In this seventh book in the Samurai Detective series adopted samurai Seikei goes to the shoguns palace to see a demonstration of European medicine Instead he witnesses a murder when one of the foreigners dies of poisoning Another foreigner wants to take away the young nephew of the dead man but the boy is reluctant He does not speak Japanese so to keep him out of harms way Seikeis foster father tells Seikei to take the boy to the foreigners base at Nagasaki What seems like s simple task soon turns into a dangerous one for many people seem to want the boy for their own peculiar purposes Seikei has to use all his ingenuity and daring to carry out his mission and find the murderer as well