This quartet picks up the lives of Sandry, Briar, Daja and Tris four years after the events of The Circle of Magic quartet. The four are out on their own for the first time. Briar has gone east with his teacher, Rosethorn, to study foreign plants and visit the First Circle temple in distant Gyongxe. Daja has gone north with her own teacher, Frotspine, to visit his friends in Namorn and learn metalwork from different masters. Tris and Niko have sailed so far south that it’s impossible to guess when messages will reach them. Sandry is alone in Emelan and living in the Duke’s Citadel after her uncle’s heart attack.

As masters of their respective fields at only eighteen, the Emelan mages are often greeted with incredulity and dislike. Isolated by strange surroundings or circumstances, each of them must confront one of the hardest responsibilities of fully accredited mages: teaching. Faced with magics so strange that there are no masters to help them (Magic Steps), or dealing with magical abilities brought on by physical trauma (Shatterglass), they would already have enough to manage. But the world is a dangerous place, and criminals don’t wait for heroes to have free time. Assasins, gangs, arsonists, murderers – the young teachers and their new students will have to work together to stop the threats that surround them.