Locke Lamora, the erstwhile Thorn of Camorr, and Jean Tannen have fled their home city and the wreckage of their lives. But they can’t run forever, and after escaping Camorr they decide to head for the richest and most difficult target on the horizon-- the city-state of Tal Verrar. And the Sinspire.

The Sinspire is the ultimate gambling house . . . exclusive, luxurious, and fiendishly guarded. No thief has ever survived an attempt to rob it. Naturally, Locke plans to take it for a fortune, in his biggest gamble yet.

But this perfect crime may have to wait.

Someone else in Tal Verrar wants the Gentlemen Bastards’ expertise, and they’re not gentle in compelling Locke and Jean to devote their talents to an even more unlikely and suicidal proposition-- masquerading as pirates on the high seas. Fine work for a pair of landlubbing thieves barely able to tell one end of a ship from the other!

Locke and Jean find their abiding friendship tested to its very limits in this strange new world of lurching wooden decks, brutal ship-to-ship action, and feuding pirate captains. But not even their sojourn as buccaneers can keep the Gentlemen Bastards from their much-desired reckoning with all the powers that have conspired to interrupt their lives, including the last people in the world any sane person would want to offend... the Bondsmagi of Karthain.