The third book in the Culture series, which takes place approximately seven hundred years after the end of the Culture-Idiran conflict. The victorious Culture carries out progressor missions on planets that are less technically and socially developed. But there are tasks that even the most pragmatic citizen of the Culture disdains to carry out. For such cases, there are off-world mercenaries of Special Circumstances. The best of them is Sheradenin Zakalwe, who has only one terrible enemy - his own past.