Trudi Canavan

Living among the Sachakan rebels, Lorkin does his best to learn about their unique magic. But the Traitors are reluctant to trade their secrets for the Healing they so desperately want. Meanwhile, Sonea searches for the rogue, knowing that Cery cannot avoid assassination forever. The rogue's influence over the city's underworld, however, is far greater than she feared. And in the University, two female novices are about to remind the Guild that...

"Even if a magician's powers surface of their own accord, he will soon be dead if he does not gain the knowledge of how to control them." Alone among all the novices in the Magicians' Guild, only Sonea comes from lowly beginnings. Yet she has won powerful allies -- including Lord Dannyl, newly promoted to Guild Ambassador. But Dannyl must now depart for the Elyne court, leaving Sonea at the mercy of the lies and malicious rumors her enemies are busy...

Living among the Sachakan rebels, Lorkin does his best to learn about their unique magic. But the Traitors are reluctant to trade their secrets for the Healing they so desperately want. Meanwhile, Sonea searches for the rogue, knowing that Cery cannot avoid assassination forever. The rogue's influence over the city's underworld, however, is far greater than she feared. And in the University, two female novices are about to remind the Guild that...

When the mages if Imardin gather for their yearly purge of the city's undesirables, they are dismayed to encounter a vagrant girl capable of penetrating their magical shields, so they decide that they must teach her to control her extraordinary power.

The first book in the Traitor Spy trilogy. Sonea, once the despised commoner in the Magicians' Guild, is now a Black Magician of Kyralia. Though she is now part of the establishment, she comes to find that the past is not so easily left behind.