The People of 1146
Kings, spies, smiths, seers and orphans: the sixty-three people the next year turns on.
The Kingdom of Aldmere
King Hethlarn Tulvard III, "the Steady"
Broad, graying, a farmer's hands on a king. A pale burn scar across the back of his left hand from a kitchen fire as a boy, which he shows to children to explain why he's careful. Wears a plain circlet and old boots.
Prince Hethbael Tulvard
Lean, fair, restless, handsome enough to know it. A small notch missing from his left ear from a hunting arrow that was a foot from killing him at sixteen; he tells the story differently every time. Rides better than anyone at court and fights better than his tutors admit.
Lord Chancellor Tuvith Ownirel
A small, sharp, gray-haired woman who has run the kingdom's paperwork for twenty-two years. Ink permanently stains the first two fingers of her right hand. Reading spectacles on a chain.
Duke Minthor Durift of the Westmarch
A bear of a man with a black beard going gray at the chin and a face weathered by mountain wind. A long white scar from the corner of his mouth to his ear, courtesy of a Hrodvald axe at Thalmirn in 1127; it pulls his smile into something worse than a scowl. His family has distrusted Hethlend since the Lords' War three centuries ago, and he has inherited the grudge whole.
Dunt Wrunvos
A wiry commoner with forearms like rope and a right shoulder permanently higher than his left from twenty years of the bow. Missing the tip of his left index finger. Tattoo of a hare on his inner wrist, the mark of his village archery guild.
Sister Tunith of the Quiet Hearth
Plain-faced, round, calm, with a low soft voice that the dying find easier to hear than a loud one. Wears undyed gray and no jewelry. She sits with the dying of every rank and faith, and because of that she knows more secrets than the Quiet Office.
Tharax
King Kenithor Deneskid
Shaved head, close black beard, a body made entirely of scar tissue and muscle. The Anvil's brand, a spear-point, is burned into his right shoulder like every Phymon. A deep dent in his left forearm where a Castavari bolt broke the bone at Faashab-Talodin while he stood guarding the crusaders' flank under the Iron Contract.
King Lekakor Sastorid
Slighter than Kenithor, quick, with gray eyes that miss nothing and a long straight nose broken once. Was a mediocre soldier and knows it; is a brilliant politician and hides it. Speaks more than any Phymon should, which the Thirty resent.
Skekir Sirtys Gonamik
A hard gray woman with a face like a hatchet and a limp from a childhood fall in the Kokekt mines. Widow of a king's brother, mother of three dead soldiers. She runs the secret watch over the Bound and has done for eleven years, longer than any Skekir is supposed to hold anything.
Tandox the Bound
Big, quiet, with the flat calloused hands of a man who has worked barley terraces since he was six. The Bound's slave-brand, a plain bar, on the back of his neck. A whip scar across his shoulders from a Tyrthas patrol when he was nineteen, for looking at a Phymon girl too long.
Krirtys Sastorid
Tall, rangy, cropped dark hair, the Anvil brand on her shoulder and the grin of someone who has not yet lost. Girls of the Phymun train in the Anvil too, though they do not fight in the line. She wants to.
The Principality of Caelvenne
Prince Lourien diol Valcroix
Silver-haired, beautifully dressed, with a mild pleasant face that has never once shown what he was thinking. Wears a single gold ring shaped like a lily and no other jewelry, which in Solvaine is a boast. Has a slight lisp he turned into an affectation so people would underestimate him.
Bevele Bansine Farisel
Short, plump, dark-eyed, with a warm grandmother's face and an abacus mind. Dresses richly but not showily; her one vanity is scent, a rose perfume that announces her before she enters. Widowed young, raised four children and a bank.
Roltien Aijal
Thin, sallow, forgettable in a way he has cultivated for thirty years. Wears black and gray. A faint scar through his left eyebrow he claims came from a fall and which came from a knife.
Cardinal Fezaud Lalos
Vast, jowled, gold-robed, magnificent. Sings the dawn liturgy in a bass that fills the cathedral and eats a dinner afterward that would fill a barracks. Genuinely believes the Radiant Iévaine favors Caelvenne, and points to the gold as proof.
Sierelle Tésvol
Descendant of the Sierine Tésvol who built the first heliograph line. Small, quick, freckled, with lens-burns on her fingertips and a squint from years of staring into polished bronze. Wears men's work clothes and a tool belt in a city of silk.
The Holy Crown of Castavar
King Dobarmo IV deso Grarañe
Handsome in the dark Castavari way, with the Grarañe jaw and a beard kept short. Wears his armor to prayers. A burn scar across his right palm and wrist from Talodin fire at Faashab-Talodin, where eight thousand of his men died; he wears a glove over it and takes the glove off when he prays.
