The action of the story takes place after the events of the story “The Face in the Window”, eight months before the novel “The Bloody Covenant”. The gunpowder magician Taniel Two Shots fights in the partisan detachment of the “Tristan Ghosts” for the independence of Fatrasta from Kez. Lady Chancellor Lindeth, who has proclaimed herself the head of the Fatrasta Republic, gives the order to the “ghosts” to arrive in Plant, a small town on the route of the Kezan army.