Murdina Ritchie and Shackleton Fitz IV start their junior year at the Oymyakon Foreign Service Academy finally feeling like they belong in that world. They stand as equals among the other cadets. And the crushing load of schoolwork? Surprisingly manageable when you're not trying to solve a murder at the same time.
But the rumors of big changes in the political universe reach even the depths of the Academy. Distrust and secretiveness invade the minds of all of the cadets. Something dark and tumultuous hangs over all of them, and not just the ever-present storms of Oymyakon.
Then someone finds a body in the lower levels, and the accusations fly. A murder, but committed decades before. Long before the time of any of the cadets.
But not before the time of the instructors. In fact, exactly at the time Colonel Hansen was Cadet Hansen.
Can Ritchie and Fitz solve the coldest of cases and prove the colonel innocent? Or worse, guilty?