Lucien de Fontein has grown up different. One of the mysterious and misshapen Orfano who appear around the Kingdom of Landfall, he is a talented fighter yet constantly lonely, tormented by his deformity, and well aware that he is a mere pawn in a political game.
Ruled by an insane King and the venomous Majordomo, his is a world where corruption is commonplace, but it's only when Lucien discovers the plight of the "insane" women kept in the so-called Sanatoria that he realises how deeply rooted the day-to-day decay is.
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To paraphrase A. A. Milne, creator of Winnie the Pooh—and Tigger too!—the things that make us different are the very things that make us us.
But when you're different—and who isn't?—fitting in is a difficult thing. It's far harder, however, for the likes of Lucien de Fontein, a young man who has no ears, I fear, and must display his most significant difference every day, come what may.
There are others like Lucien. Other Orfano, which is to say "witchlings [...] whose deformities were an open secret among the subjects of Demesne in spite of the Orfano's attempts to appear normal." (p.10) Lucien has long hair to hide the gory holes on his head, but no matter how hard he tries to fit in with his fellows, they reject him repeatedly. Evidently, "the life of an Orfano was a lonely one," (p.17) if not without its privileges:
"Years of schooling. Almost daily education in blade and biology, Classics and chemistry, philosophy and physics, art, and very rarely, assassination. He had been given the best of everything in Demesne as set down by the King's edict, even when he'd not wanted it, which had been often. Now he would be bereft of everything; all thanks to Giancarlo." (p.43)Giancarlo is Lucien's Superiore, an instructor of sorts who can't stand the sight of our Orfano... who has gone out of his way to break him at every stage. So far, Lucien has held fast in the face of Giancarlo's cruelty, but everything comes to a head during his final Testing: the emboldening moment when he is to trade his paltry porcelain blade for real steel, and indeed the scene with which Den Patrick's debut begins. But the bastard master pushes his intemperate apprentice too far, and Lucien's response—to attack Giancarlo rather than the innocent he is to kill—leads to his exile from Demesne.