Officer 349 has finished her rook year. Her next assignment should have begun with an ordinary personnel placement. Instead, Obregón Menéndez gives her an incomplete identity and puts her beside Senior Marko Damius, a veteran Security officer who knows the people, favors, shortcuts, and private arrangements of District Six. Protected Vanguard Guide research is leaving controlled channels. Damius may be involved. 349’s job is to ride beside him, do the work of his rook, and discover what she can prove without ever letting him know why she is there. That assignment is only the beginning. Raven’s Head is an isolated mining installation where the cold can kill an unprotected person, Security officers collect money while they patrol, company rules bend around production, and everybody seems to know which laws are actually enforced. 349 arrives as another young Security officer assigned to a miserable frontier post. Her real assignment is known to very few people. A man connected to the local smuggling network is already dead. Someone will take his place. 349 has to find out who. She works patrols through snow and industrial yards, learns who pays whom, watches officers who have made corruption part of their ordinary work, and begins assembling the people and routes that keep Raven’s Head functioning. The deeper she goes, the less certain it becomes that her employer wants the installation cleaned up. Menéndez wants the network identified. She has never promised 349 what will happen when it is.
