The-tyrant-philosophers/Banders

Banders is a former Cohort-Broker who serves as the processing NCO and chief orderly of the experimental field hospital attached to the Palleseen Forthright Battalion, and is the figure who gives Maric Jack his working name. Irreverent, irrepressible, and possessed of what Ollery calls a "peculiar genius" for acquiring exactly the supply item a quartermaster desperately needs, she runs the department's black-market lines in spiced salt, liquorice, and valgaric oil while cycling repeatedly through demotion and re-certification in rank - the narrator calls her "the most promoted soldier in the entire battalion, possibly in the history of the Palleseen military" - ch 3. She grew up in a Commission of Ends and Means orphanage, was trained to kill on the Archipelago as a Bracite conscript, and carries a childhood wound she learned to ignore a long time ago. Her loyalty is to people, not institutions; the army, she says, is all I've got - ch 51.

In the second volume she appears under two further identities: The Mouth of the Sea, Herald of the Pope of Tides and "first disciple" of the Fisher King cult in Eres Ffenegh, and Cohort-Broker Anders, a former Palleseen support officer who defected during the uprising and now runs a cross-lines smuggling operation while embedded among the Heretics coterie she cultivated in her army years. The connection between these guises becomes explicit in the siege's final act, when Lovern sees the Mouth of the Sea on the battlefield and recognition passes between them, confirming what the reader has already assembled from her earlier visits to the forward camp under the name Anders - ch 27. In the war's aftermath she inherits the role of Pope of Tides against her will and resolves to make demands of the god rather than accept the mantle passively - ch 42.

Her arc across both books traces a single stubborn refusal: to be anyone's. She is consecrated to the Fisher King by an accident of childhood vandalism and resists the claim for years; she enters the cult only because she was the Pope's first adherent and the religion frightens her; she refuses championhood when the god reaches for her in the Lighthouse, accepting it only when she can name her own terms. Yet the books track her toward a grudging, chosen belonging - to her department, to Masty, to the army, to the people she calls family - rather than toward any institution or deity.

Character

Appearance

The books give no sustained physical description of Banders. What the narrator and other characters register is her bearing and her hands: she writes "elaborate calligraphy" when stamping dockets, fights with "pugilist's fists," perches on crates at assault sites, and greets sentries with a trader's easy familiarity in the forward camp - ch 3, ch 31, ch 21, ch 8. Tallifer reads her absence from a group as "being Banders," a kind of gravity that should be self-evident when she is there - ch 14. Cosserby experiences her presence as an intimidation that makes him feel "very small and inadequate," and Lidlet invokes her approval as the one thing that might get the broken Cosserby back on his feet - ch 8, ch 36.

Personality

Banders is compulsively transactional, socially aggressive, and allergic to stillness. She punches people she likes - Jack, Cosserby, Masty - as much as those she does not; she nicknames a prisoner "Maric" before he can correct her, steals a Statlo's pen while stamping his identity card, and tells Ollery a rumour sourced for profit in the same breath as she would for the department - ch 3, ch 2. Her humour is a shield and a weapon in equal measure: when the department is being purged around her, she is "almost cheerful" about routine; when Masty confesses the hospital is "home," she erupts in celebration, misreading his vulnerability as a victory she can claim for the group - ch 41, ch 23. Beneath the bonhomie the narrator locates a child who "crept down to the caves below the orphanage, and come back bloody and terrified," a tenth of her psyche that still weeps, which she learned to ignore a long time ago - ch 3. Across the two books the bonhomie is "slit the throat of" by events she cannot joke away - the Fisher King's claim, Lovern's death, the inheritance of the Pope's mantle - and what remains is quieter, more deliberate, and no less loyal - ch 45, ch 42.

She treats sex as transactional and romantic feeling as private, even to herself; Cosserby's love is visible to everyone but her, and she likes him without wanting what he wants - ch 31. Her affection for Alv is aesthetic, not erotic; her attachment to Tallifer is a held, unspoken torch; her love for Lovern is specific, suppressed, and ultimately unfulfilled - ch 3, ch 47, ch 8.

Beliefs & Motivations

Banders's founding rule is possession-as-violation: "I'm not anyone's" - ch 44. She resists being consecrated, being special, being chosen, being owned by a god, a title, or a role imposed on her. She entered the Fisher King cult not from faith but because she was the Pope's first adherent, and the religion frightens her - ch 24. What she does believe in is the people at her table: the department, Masty, the Heretics, the army. "The army's all I've got" is not nationalism; it is the claim of a woman with no family but the one she built in a field hospital - ch 51. She will smuggle Jack into camp in a borrowed uniform, bring a medicine box containing a god to a prison tent, and punch the king of Bracinta because he will not come home, because the people in the room are hers - ch 49, ch 43, ch 51.

She has no ideological commitment to the Palleseen state. She ran black-market lines for profit and convenience, defected to the sea-cult side during the uprising, and trades rum and Loruthi smut across siege lines to former colleagues - ch 3, ch 8. What she refuses is to let the people she loves be swallowed by institutions. When Ollery sends her on a fool's errand to keep her out of the escape, she realizes, disobeys, and follows anyway - ch 46.

