Patience needs to speak to her father honestly for the first time, something that’s easily accomplished now that he is dead and his head is preserved so that his wisdom can be called upon by future rulers. But as Patience learns the truth about who she is and what her father had intended for her, she realizes that she must get out of the city before she is eliminated by Oruc the usurper. And as Patience makes her way out of the city and looks for her servant Angel, she feels the urge of the “Cranning Call” – a strange psychic beacon that has led many to vanish into the wilderness forever…