Danue was eighteen when the pirates came to Yoldshome. He ran. His family didn't.
What Lord Xerxes Tranton's factory does to captured men takes hours and cannot be undone. It rewrites the body, edits the memory, and installs a devotion the subject cannot tell from her own. The woman who steps off the line is called Vaelisya. She is beautiful, obedient, and grateful-and she has been given to a warlord as the fourth jewel, the Sapphire, in his collection.
The other three are not what the pirate lord sees. The Amethyst is a scientist studying the machine that made her. The Emerald is a rim world girl the process barely touched. And the Ruby was, until the factory, the Colonel-in-Chief of the 177th Prevost Cavalry, "The Prince's Own Horse."
They have no weapons, no allies, and no way off the ship. What they have is a tutor, hours of practice a day, and a discipline the factory never thought to remove.