Alpha Station, orbiting the world of the alien atevi, has taken aboard five thousand human refugees from a destroyed station in a distant sector of space.  With supplies and housing stretched to the breaking point, the refugees must be relocated down to the planet, and soon.  But not to the atevi mainland: rather to the territory reserved for humans, the island of Mospheira.

Tabini-aiji, the powerful political head of the atevi, tasks his brilliant human diplomat, Bren Cameron, to negotiate with the Mospheiran government.  In the decades Bren has served Tabini, he has become enmeshed in the atevi world in a way no human ever has before and become close to Tabini's young son and heir, Cajieri, the first atevi child ever to grow up in the presence of a human.  Bren is to inform the president of Mospheira that he is no longer his diplomat, that Mospheira must take in the refugees from Alpha, and that there is no other acceptable solution.

But the Mospheirans are not enthusiastic about welcoming these immigrants from space, for the Alpha Station refugees represent a political faction that the people of Mospheira broke from two centuries ago.

While Bren travels to Mospheira, Tabini sends Cajieri to the country to visit his uncle Tatiseigi a political gesture to shore up an old man and give the boy a well-earned vacation from the formality of the atevi court.  Tatiseigi's neighbors, however, are determined to end an old feud to their own satisfaction.... and Cajieri's presence is just the excuse they need.