When Prince Alanai rejects the offer of help from Jiana, and expert swordswoman, she decides to go on her own quest

Jiana, hero for hire, managed to accomplish a lot on her last adventure. Indeed more than all of the heroes of Bay-bay and its boy-prince could manage. But life goes on after the adventure is over, and Jiana decides she needs something to give her life direction: she'll take on a new apprentice, and make a perfectly well-adjusted hero out of this one (since her last apprentice fell in with some pretty unsavory company). But Jiana couldn't pick just anyone: she had to choose a crippled slave girl. And everyone knows you can't free a slave—slaves have to free themselves. So Jiana has a friend sell her into slavery too, so that she can teach this girl how to become a hero from the bottom up. For her first lesson, Jiana must free herself.