One good deed will change the lives of Sorrel and Gwynn Marchand. They were supposed to have lived in an age of civility and mundanity under the flag of the Society of Worlds, an inter-planetary government. However, in the wilds of Undiscovered Space, war blooms between the Society's greatest trading partners, bringing to Society Worlds the whimsy and horror that lurks in between the stars. The girls take in a refugee, and in the process become entangled in a battle between good and evil that is as primeval as the stars.