For five years Me’acca Mysuth Sheever has lived among his “sworn enemies,” pretending to be one of them. One night he buys a journal, its pages blank. The woman who sells him the journal extracts his promise to record his deeds for study. “Lo, the steps of your life mark the journey of your soul.” To expose his prior life, however, would be akin to suicide, for Sheever is a man brimming with secrets. He begins the journal cautiously, describing the area where he works as a cook, and the people he’s forced to endure. Hints of his past emerge as he also records day-to-day events. As the journal evolves, he finds himself more entangled than he ever wanted to be in the lives around him, and more sympathetic to people he wanted to hate. Memories haunt him, and he struggles to maintain a grip on his sanity as he prays for – and fears – the signal that his years in exile have ended and he can return home. This then is Sheever’s Journal, Diary of a Poison Master.