History

House of Open Wounds

The Field Hospital (ch 1-5)

Banders is introduced as the Former Cohort-Broker serving as orderly in the experimental field hospital attached to the Forthright Battalion, and as the primary processing NCO for new arrivals. The narrator states that "By her own estimation, Banders was the most promoted soldier in the entire battalion, possibly in the history of the Palleseen military," having been repeatedly demoted to the lowest rank and then re-certified upward, a cycle the narrator calls "great effort to be simultaneously so useful and so innately imperfect as to get disciplined out of even a lowly rank every time, and then reacquire it" - ch 3. She runs black-market lines in spiced salt, liquorice, and valgaric oil, and operates the department's supply chain from quartermaster's stock to the hospital's reagent shelves - ch 3.

In ch 2, Ollery (the Butcher) passes on a rumour Banders sourced about a Loruthi detachment overrun west along the line, possibly leaving corpses for Prassel's mine-clearing mission - ch 2. In ch 3, Banders takes POV. She processes the prisoner Maric Jack (whom she nicknames "Maric" after his nationality, before he can correct her twice), signs his docket with elaborate calligraphy while stealing the escort Statlos Peppel's pen, stamps his identity card, and declares him an Accessory: "You are now Accessory... You, you are an Accessory in the Palleseen Army" - ch 3. She strips him of his robes at the uniform stock, buttons him into a pale grey Accessory's uniform, and notices the rope scar on his throat. When she touches his neck she freezes: "She froze up, feeling her fingers on the throat of the priest and knowing it to be sacrilege. Knowing herself to be judged" - ch 3. She then leads him to the field hospital, introduces him to Ollery (telling him to call the man "Chief"), and presents him to Alv - ch 3.

Banders gives the Ilmari his working name: Tallifer later explains to Jack that "Banders named him," noting the Pel wordplay - "Maric" meaning one who does everything a bit, a jack of all trades - ch 5. In ch 4, she is briefly mentioned operating the bellows pump and sending for reagents during the triage of burned soldiers.

The narrator records a childhood wound: "the one-tenth that had crept down to the caves below the orphanage, and come back bloody and terrified, shook and wept in a far corner of her mind, but she'd learned to ignore that a long time ago" - ch 3. Banders reveres Alv aesthetically but not romantically: "Alv was the most beautiful woman in the world, as far as Banders was concerned. And Banders didn't even like women that way" - ch 3.

The Whipping at the Alder (ch 6-9)

During the aftermath of Jack's flogging, Banders is tasked with carrying his warning to the healed spy who has since died of a ghost-eater arrow. Ollery, finding no angle or profit in the errand, gives Banders a tacit nod, and she departs - ch 6. In ch 7, the Statlos who arrests Jack confirms his identity from "Banders's card" - the identity card she stamped in ch 3 - ch 7. In ch 8, Banders greets Cosserby aggressively at the hospital tent entrance before handing him off to Masty, whom Cosserby can tolerate; she sells him goods the army should supply free, making him feel "very small and inadequate" - ch 8.

The Great Advance (ch 10-13)

Banders takes a major role in the evening dinner before the planned offensive. She and Masty set the tables; she playfully punches Jack when he arrives late with his box, rescues him from falling, and teases him about having been whipped and arrested the same day. She kneels to peer into Jack's box and glimpses "a little face, hard and savage beneath the slanted brim of an old-timey sea hat. The jut of a bone harpoon head," retreating into pique and flicking Lochiver's knuckles - ch 10. She interrupts Alv's awkward moment with a toast to Jack, and nudges Tallifer into confirming the advance order to Cosserby - ch 10. She engages in banter with Masty: "You're incorrigible" / "Only because everyone 'incorriges' me" - ch 10.

In ch 11, Ollery and Tallifer check medical supplies against records, suspecting Banders of pilfering - ch 11. During the advance itself, Banders works alongside Masty, Jack, and Ollery pushing stuck wagons by hand - ch 12. She explains the graduated combat salts to Jack: "They're the ones that come after the orange ones... Just hope we don't get as far as the purple ones. I didn't sleep for a week after those, and when I did, the fucking dreams, man. Reason help me, the dreams" - ch 12.

In ch 13, Banders gives Jack a lead disc to knock him out; the drug produces a hallucination of the landscape as a tessellation of corpses. She comforts him when the forward surgery is overrun by the three-horned war-beast, hugging him from behind and saying "I know" after he nearly destroys his box in grief over a dead student - ch 13. She helps load wagons during the retreat.

Between the Lines (ch 14-15)

Banders is among the three orderlies (with Jack and Masty) left behind when the department stops to treat Lochiver's broken leg. Tallifer realizes with horror that Banders is missing: "Banders was... wasn't she with us when we set off? I thought she was just... being Banders..." - ch 14. Prassel absorbs the news of the three missing orderlies without expression - ch 14.

