit is a poet of a dying race, looking for his successor. Fix is a failed monk, pining for his lost love. They're swordsmen and thinkers, heroes in their hearts and in their deeds. They also recover stolen documents, unravel financial fraud, escort shipwrecked diplomats, and hunt in the ruins beneath the city for missing academics. Meanwhile, the criminals they investigate, rival jobbers, sorcerers, spies, assassins, and other mysterious parties get more and more reason to want the Protagonists dead.

Welcome to Kish.

Sometimes, the real enemies are the friends we make along the way.

An encounter with an old friend becomes tragically fatal, and Indrajit and Fix set out on a high-stakes, high-adrenaline quest across the ancient city of Kish to bring their friend back to life. At each step, the complications and the enemies alike pile up. The mysterious necromancers, the Vin Dalu priests, bind the heroes on an errand that sends them shuttling from one thieves' guild to the next, pitting Indrajit and Fix against the deadly House of Knives and embroiling them in a plot by the giant, wasplike Kattak to take dire revenge on Kish and all its great houses.

Can the heroes save their friend? Can Indrajit and Fix survive? Will Kish itself fall?