Everyone in Oasis City worships the fennec fox as a sacred animal, except for the one woman forced to marry him. Enchantress Hiresha believes her fiance is possessed by nothing more divine than fleas, and she also objects to the wedding venue: the afterlife. Priests will trap her in an airless sarcophagus with the fox. She has only four days of engagement left to live. Her escape attempt ends in disaster, leaving her at the mercy of the city's vizier as well as her own pathological sleepiness. She wishes she could trust help from the Lord of the Feast, a past acquaintance with forbidden magic. He warns her that a sorcerer with even fewer scruples than himself may have arranged her marriage, to murder her. To find the truth before it's too late for her and the fox, she must slip off her silk gloves and break into pyramid tombs."