Told from a first-person perspective, the novel opens with its protagonist and narrator, Sage, fleeing from the town marketplace. A butcher is chasing him. With an enormous roast tucked under his arm (a roast that he has stolen), Sage runs toward Mrs. Turbeldy’s Orphanage for Disadvantaged Boys, the place Sage calls home, struggling because “it happens to be very difficult to hold a chunk of raw meat while running. More slippery than I’d anticipated” (1). However, before Sage can make it to the safety of the orphanage, the butcher intercepts Sage, knocking him to the ground.

As the butcher delivers a series of swift kicks to Sage’s back, another man—a mysterious figure, one that Sage does not recognize by voice—appears and offers a sum of fifty garlins as payment if the butcher will turn the boy over to him. The butcher agrees. The man lifts Sage, who is still holding the roast, to his feet, and Sage gets a look at the man: “His [eyes] [are] dark brown and more tightly focused than [I’ve] ever seen before [...] He [looks] to be somewhere in his forties and dresse[s] in the fine clothes of the upper class” (3).