In this stand-alone episode: Karsten and Babette are on the run with magebreakers closing in, but their luck appears to change when they encounter a mysterious crossroads and the unexpected choice it offers: In one direction, the meandering old road. Safe, familiar, and slow. Take it and they'll keep their lead but gain no ground. In the other, the new road. Unproven, unmarked, but with the tantalizing possibility of escape. The only catch? It leads straight into the blighted wasteland known as the Widow's Wrinkles. Guess which way they go.

Who is the 13th Advocate? Karsten was once a violent man at the end of a violent career with no greater ambition than a quiet retirement and maybe a woman to keep him warm. But a gamble over a bottle of beer cost him that dream and sealed him to a bewildering fate: as a reluctant and curmudgeonly champion of the people. Irritable, argumentative, and with powers beyond imagining (though he's still not sure how to use them) Karsten now travels the back roads of a decaying empire, bringing his own brand of justice to both the high and the low. And getting grief at every turn from the llama who carries his gear.