Rislo Litoto
Gaunt, hawk-nosed, shaven-headed, with pale gray eyes that people describe afterward as the thing they remember. Wears rough white wool under his vestments and sleeps on a board. Does not eat meat, drink wine, or keep a mistress, and has therefore the moral authority of a man with no vices, which he uses like a whip.
Queen Rorelle diol Valcroix
Golden-haired, fine-boned, with the Valcroix trick of a face that shows nothing. Speaks Castavari perfectly with a Solvaine lilt she has never bothered to lose. Married at seventeen as the seal on the Gilded Pact; has produced two sons, both healthy, and reports to her uncle by heliograph in a cipher the Office of Truth has not broken.
Grand Master Arsoso Tirago of the White Thorn
An enormous gray-bearded knight with a face like a cliff and a voice like gravel. Missing two fingers on his left hand from a Sunmaw border skirmish in his youth. A hawthorn branch tattooed in white ink around his sword arm, the Order's mark.
Brother Talvo
Soft-spoken, soft-handed, tonsured, with a habit of touching his fingertips together and smiling before he speaks. Has never killed anyone personally. Has signed for some two hundred deaths and keeps the ledger neatly.
Captain Modarsa Tandosno
Sun-dark, salt-cracked, with a rope burn across her left palm and a ship's wheel tattooed over her heart. Daughter of a Tandosa fisherman, rose through the navy by being better than every man who tried to stop her. Has sunk four Salt Brotherhood ships and lost one of her own.
The Khaasarate of Zarvand
Khaasar Avisteer III
Once handsome, now frail, with a white beard dyed at the edges with henna out of habit and ink-stained fingers from fifty years of writing poetry. Wears the plain robes of a scholar and the ruby of the Khaasareem. Doubled the House of Learning, kept the peace with Kaishon, broke the Third Crusade, and wrote the best verse in the Zarvani language, all while fathering seven sons who are going to tear his realm apart.
Prince Faasheer
Big, hard, black-bearded, with the cataphract's bow-legs and a face that does not move. A scar through his upper lip that makes him look as if he is always about to sneer, which he usually is. Killed his first man at fourteen and his first brother, everyone assumes, at twenty-six, though nothing was proven.
Prince Durkaad
His father's son: a scholar, an astronomer, a poet, and the most popular man in Zarvand. Slender, quick, laughing, with a gap between his front teeth and a saffron stain always somewhere on his sleeve from the Feshfaan fields. Speaks to camel-drivers and Jaarzebeem in the same voice.
Grand Vizier Tartal-i Kebidaan
A tiny, immaculate woman in black, with silver hair under a veil and the fastest mind in the Khaasarate. Rose from a Kebidaan merchant family through the House of Learning's examinations, the first woman to do it. Runs the treasury, the salestoot, the caravan tolls, and the Jaarzebeem's correspondence.
Rahaash Kelongaad the Elder
Ancient, bright-eyed, bald, with a white beard to his belt and the smell of sandalwood smoke on him always. Has tended the Flame for fifty years and claims to remember every Khaasar since Zhaasheer IV. Believes the Flame is the world's truth and that lies are the only real sin; will not tell one even to save a life, and has been asked.
Mozaaft of the Deep Sands
A desert man with a face burned dark and creased, a camel-driver's squint, and a gold tooth. Tattooed on both forearms with the routes of the Spice Way in a code only caravan-masters read. Speaks Zarvani, Qaflan trade-cant, Tzalan, and enough Castavari to sell to them.
The Jade Dominion of Kaishon
Emperor Tokrai Shaiku
Thin, yellowed, dying slowly of something the physicians will not name. Once a vigorous reformer who rebuilt the canals and reopened the examinations to the southern provinces. Now rarely seen, propped on cushions, drifting in and out.
Grand Chancellor Seiro Makok
Immaculate gray silk, a thin gray beard, a voice like a closing door. Ninth Seiro to hold the seals of state; the family has run Kaishon's bureaucracy for six centuries and Makok has never questioned that it should. Passed the examinations first in his year at seventeen.
Princess Tokrai Seitotai
Slight, straight-backed, with her father's long face and a stillness she learned in a court that wanted her invisible. Passed the imperial examinations under a false name at twenty-two, placing third in the Dominion; when the fraud was discovered the ministers burned the paper and Makok has never forgiven her for making him do it. Reads four languages, plays buitso with generals, and has quietly cultivated the Rampart's commander for six years.
