Days after being stripped of his inheritance, Cormac Veyne, eldest son of the king of Avelune, has no land, no annuity and no vote in council, and his wife Sabine holds a signed annulment petition. When Bellacourt comes to arbitrate three harbors, he wins the first two rounds with an elegy for the drowned and a refusal to swear a false oath, then is forced into three bouts whose price is the harbors, his marriage and his own person. He cannot hold a sword, so in seven nights behind a locked workshop door he builds the first Thunderlock. He does not expect the man behind the princess to be a Vardane prince choosing her husband, or that winning costs a prince's life and buys a war. His restoration as heir rests on one condition: clean up Rookhaven, where three inspectors have died and grain ships vanish. He goes in as a merchant, is jailed, whipped, forced to sign a false confession, and turns his shackles into evidence at a public hearing. Then his brother closes the banquet doors.
