The Camarilla lost much ground along the East Coast in its recent war with the Sabbat. But the sect claimed one of the greatest prizes in the world control of New York City. Of course, the Camarilla was never entirely absent from the city, but in recent years no clan held so firmly there, among the enemy, as did the Tremere. Now the story of their covert activities and greatest victory is told. A fledgling prince restlessly pacing the battlements. A Tremere novice walking the razorwire tightrope. In the wake of the Camarilla liberation of New York, the real battle is just beginning. A floodtide of refugees, immigrants, opportunists, prospectors, pariahs, carpetbaggers, Anarchs, pioneers and outlaws washes over the city—each of the newcomers intent on carving out his own piece of the blood-red Big Apple. Everyone has a dream, or at least a scheme. Antigone Baines thinks of herself as the veteran of many lifetimes. There is a trick to picking your way along the Widow's Walk—the treacherous precipice between the quick and the dead—and dancing away again, unscathed. A magic of names. Among the halls of the Chantry of Five Boroughs, Antigone is usually called Novicia in accordance with her rank in the steel-jawed hierarchy that she has come to know as the Tremere Pyramid. Sometimes, in scornful whispers, they call her Jackal, because that is her Pyramid security. Like Anubis, the laughing, jackal-headed, warden of the dead, Antigone keeps careful guard over the house of the undying. She cannot, however, anticipate that her job is about to become rather more complicated.

Exiled from the communion of the Tremere Pyramid, Antigone Baines sheds the robes of her novitiate like a second and ill-fitting skin. In their place, she dons the Widow's Weeds-the formal mourning clothes, symbol of her solitary vigil over the restless dead. Alone she must unravel the riddle of the Conventicle, discover the identity of the prince's would-be assassin, and carve out her own place along the treacherous precipice between the worlds of the quick and the dead. Meanwhile, within the shelter of the Chantry of Five Boroughs, Regent Aisling Sturbridge faces the fight of her unlife-a fight all the more deadly for the fact that her adversary is the very order that she is pledged to uphold. Faced with determined Inquisitors from the Fatherhouse in Vienna, Sturbridge finds herself standing trial for the Sins of the Father.

The Camarilla lost much ground in its recent war with the Sabbat, which raged along the East Coast of the United States. The Camarilla gained one of the greatest prizes in the world, however—control of New York City. The Camarilla was never entirely absent from the city, but no other clan held out so strongly against the Sabbat as did the Tremere. This is their story.