General Dezau Honmyan
Weathered, square, with a bristling gray mustache and a crossbow bolt's puckered scar in his left shoulder from a steppe raid. Has spent twenty-six years on the wall and knows every gate, every garrison, and every tribe on the far side by name. Respects Sarsak Tolmar, which he reports and the ministers ignore.
Magistrate Tsehei Kaukai
Plump, sweating, silk-robed, with soft hands and a fine collection of jade. Passed the examinations respectably and has spent fifteen years converting the Southern Reach's mahogany and pepper into personal wealth. Takes a tenth of everything, which in Kaishon is considered moderate.
Old Tsau
A bent old woman with a wide gap-toothed smile and hands like roots, who has kept an illegal shrine to the household gods on the Sorogei road for fifty years. Every magistrate in that time has known and every magistrate has decided not to notice, because their wives leave offerings there. Claims to remember the Reasoned Rebellion; is lying, and does it beautifully.
The Hrodvald Clanholds
Hearthking Selra Stormbrand
Red-haired, broad-shouldered, with a face full of freckles and old cold-burns, and three blue tattoo bands on her left arm for three longship voyages beyond the ice. A wolf's-tooth scar on her right calf. Laughs like a landslide.
Stelest Kruman Ironjaw
A mountain with a beard, iron-gray, one eye milk-white from a spear at Thalmirn, the other very sharp. Jaw broken and set crooked in youth, hence the name; he chews on the left. Killed eleven men in single combat and buried two wives and four sons.
Statha the Far-Seer
Bird-boned, white-braided, blind in both eyes and the only person on the Frostmarch who claims to see anything at all. Reads the weather, the entrails, and the Northern Lights, and is right often enough that no stelest sails against her word. Raised Selra after her mother died on the ice.
Sauld Durtha, "Sauld Half-Sung"
Golden-haired, handsome, vain, with a lute on his back and an axe on his belt, both of which he uses well. A scar bisecting his left eyebrow from a duel over a song. Sings the histories of the clans and is rewriting them, verse by verse, to make Selra the hero of every one, which Kruman has noticed.
Thuba Nugag
Dark-haired for a Hrodvald, quiet, with a flat unreadable face and a bear-claw necklace she took herself. Leads the westernmost clan, against the Spine, and trades with the Dunmorrow more than she raids. Was Selra's rival for the Hearthking's seat and lost by four votes; has been perfectly, ominously loyal since.
The Free Peoples
Mother Hamen
A round, brown, shrewd grandmother with a hundred grandchildren and the memory of every debt owed to the Qaflan since her own grandmother's time. Wears a headscarf embroidered with the twelve clans' signs. Speaks every trade language on Aethorra with a Qaflan lilt.
Zesose the Wheel
Handsome, restless, tattooed with a broken wheel where the whole one should be. Cast out for carrying a Zarvani prince's letters for gold instead of wages. Now runs a rogue caravan on the Spice Way that takes sides for pay.
Helm Rindlith of Threeoars
Barrel-shaped, sun-brown, tattooed with river-fish from wrist to shoulder, one for every year on the water. Runs a floating town of four hundred souls that has drifted between Aldmere and Caelvenne for thirty years and paid taxes to neither. Smuggles what pays and ferries what doesn't.
Pell
Skinny, quick, gap-toothed, can swim the Wenvorm in flood and pick a lock underwater. Knows every quay-master on the river by sight and which ones take bribes. Wants to see the sea.
Elder Wiroll
Skin like bark, hair like moss, a voice that sounds as if it comes from somewhere behind him. Has not left the Greenwarden in seventy years. Speaks to trees and, the Waheli insist, is answered.
Maesra of the Edge
Green-stained fingertips, bloodroot paint on her cheeks, an arrow-nick through her left ear from a Castavari logger's crossbow. Watches the Venei's Throat road and has killed six trespassers, each with one arrow. Has also, twice, let one live: a lost Aldmere child and a wounded Ember Pilgrim.
Viwal Stainhand
Named for the black bloodroot stain on his whole right hand, the mark of the Waheli's executioners. Enjoys his work. Believes the forest would be safer if the Greenwarden's edge were a hundred miles of corpses.
Sarsak Tolmar
Bow-legged, wide-faced, with a sparse black beard, a broken nose, and a long puckered scar from a rival's saber across his chest. Wears felt and a single Kaishoni silk sash he took from a tribute caravan. Speaks Cherüsh, Kaishoni, and rough Aldmere.
Ghorsan
Wide, weathered, gap-toothed, missing the last joint of both little fingers, cut off in mourning for two dead sons. Rides as well as any warrior and runs the Horde's camp, its herds, its marriages, and its grudges. Sarsak consults her on everything and admits it to no one.
