September, 1810. After a particularly close brush with death, Lucy Bluecrowne is facing an even worse prospect: leaving behind her father’s privateer, the Left-Handed Fate, for a new life ashore. Now Lucy will have to find a way to survive on land in the city of Nagspeake, though she’s certain only a ship of war can ever truly be home. Meanwhile, two peddlers called Trigemine and Blister have come to town in search of a conflagrationeer—a pyrotechnical prodigy with near-magical capabilities. When the peddlers identify Lucy’s precocious half-brother Liao as the one they’ve come to find—and take—it will require every fighting instinct she possesses to keep her family together.