During the war, many small villages were simply not worth fighting over. What would the ponies want with a small village of pottery makers, like Zoco? The greatest threat to Zoco came not from the ponies but from their own kind, a pair of corrupt ex-spies looking to extort them. The former [i]frumentarii[/i] killed the town's only defender and promised they would return for whatever they wanted. But will a member of the new order of spies -- the [i]agentes in rebus[/i] -- turn out to be any less corrupt?