Synopsis: Mindwiping or death would be the fate for Shadith if she could not find a way to escape the Institute ship and the captors who had put a sudden stop to her own plans to end the highly lucrative operations of Ginbiryol Seyirshi, master filmmaker and orchestrator of the death of worlds. But though she was truly on her own - her partner Kikun having evaded the trap into which Shadith had fallen - Shadith was not without her resources. So she created a controlled, temporary mindwipe, hiding her very identity so thoroughly that even she herself no longer knew who she was. Only a direct meeting with Kikun would serve as a cue to reawaken her memories of her past. Yet though she could fool her current captors, Ginbiryol Seyirshi was not so easily deceived. He, too, had become a prisoner of the Institute which had capture Shadrith, but his new masters had a very different fate in mind for him. And even as Shadrith was sold as Contract Labor to a world on the verge of revolution, Seyirshi was given and assignment he could not refuse, to irrevocably destroy the defenses of yet another planet and subjugate a people with powers never before encountered by the Institute. What the agents of the Institute could not foresse was that by their actions they were about to make sworn enemies into temporary allies in a battle that would not end until Shadrith, Kikun, and Seyirshi were all dead, or the Institute itself was overthrown.... (from the back cover of the DAW Books first edition)