How can one man kill two other men in the same way in different places at the same time? What if, while investigating something, you discovered everything and realised that you knew it all along? These two seemingly unrelated questions lead Eddy Pain on a voyage of discovery in the land of Taja, a place with a long and complicated history that just won't seem to leave the present alone. Eddy is a foundling, a former militia man, and now a legal investigator, although strangely, he has never investigated where he really came from, assuming quite reasonably that he would not like the answer. But when the visit of a mysterious woman launches him into the case of two brutal murders, the investigation starts to reveal disturbing things to him that he realises he probably already knew. Along the way, he meets people who all seem to know more about the world and what goes on in it than him, or at least think they do. A less than politically correct judge, a militia captain with a penchant for haute couture, a museum curator surrounded by 'nice' items, a few task-specific gods who are actually just self-publicists with a particular skill of some sort, and an executioner with job satisfaction issues. Eddy's journey through Tajan history and its various dysfunctional institutions leads him to discover that his roots and the roots of the place in which he lives, works, and occasionally plays are inextricably linked.