In the space of three days, Rogan loses his royal privilege, his country, and his mother. Now knowing that his father, the King of Kanrine, orchestrated his mother's execution, Rogan is left stranded in his mother's homeland. Sickened by the idea of returning home to face his mother's killers, Rogan lowers himself to washing and sweeping for a local healer to survive. He's now a drudge, a mongrel, a nobody with airs. His one friend is Bryna, the poverty-stricken daughter of the city's former baron, who has her own reasons for skirting the notice of the city's occupying soldiers. Before Rogan can decide his next move, the mysterious death of a soldier pulls him and Bryna into a web of politics, murder, and magic. The two of them must race to separate truth from lies as the authorities' investigations quickly turn personal...and deadly. Told from the alternating perspectives of a conqueror's son and a conquered lord's daughter, THE EMPIRE'S ORPHANS follows two twelve-year-olds in a country simmering with national, racial, and class tension.