The story takes place primarily within Burland's capitol, a city once called "Hart's Hope" but eventually renamed Inwit.

The Hart is strong in the affairs of men, while the Sweet Sisters, twins congenitally joined at the face so that one looks always inward and the other outward, are worshipped by women.

Hart's Hope begins by describing the state of Burland: ruled by tyrannical king Nasilee, damaged young princess Asineth, and bloody martial law.

He then sends for the Flower Princess, whose nearly unpronounceable name (Enziquelvinisensee Evelvenin) is rarely used and whose hand he secured during his bid for power; she is the most beautiful woman in the world, because she will never lie.

Sleeve, who being a man knows nothing about the customs of the Sisters, begins to research this phenomenon; unbeknownst to him, Asineth is duplicating his reading and, being a woman, understands a great deal more of it.

Made immensely powerful by this hateful decision, she overthrows the gods and the city of Hart's Hope, setting Palicrovol in place as a humiliated (and continually tormented) puppet ruler.

She steals the Flower Princess's face and body and keeps Sleeve, Zymas and the Flower Princess as her personal pets in altered forms, along with her collection of enslaved gods—the Hart a pile of bones beneath the castle, the god named God a blind slave scrubbing floors, and the Sweet Sisters sundered and sold out as whores.

In the end, the narrator, revealed to be the restored Enziquelvinisensee, tells her husband in a letter she is writing for him that he must make the choice: will he kill young Orem for usurping, however briefly, his place on the throne?