"It’s not every day a firefight occurs in the garden of the American embassy in Beijing, and once the perpetrators are identified as Ivory Tower agents, the Salt Mine is on the phone. Leader dispatches Aaron Haddock–code name Stigma–to the scene and he finds it only gets weirder from there as clues lead him to an international smuggling ring and eventually out of the mortal world entirely. Everything may be for sale in Duncith, the fabled Magh Meall city of rogues, including lives, but Stigma’s determined not to be on the auctioning block."