The foundation of an empire once rested on the secret language of jin-shei and its customs. Connecting women from every walk of life, it empowered everyone who swore the oath. But four hundred years after that empire flourished, things in the land of Syai have changed beyond recognition. Amais is a child of two worlds, born in a country far away from her ancestral land. She is taught the women's language by her grandmother - but when circumstances take her back to Syai, she finds a vastly different world from the one she has always imagined. Amais determines to reinvent the women's country and bring back the secrets of jin-shei. But just as her crusade begins, she is caught up in a storm of history - the whirlwind of the Golden Rising, a people's revolution that is fated to destroy much that was once valuable, gracious and beautiful - including the last remnants of the treasure Amais has sworn to restore to the world.