Queen Verity is queen only because her mother has said she has to be. She agrees because, after all, somebody has to liberate the dragons who have long toiled in the boiler room bowels of the city. Now that they are free, nobody has any idea what to do with them or how to feed them.

Everyone is used to dragons being docile cogs in the machinery of industry, tamed into tranquility by food treated with a hypnotic tranquilizer, now largely destroyed, leaving a lot of huge hungry beasts roving the capital city of Queenston. Verity needs to act fast, before the dragons remember what dragons once did to feed themselves.

The crown has scarcely mussed her hair before her political enemies have her shanghaied and sold to an outward bound vessel, leaving the kingdom to the random mercies of her erstwhile assistant, Malady Hyde.