A ragtag crew. A perilous quest. First, they need a boat. Next, they need to learn how to sail it. A pirate faces the gallows drop. A farmer is given a terrible ultimatum to save her daughter. An acolyte ascends to priestesshood only to find that a blessing really can be a curse. These unlikely bedfellows band together with an inscrutable pickpocket and a talking ottercat in pursuit of the most hopeless of causes: to sail into the Maelstrom – a raging whirlpool from which no one has ever escaped – and the mysterious treasure hidden within it. The quest will test their fragile allegiance to its limits, but there is more at stake here than getting rich: the magic of the world is in peril, and the barrier between life and death has never been so thin.