"A Tom Doherty Associates book."

Khari is the best cooper in Brysta, one of the major cities in Nordia, and his life as been as ordered and dependable as his barrels. His trouble begins when he saves a neighbor's daughter from the violent advances of two upper-class men. Then he rescues an actual rape victim he finds unconscious in an alley, a blackstaffer, a young expatriate mage, from Recluce, and that makes his wife very uneasy. The culprit in both cases turns out to have been Egen, the cruel and corrupt son of the local ruler. When the blackstaffer is mysteriously murdered in Khari's cooperage, Khari is jailed, tried, and flogged and in a shocking turnaround released, and his consort executed for the murder, which she did not commit.