Raishin Akabane arrives at the Walpurgis Royal Academy of Machinart in Liverpool with Yaya, his combat automaton, intent on entering the Night Party, a tournament where puppeteers and their dolls fight for the title of Wiseman. His real motive is revenge on his elder brother, who he believes destroyed their clan. In an alternate early-twentieth-century Britain where sorcery-infused circuits animate mechanical dolls, the academy's ranking battles are his only path to the man he is hunting.