Kiela, a librarian who has spent eleven years sequestered among the spellbook stacks of the Great Library of Alyssium, is shaken from her routine when revolutionaries—who have already overthrown the emperor—storm the library and set it ablaze. Her sentient spider-plant assistant Caz urges her to flee, reporting that the front doors have been battered down, Kinney Hall is being ransacked, and the North Reading Room is on fire.

Kiela hastily dumps a half-filled fifth crate of spellbooks into a lift and, together with Caz, descends to the canal-level boat slips. She loads the crates onto a small library sailboat she is not technically authorized to take, rationalizing the act as preserving the collection rather than theft. They pole through the burning city's canals, witnessing corpses, screams, and devastation, before raising the silver sails and escaping into the open sea.

As dawn breaks, Kiela realizes she has nowhere to go. She has no family, no friends, and no remaining ties in Alyssium—she had not spoken to anyone but Caz in three weeks. Her coins will not stretch far, and living on the boat is unsustainable. She resolves to look forward rather than back.

Spotting a herd of merhorses, Kiela suddenly remembers Caltrey, the tiny, remote northern island where she was born before her parents moved her to the capital and later died. She believes she may have inherited a small cottage there. With no better option, she and the anxious, plant-eating-fearing Caz set a course north, carrying their stolen crates of spellbooks toward her forgotten past.