Oh ye imps of sour water, not Tzakende, the city with more gods than rats or Ngarra where even the little children carry knives. Priests or knives, priests or knives...which would it be?

Layla led a free life as a gem thief, her choice of the two careers open to a woman who'd left her husband, but she broke the cardinal rule of her trade: she stole from a temple. While the huge emerald netted her a tidy profit, it also attracted the attention of the Goddess of Mirth and her Priestess. And though Layla appreciated some of the Goddess' gifts—coins for one— she was less pleased with the overlarge and temperamental donkey who appeared in her upstairs room.

What was a woman to do? It was time to make a decision, time to leave dusty Charransar on the edge of the Wastes and strike out into the unknown, hoping to avoid the divine attention of the God she had robbed and the Goddess who seemed determined, in her own peculiar way, to reward Layla.