The artificial world of Confluence is home to thousands of alien races shaped and raised to consciousness by god-like descendants of humanity who long ago retreated from the Universe.

As a child, Yama was found on the breast of a dead woman in a white boat floating on the Great River. Raised by an obscure bureaucrat in an obscure town in the midst of a disused necropolis, he is destined to become a clerk in Confluence's vast theocratic civil service...until he comes to the attention of schemers, who have discovered his inborn ability to control the machines which maintain the fabric of the world.

All Yama wants to do is trace his bloodline, but the unravelling of the riddle of his mysterious birth will reveal whether he is to be the saviour of Confluence - or its nemesis.