All that stands between Alessa Li and freedom from Hellebore Technical Institute for the Ambitiously Gifted is a single carnage-filled rite of passage, or as the unspeakable teachers call it, dinner.
A decrepit fleet sails from Germany to play its role in a futile war, crewed by sailors who seem more eager to kill each other than the perfidious Australians.
An arduous journey in a prince's entourage offers a courier escape from immediate, judicial danger, at the cost of an entirely different assortment of dangers.