To track down the thieves, an elite band of hand-picked warriors is assembled. Among them are friends Awa and Will. Awa, the studious daughter of a noble family from West Africa, once a slave but now a whirling force with a scimitar, and Will, snatched as a child from his home in London at the age of 5, is now 16 and a galley salve on a Moroccan warship.  Escaping that fate to join the Rüzgar turns him into a man.

From the roofs of Ottoman Istanbul, along the canals of Venice and all the way to the court of Elizabeth I.