The Way of Shadows

In the slums of Cenaria City, street orphan Azoth survives by running with a gang and living in fear of the city's underworld, until he talks his way into an apprenticeship with Durzo Blint, a legendary wetboy, an assassin whose skills edge into magic. Taking a new name, Kylar Stern, and a new life, he trains for years in killing and in the strange power bound up in an artifact called the ka'kari, all while the Sa'Kage, the true rulers of Cenaria's underworld, tighten their grip beneath the kingdom's respectable surface. Opens Brent Weeks's Night Angel trilogy.