Eleanor is a quiet student at Penwick Academy, when she and several classmates are asked by a visitor to help crack a strange code. Doing this takes Eleanor deep into the rambling maze of libraries at Penwick, where she discovers that the code refers to an old ship that visited a mysterious island nearly a century ago. Trying to discover what the ship found there leads Eleanor into the most dangerous part of the city, a basement filled with liquid books, a chase through the sewer drains, and a dwarven jail cell. But Eleanor is not the only one chasing down the story of the ship, and a group known only as the Forgotten will stop at nothing to find out what she has learned. Eleanor has to race to stay ahead of the Forgotten and protect the secret of the ship before they uncover it.