Calcutta 1837. The East India Company rules India -- or most of it -- and its most notorious and celebrated son, Scottish author Xavier Mountstuart, has gone missing. William Avery, a down-at-heel junior officer in the Company's army, is sent to find him, in the unlikely company of the enigmatic and uncouth Jeremiah Blake. A more mismatched duo couldn't be imagined, but they must bury their differences as they are caught up in a search that turns up too many unanswered questions and seems bound to end in failure. Avery will have to fight for his very life, and in defence of a truth he will wish he had never learned.