 Her employment agency finds her a job as captain of the private yacht "Sweet Delight" for a rich Family member, Lady Cecelia.The "Sweet Delight"'s previous captain, the sinister Captain Olin, had incurred Cecelia's wrath by failing to promptly leave the capital (where Cecelia had been to attend the Grand Council of the Familias) so she could arrive on Sirialis, Lord Thornbuckle's private estate-planet, in time for the beginning of the fox hunting season; this delay saddled her with some obstreperous relatives who are in disgrace and are sent aboard her yacht as being a convenient mobile exile.Heris discovers to her dismay that the same agency that had recommended her to Cecelia had also foisted an unrelieved stream of incompetent, regenerate, and outright criminal personnel on her ship, and that her new command was not merely overly luxurious and inefficient, it was an outright deathtrap.