"The stupid smirk died instantly on his lips, and all the colour drained from his face; his jaw dropped and his eyes grew wide with terror, as if seeing a ghost -- which, in a real sense, he was" It's 153 A.D., and with the often-brutal Conquest now a distant memory, the Roman province of Britannia is peaceful and prosperous. Faustina, a young artist from the town of Mancunium, with a talent for mosaics even more impressive than her flowing blonde hair, travels to another city to execute her latest commission for a wealthy gentleman client -- only to fall victim on the way to a savage assault. Faustina barely survives the assault and has appalling injuries to both body and mind. She will need every bit of her formidable strength of will and warrior spirit to battle her way back to health and discover the perpetrator of the ghastlyt evil done to her. However, all too soon she is once more in fear of her life! In this gripping tale of a young girl's struggle against near-impossible odds, what begins as an apparently straightforward quest for justice leads into some of the darkest corners of the second-century underworld. Caught up in a terrifying web of fraud, deceit, bribery, corruption and bloody murder, how can she possibly hope to prevail against an all powerful criminal mastermind who has a whole city in his evil thrall?