Foster and Parks find themselves cast apart as the first reverberations of a war for the kingdom reach the tiny South Polar island of Drummoc. Wounded within an inch of his life and betrayed by an ally, Parks finds himself in the position of a sensational fugitive, loved and loathed in equal portion. His unearned reputation and survival now rest on the narrow shoulders of low friends. Parks will have to brave a violent storm of sled dogs, bounty hunters, and ghosts who rise from the mines if he means to stand for himself once more.

Meanwhile, Foster rides the waves north, an infiltrator on a ship of incomprehensible cutthroats that he must stop at all costs. He soon learns that in a sea of perils, the greatest danger to a crew is the divide among the benches. With the ice closing in around them, they race for their lives to the one place that will make them all rich, unless Foster can turn the dangers in his favor and sink their dreams without going down with the ship. Trapped beneath a looming mutiny and hunted by elite killers of the sea, he despairs to remember his mission within a mission: home, at all costs, even if he has to go alone.