The Iron Cage (Magic's Poison Book 4)

Half a dozen soldiers came into the plaza, pushing a flat-bedded wagon loaded with an iron cage. Idareh caught his breath as he realized that the occupant of the cage was not an animal . . .

For four years Idareh has been an exile, forced from his home in the Comorrian Empire and scrabbling a living in the kingdom of Aldoris. His employer, a scandalmongering pamphleteer, has sent him to the royal capital of Levalsa to get a story. The Duke of Sithia, cousin and heir of the king of Aldoris, has been caught protecting a colony of ophidians, serpent-people once believed extinct. Ophidian venom was once used by sorcerors to gain mastery of the world, and the duke is charged with sorcery and treason, while the ophidians he protected face extermination. As Idareh chases the story, though, he begins to realize that the popular view of the duke as a would-be tyrant and the ophidians as monsters is wrong. Printing the truth, however, will be dangerous, since both duke and ophidians have powerful enemies€"and Idareh€s own past contains a secret that could ruin him.