Nepenthe is a sixteen-year-old orphan who was found and raised by the Royal Librarians of Raine. During the new queen's coronation, visitors and ambassadors from the Twelve Crowns (domains) that comprise Raine gauge Queen Tessera's strength. Bourne of Seale, a junior mage from the Floating School, meets Nepenthe in the library with a book inscribed with an unknown language, which seems to be written in configurations of plant thorns. Instead of delivering it to the Master Librarians, Nepenthe decides to transcribe it herself; she soon becomes obsessed with learning the book's outcome. On the surface, it appears to be an epic poem documenting the conquests of Axis and Kane, an emperor and "the Hooded One", three thousand years earlier.