Every wet season the Leviathans emerge from the seabed and attempt to enter the Empire. Defending the people from the Leviathans is, in fact, why the Khanum started altering themselves using what they could extract from the Leviathans. The brilliant Khanum are long gone, except for the Emperor kept in stasis, but the bureaucracy and military live on thanks to those willing who volunteer for various alterations and serve their people despite the side effects, sterility, and shorter lifespans. Like most who sign up, Dinios Kol is doing it to support his family and he survived the difficult Engraving alteration which gives him perfect recall. But Din has a problem, he's Dyslexic in a world that doesn't know it exists, and can't find a position until Ana Dolabra takes him as her assistant. He's elated until he realizes she's insane. Ana is a brilliant investigator but also a total shut in who needs a talented Engraver to attend crime scenes and then regurgitate everything about it for her. It makes for an interesting symbiosis and their first murder case is a real doozy. An Engineer died when some kind of trees grew out of his chest in a wild burst twenty feet high. It looks like the contagion that springs up near a Leviathan's path but there should be other cases. Is it possible to poison someone with a contagion? As the wet season begins and the Leviathans challenge the sea wall, their case will take them to the Wall itself as a terrorist goes on a killing spree at the worst possible time. Who could possibly want to sabotage the Wall they all depend on?