Sebastian, as second son of a Fourteenth Century English nobleman, is ineligible to inherit. Sent to the University of Paris to study law, the bored young man enlists as a mercenary pikeman in the Italian wars. He deserts in the aftermath of a bloody campaign and makes his way back to England via Salerno, Alexandria, Constantinople and Venice, gaining an eclectic mixture of skills along the way. When he arrives in a small English city in 1335 he discovers that his father and older brother perished in a border scuffle and with them the family’s claim to a noble holding. The Hundred Years War is in its early stages, the Middle Ages in their turbulent later stages.
“My enterprise stands ready for your every inquisitorial need: warnings off, followings, seekings out, recoveries, disputations resolved and extrications of divers kinds. Abuse of affections a speciality. Discretion is yoked to efficiency, outlays tailored to means—”
Sebastian, with no place or role in the established hierarchy, takes the name Treadsoft and sets up as a Privy Inquisitor, soliciting clients among the rising merchant class. He enlists Dafydd, a runaway scribe, and Prat, leader of a gang of street-boys. His sometimes conflicted allies include a comrade from the wars, Constable Barker of the Town Watch, and the Coroner Clasterpole; both choose to overlook Treadsoft’s ambiguous position and dubious pursuits when they find him useful. Mistress Charity, his formidable landlady, maintains a skeptical eye on his activities. The governing nobles are beginning to take notice of his covert skills, if not often profitably for Treadsoft. He confronts and combats the underworld of his city, agents and raiders from Scotland and France, aristocratic satanists, peasant rebels, warring lords, a vendetta sixty years old, a clandestine revival of the Templars and of course, scheming women willing to use any advantage to obtain their goals.
In the course of eight inquisitions in this collection he faces accusations of murder, attempted assassination and imprisonment. He is called upon to: investigate murders, retrieve the map to a fabled treasure, dispose of more than one inconvenient corpse, undertake secret political and military missions, thwart an assassination, intervene against an invasion by sea, and act as a midwife to insure a dynastic succession.
He declares himself content with “a quotient of truth and justice sufficient to get on with—truth remaining, as it usually does, less firmly established.” 
