In the cosmopolitan world of seventeenth-century Madrid, with its posh theaters and gleaming palaces, Captain Alatriste and his protégé, Íñigo, become unwilling participants in a court conspiracy that could lead them both to the gallows.

The fifth novel in the adventures of Captain Alatriste, a seventeenth-century swashbuckler and a twenty-first-century literary phenomenon(Entertainment Weekly). In the cosmopolitan world of seventeenth-century Madrid, Captain Alatriste and his protégé Íñigo are fish out of water. But the king is determined to keep Alatriste on retainer - regardless of whether his "employment" brings the captain uncomfortably close to old enemies. Alatriste begins...

Gear up for swashbuckling adventure in the second "riveting"* historical thriller in the internationally acclaimed Captain Alatriste series. The fearless Alatriste is hired to infiltrate a convent and rescue a young girl forced to serve as a powerful priest's concubine. The girl's father is barred from legal recourse as the priest threatens to reveal that the man's family is "not of pure blood" and is, in fact, of Jewish descent-which will all but...