Imre is a Dancer of the White Pavilion. As a follower of Aurelia, the Whore, one of the seven companions who accompanied la Relojero (the clock maker) to Tierra Mej?r, she is also a courtesan in training. When Imre falls when performing the Dance of a Thousand Steps, a dance that has been performed every year for the past five hundred years, she believes she has disrupted the will of the Pattern and is now responsible for the disasters befalling...