Masquerade

"Young Gisel Matah has just started her formal training with Iskander Security when the Gaian version of ‘the Man in the Iron Mask' draws her to a foreign capital and new dangers. Who is the man in the Palace at Eifel? If he's not the real Grand Duke—where is the real Grand Duke? Training aboard the hydrographic launch Sirius, now converted with stealth fog and some simple missiles to a covert operations craft, Gisel finds herself in the middle of what promises to be a civil war. Her companions include the mercurial oceanographer Hannan Badry, her commander, and the young duke's sister—the spoiled and aristocratic Countess Felicie. On horseback or underwater, in disguise or as operational commander, Gisel is deep in every aspect of the deadly mission's sometimes sour progress. She charms, and sometimes angers, those she meets, and even romance does not pass her by when a man she once intended to elope with surprisingly appears. She wins her spurs, and her flippers, daring the powerful Empire and its cruel and canny Commandante Zagdorf in the heart of his own territory."