The Treaty: The unprecedented treaty between the two worlds is about to be signed, but all is not well. For one thing, Sally finds herself being surreptitiously followed once again, and that is never a good thing for her peace of mind. Plus, to confuse her thoughts, she finds herself thinking about her relationship with Saul and what to do about it. She has no idea how to proceed and is even unsure if she should proceed at all. But events come to a climax during the actual Treaty Signing Ceremony. Aided by Saul, Sally uncovers not one, but two assassination attempts on the lives of the new world's ambassadors. And, if that wasn't enough, she unexpectedly falls prey to a killer. But all of this pales into insignificance when Rocky, her pet baby dragon, uncovers a mysterious box, containing a single baffling page. It appears to be written in some kind of complex cipher, and it's up to Miss Fortuna to unravel its hidden meaning. However, the secret she unravels produces a very unexpected and inexplicable happening.
Rebellion: After using the three rings to create a mysterious blue light, Sally ends up in a situation she can't fully understand. For some unknown reason, she finds herself hounded out of the One section of the city and forced to hide in the Naught area. To add to this confusion, she couldn't detect any civic improvements to the Naught suburbs. She'd been assured that these improvements had taken place. Has she been lied to all this time? Had she been played for a fool? To compound her bewilderment, none of her magical rings work anymore. Determined to find some answers, she employs her Naught hiding skills to make her way to Master Wentworth's house, hoping that he can explain what has happened to her.
Unfortunately, when she confronts Master Wentworth, he confounds her by claiming that he has never seen her before in his life.
Despite this momentous setback, Sally manages to persuade her employer to consult with Miss Fortuna. But, like Master Wentworth, Miss Fortuna also claims a total ignorance of Sally. What follows is a frenzied attempt by Sally to prove her identity to these two skeptical former acquaintances. She partly succeeds, by putting forward a theory that, thanks to the blue light, she has somehow skipped into the Past. To return to her Time Period, she proposes to once again uncover all the rings, hoping that this action will somehow 'activate' them and recreate the blue light to take her home. Along the way to achieve this end, she meets Mister Trent and Sir Alex Wright for the 'first' time and has to convince them that she isn't telling a whole string of lies. She also finds herself involved in an unprecedented Naught uprising.
However, Sally has serious doubts about what she is doing. Is she changing the Past to the detriment of her Present? Will all of her meddling in the Past prevent her from returning back to where she belongs? And even if she can return, will everything she knows be altered?