Raj and Russia. In the now long-destroyed United States, several Californian theocratic city states enjoy some independence by playing the Raj off against Dai-Nippon, and regions near the Gulf of Mexico are inhabited by the Seven Tribes, relatively civilized peoples who are loosely allied with the Raj. Other semi-civilised powers in North America include the Kaijun, Cherokee, Kumanch, and Mehk peoples, as well as a small Mormon enclave near the Great Salt Lake. Plot The story takes place in the year 2025, in a world where the British Empire, now centered in India, remains the dominant world power. A series of environmental disasters in the 1870s has stopped the advancement of technology and forced the great empires to move south. Athelstane King, a cavalry officer in the Peshawar Lancers, and his friend, Sikh Daffadar Narayan Singh, are ordered to go on medical leave after being wounded in battle. Russian agent Vladimir Obromovich Ignatieff and psychic Sister Yasmini are on their way into the British Raj to kill both King and his sister, Cassandra, a brilliant scientist. Ignatieff, disguised as an impious Muslim, makes a contract with Bengali separatists to kill Cassandra. After escaping one attempt on his life, King decides to leave for Oxford in disguise, but on the train, he is nearly killed again by the Pashtun assassin Ibrahim Khan. When King confronts Khan over who hired him, he makes the connection that a Russian has been sending the assassins. Khan, upon hearing this, swears vengeance at being misled and agrees to follow King. King returns home, where Singh's father, Ranjit, tells King the truth behind his father's death. King's mother sends him to Delhi to find Elias bar-Binyamin, a Jewish financier who owes the King family a favor, to gain further information. To ensure Cassandra's safety, King's friend Sir Manfred Warburton arranges for her to be hired by the royal palace as tutor to King-Emperor John II's daughter, Princess Sita. While there, Cassandra meets Sita's brother, Prince Charles, and finds herself interested in him. In Delhi, on his way to the bar-Binyamin residence, King is attacked by assassins and the fight spills over into Warburton's residence. Meanwhile, Warburton has been critically injured by Ignatieff and a traitorous British agent, Richard Allenby. Ignatieff and Allenby escape, and Allenby summons the police. In order to help his friends escape, Narayan Singh stays behind to face the police. Allenby orders Singh