Bagoq the Elder
Long white hair, a drum, a robe of eagle feathers, and a habit of speaking to the sky mid-sentence. Blessed Sarsak's unification and could unbless it. Believes the Horde should never build a wall because walls are where men go to die.
Juryan Redbow
Sarsak's best young commander and the fastest archer in the Horde; red-lacquered bow, three kills before she could grow her braids. Idolizes Sarsak and thinks his talk of libraries is a joke. Wants to burn Kokrin.
Thane Grurn Harrowdeep
Short, dense as ore, with a beard braided with iron rings and hands scarred white by fifty years at the forge. Descendant of the Underkings and still calls himself one when drunk. Sells starsteel to Zarvand, armor to Castavar, and the same information to both.
Tesk Deepsong
Broad, burn-speckled, with one eye lost to a spark and a patch of hammered gold over it. The finest armorer alive; made Grand Master Tirago's plate and its twin for Prince Faasheer and dislikes both men. Sings while she works, an old Underking hymn.
Sun-Speaker Ixatl
Slight, intense, with jaguar-scars raked deliberately across both cheeks and a crown of sun-quetzal feathers. Speaks in a low steady voice that carries in the pyramid halls. United the jungle villages in six years by faith, marriage, and a few disappearances.
Chelpan
Broad, calm, tattooed with the river's course down his spine, a canoe-man's shoulders. Remembers when the Zarvani spice-forts paid fairly and preferred it. Distrusts Ixatl's fire.
Kaltzi
Small, silent, with dart-frog venom under her nails and a serpent tattooed around her wrist. The best blowgun in Sutzam. Has killed three Kaishoni sentries from the canopy and feels nothing yet.
The Iron Matron
Nobody outside the Teeth knows her name; her own people call her Mother of Fire. Broad, ash-gray-haired, with lava-burn scars glazing her whole left arm and a necklace of obsidian teeth. Has quadrupled the price of naphtha in her lifetime and is now taking Castavari envoys with a straight face.
Hizikaad the Younger
Soot-black beard, burn-scarred hands, the only man alive who knows where every naphtha seep in the Teeth lies. Wants to sell to Castavar. Wants, more precisely, the Zarvani to feel what it is like to be at someone's mercy.
Captain-Queen Sormerva Vex
Tall, sun-black, salt-white hair cut short, a gold hoop in one ear and a hook-scar through the other. Claims descent from the last Captain-King, drowned in 1004. Has taken thirty Castavari ships and hanged no one from any of them, which is her policy and her pride.
Chobecho "Two-Fathom"
Squat, hairy, cheerful, with a wooden foot and a tally-stick habit. Runs the Brotherhood's shares, stores, and elections. Thinks Vex's kingdom is a fantasy and pirates should stay pirates.
Lilvuq of the Long Dark
Wide-faced, fur-hooded, with snow-blindness scars around both eyes and hands that never shake. Has guided Statha the Far-Seer north of the ice and will not say where. Speaks Hrodvald in a whisper.
Jaamang
Bright, curious, the first Uusung in a generation to walk south to Krasvuv. Trades furs, learns words, and asks the Hrodvald too many questions about their gods. Has been told by her grandfather to come home and has not.
Brother Ash
Gaunt, barefoot, robed in undyed wool, with a Zarvani accent worn down by twenty years of roads and a brand on his forehead from the Office of Truth that he shows to everyone. Was a Rahaash of the Flame; left when he decided all fires were one. Preaches in Aldmere's market squares, feeds anyone, owns nothing, and has twice talked a mob down with his voice alone.
Sister Coal
Shaven-headed, Kaishoni-born, a survivor of the Reach's garrisons who found the Pilgrims on the road and stayed. Quiet where Ash is loud, practical where he is holy: she is the one who finds the food. Has a repeating-crossbow bolt scar in her thigh and a conscript's lamellar plate sewn into her satchel as a reminder.
Nick, of the Two
One of the Two, whose names are the same in every language of Aethorra, which no other name is. Two men, one never seen without the other for long: warriors no one has beaten, statesmen who have sat at councils nobody can date, teachers of children in every realm, speakers of every tongue as a native. Every teller gives their age in thousands of years and describes men in the prime of life.
Dan, of the Two
One of the Two, whose names are the same in every language of Aethorra, which no other name is. Two men, one never seen without the other for long: warriors no one has beaten, statesmen who have sat at councils nobody can date, teachers of children in every realm, speakers of every tongue as a native. Every teller gives their age in thousands of years and describes men in the prime of life.