subservient again. Rigg Rigg lives with his father, trapping animals and being educated extensively for purposes unknown. One day Rigg finds his father dying, apparently impaled by a fallen tree. As he dies, he tells Rigg to go to the ancient city of Aressa Sessamo and find his sister Param and mother, and that the innkeeper Nox has incredibly valuable jewels for him that he will need on his journey. After evading a band of pursuers after being falsely accused of murder, he finds Nox and gets the jewels and some money. Rigg heads out of the city, but his childhood friend Umbo follows and demands to join him. During the journey to Aressa Sessamo, the pair learn that with Rigg's pathfinding skills and Umbo's ability to slow the perception of time, they can interact with the people of the past by focusing on specific points on their paths. Umbo is affected by the changes they make (for instance, when the time travelers accidentally create legends after being seen in the past, he remembers them), but Rigg is not, remembering things as they were before the past was altered. After coming to Leaky's Landing, a small river town, they meet a former soldier by the name of Loaf. He agrees to take the boys to a city called O to sell one of the jewels for money. The city is along the way to their final destination so they agree. When the trio reaches O, they are arrested by General Citizen of the People's Republic. Rigg is accused of impersonating the lost prince Rigg Sessamakesh. Rigg infers from this that he actually is the prince Rigg, and was stolen at birth by the man he called his father, for purposes yet unknown. They are taken on a boat to Aressa Sessamo, but Umbo and Loaf are able to escape back to Leaky's Landing so Umbo can practice his ability to travel through time. The pair soon returns to O. Upon reaching Aressa Sessamo, Rigg meets his mother and sister for the first time. It is also revealed that the man that died under the tree, his mentor, was not his real father and his actual father is also dead. He finds that his sister, Param, has the ability to skip through time, making time pass much more slowly for her. While she is doing this she turns invisible, but she