Sarantium is the most greatest city in the known world. But few can imagine traveling a great distance so to say someone is sailing to Sarantium means they are making a great change and perhaps completely abandoning the life they knew. The mosaicist Crispin is starting that journey both literally and figuratively. He's drifting through life since losing his family in a plague when he receives a commission from the Sarantine Emperor to decorate the ceiling of the great chapel he's having built. This ordinary artist sets out on a journey that will travel through lands steeped in ancient myths and the dangerous heights of imperial politics before finding himself in an artistic work that should be known throughout the known world.