The Hunt for the Blue Orchid Thief: First in the Hirconian Chronicles

The Hunt for the Blue Orchid Thief is a multifaceted mystery set in the Renaissance-era world of Hirconia in the city of Fascio, an Italianate city, the capital of the Principality of Tyria, a now independent former Polydorian colony on the western coast of Hirconia. In Tyria three political and economic factions divide the great merchant and landed houses into urban and rural elites struggling, intriguing, and quarreling for political and economic power. Relations between them have deteriorated to the point where the next step is renewed violence. Civil war is only a single spark away. Each of the merchant houses is engaged in ferocious competition, including stealing each other's trade secrets. Exploiting this free-for-all are the city's mystery thieves; anonymous men and women capable of extraordinary feats of athleticism, infiltration, legerdemain, and general derring-do: they are city's the most valued market commodity. Yet the overstretched investigators of the Civil Guard tell stories of a master thief who strikes from the shadows, which no guard can repel, no lock foil, and who traffics in the black arts to achieve the impossible. All that is known to them is a whispered name — The Shade.