Brash young Capac Raimi, a man with no past, comes to join his uncle's gangster organisation in a big, unnamed city. Very soon he's sucked into the empire of The Cardinal, the top crime lord who dominates the city and, it seems, may be looking for a young heir. Capac encounters love (or at any rate sex) at first sight, an unstoppable assassin, puzzling advisers, blind men with a strange vision and an aging woman who has the perfect face of a teenager. People on the mysterious Ayuamarca List--which includes Capac's name--tend to vanish from life, from official records and hidden files, even from others' memories. The Cardinal, by turns capricious, violent, charming, gross and deadly, has a fantastic secret rooted in the long-ago magic of the Incas. Before Capac is allowed to learn this, he must make various terrible discoveries about himself and those close to him, including his own lady-love.