A colonial magistrate stationed at a remote frontier outpost begins to question the brutal methods employed by a visiting officer from the imperial secret police, who is convinced that the local nomadic people pose a threatening conspiracy. After the magistrate forms a bond with a young barbarian woman who has been left disabled by the officer's interrogations, he takes her on a long journey to return her to her people, an act that marks him as a traitor in the eyes of the empire. On his return, he faces imprisonment and persecution at the hands of the very authority he once served, forcing him to confront the moral cost of complicity and resistance.