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While trying to help her financially destitute family, twelve-year-old Leyla ends up on a slave ship bound for Istanbul, then in the beautiful Topkapi Palace, where she discovers that life in the sheltered world of the palace harem follows its own rigid rules and rhythms and offers her unexpected opportunities during Turkey's brief Tulip Period of the 1720's.

Bearing an uncanny resemblance to the now-blind displaced King of the Scots, former gladiator and slave Phaedrus impersonates the Horse Lord to regain control of the Scottish kingdom from the Picts.

"Kamet, a secretary and slave to his Mede master, has the ambition and the means to become one of the most powerful people in the Empire.