Ortega knows he's in the dregs of society. As a gangly half-breed with a paranoid father in a wretched pirate-hive, he has to steal to live, dreaming of the day he can sail away. So when he finds a map that leads to a wellspring of limitless magic power, he believes his luck is about to change.
There's a problem, however. Only one copy of the map exists and it has a bloodtrail leading right to it. Noble mages have killed his father searching for the map, and now they're after Ortega. Without powers of his own, he's going to need some help to stay alive. Too bad, then, that his only options are two emotionally stunted mages: an undead knight whose sanity is on a time-limit, and the woman sent to eliminate the knight before he becomes a mindless beast.
Ortega knows the man who murdered his father is closing in on them and that his two companions have agendas of their own. Not only that, but the wellspring is tied to an army of the dead and that its magic comes at a cost. In a world of cutthroats and ghosts, Ortega will have to decide if the power is worth his humanity- if he can even survive the voyage.