Burkhayden is a subject colony, leased by the Bench to a Dolgorukij familial corporation for economic exploitation. When a Nurail woman from the service house is brutally raped and beaten, Andrej Koscuisko –- Ship's Inquisitor on board the Jurisdiction Fleet Ship Ragnarok –- is called upon to render services under contract.

One of Koscuisko's bond-involuntary Security slaves recognizes the tortured woman. And murder is done in port Burkhayden. The only way Andrej can protect a man he loves is to condemn a guiltless man to atrocious torment. Will he commit the ultimate crime?

Before one fateful night is out Andrej Koscuisko will put himself under sentence of death by doing what he realizes at last he should have done from the beginning.

And Port Burkhayden will burn.

At the publisher's request, this title is sold without DRM (Digital Rights Management).

The series remains a mix of compelling storytelling, frighteningly intense depictions of evil, sentimental portraits of loyalty and courage, and some strangely reimagined conventions and stereotypes. Matthews keeps returning to the possibility of right action in a hideously wrong world, of decency struggling to assert itself despite the threat of pain and death, of the durability of compassion and respect.
-Russell Letson, Locus

[Matthews] brilliantly uses science fiction's freedom of creation to make a world in which she can explore deep moral conflicts.
-Denver Post

Matthews' Jurisdiction novels are deeply focused on character, and intensely interested in anguish, the dynamics of absolute power, and the tension between conflicting – I hesitate to say "moral," but perhaps "dutiful" will do – imperatives. I have yet to read science fiction by another author that takes these themes from a similar angle."
-Liz Bourke, columnist at Tor.com