It matters not who you are born to but where you are made.

It is 1597 and Kit Skevy and Mariner Elgin have just robbed the wrong grave.

The two are unusual criminals in the pocket of a gang Lord named Will Twentyman, the  Grave Eorl of Southwark. Mariner is the best cutpurse around, a strange Calvinist girl who  dresses like a boy and is partner in crime to Kit Skevy, Southwark's best brawler who carries a secret: he cannot feel pain.

When caught out in their unfortunate larceny, Kit is kidnapped by the threatening  alchemist Lord Isherwood (a man who will stop at nothing to achieve his hopes for the Red  Lion elixir) and his studious son, Lazarus Isherwood, with whom Kit develops a complicated  intrigue. When Mariner enlists the help of a competing French alchemist, Lady Elody  Blackwater, Mariner and Kit are thrust into the shadowed, political world of Tudor alchemy