In ch 15, Banders is a central POV figure. Trapped in a muddy hollow with Jack and Masty after Jack's body is reassembled by God, she scouts ahead and returns with three Palleseen troopers also left behind: Lidlet, Paucelry, and Klimmel. She appoints herself de facto leader of the combined group and plans to wait for dark to walk back to the lines - ch 15. When the group stumbles into four Loruthi soldiers, a confused firefight erupts; Paucelry is killed, Klimmel stabs a Loruthi to death, Lidlet is shot through the breast, and Masty is shot. Banders kills the remaining Loruthi woman - ch 15. After God is coerced into healing Klimmel and Lidlet, Banders rifles Paucelry's pockets before the group rides two-to-a-horse toward the Pal lines - ch 15. The narrator notes she was trained to kill on the Archipelago before being sent out with the army as a Bracite conscript - ch 15.

The Gallete Island (ch 16-19)

Banders, Masty, and Jack return to the department eight days after the battle. She flings her arms about Ollery, babbling embellished versions of their escape story, and checks on Alv's condition - ch 16. In ch 17, Banders takes POV aboard the flying Gallete (flying island) transport. She bickers with Ollery over counting bandages, mocks his fear of heights, and volunteers to procure bezoar specials from Confiscations to quiet him. She coaxes Jack outside, promising "solid rock" and "safe as houses," and helps Alv secure a splint on her own broken leg - ch 17. She recruits Masty for a walk through the camp, discusses Runkel's dry-camp rule and humiliation at being sent from the Lor front, and leads the group to watch a Correct Appreciation-approved play whose performers turn the anti-Maric racial humour into ribaldry that Jack cannot parse - ch 17. She watches Prassel defeat Maserley in the star-shaped piste fencing match. When Jack reveals his religious prohibition against sex, Banders is momentarily kind: "You poor son of a bitch. Religion really does screw you up, huh? One more thing to bring the Perfection" - ch 17. Three large men then appear and arrest Jack for murder - ch 17.

In ch 18, Prassel initially assumes the tribunal concerns Banders before learning the accused is Jack - ch 18. In ch 19, Banders fills in Lidlet's processing papers for the Hospital Department and supplies Ollery with contraband pamphlets; Ollery feels he "owes Banders a bonus" - ch 19.

Arrival in Bracinta (ch 20-21)

Banders perches on crates at the assault site and reports that Landwards Battalion is taking point and dislikes the tree cover ahead, that heavy stavers are being moved in, and that messengers went between Higher Orders all night: a "hamfight over seniority" gave the Professor the honours and Runkel got "slapped down" - ch 21. She explains the glory of first-in to Jack: "Thing you don't understand, Jack... is the glory of it. First in, take the city, drive the enemy from the walls. Big feather in the cap for the commander. Looks really good in the dispatches. Commendations all round" - ch 21. She teases Cosserby, pokes his bald spot, and wishes him luck before the assault; Cosserby complies "because he's a sucker" - ch 21. The assault turns out to be bloodless.

Leave in Magnelei (ch 22-26)

Banders schemes to get the hospital department onto the leave rota by procuring a specific flavour of rolling weed for the duty Companion Spinnerly - ch 22. She tells Jack about the Butterfly Houses, and God interjects from His box about delegations and dancers from His temple days - ch 22. She returns triumphant with the weed, securing the department's leave in two days - ch 22. She explains that the rummell barrel will leave the hospital with "scads of the stuff per head" and plans to syphon some for trade; she warns Jack to keep his religion secret, referencing the orphanage's whippings - ch 22. She slaps Cosserby's ass because "he goes a really interesting shade of pink" - ch 22.

In ch 23, drunk, Banders overhears Masty's confession that the department is "home" and erupts in celebration, interpreting it as him finally claiming the army; Masty thinks, "Not how I wanted that to go" - ch 23. In ch 24, Tallifer notes that the carved mask worn by Pirisytes would fetch a price from Banders - ch 24. In ch 25, Banders shouts from outside Mother Semprellaime's wagon to fetch Jack for the leave rota into Magnelei - ch 25.

In ch 26, Banders takes POV entering Magnelei's market square. She watches a fire-eater, declares a plan to "see the sights, whatever they may be," and accidentally insults Masty by calling him "our local boy" and pressing him to remove his hood. Ollery privately reveals to her that Masty was five years old in Magnelei when the dynasty fell and civil war engulfed the streets. Banders realizes the cruelty of her words: "I am such a twat" - ch 26. She apologises; Masty accepts with "I'm here now. It's all right. I understand" - ch 26.

The Market Brawl (ch 27-31)

In ch 28, Banders pushes into the stadium with the group, teases Jack about Caeleen, and leads the others toward the market. The Fisher King splits Jack's mug and screams a warning that Banders is in trouble; God partially decodes the message: Jack's female friend - Banders - is in trouble - ch 28.

In ch 30, Banders takes POV during the Masty/Klimmel/Halseder sequence. In a market scuffle, the one-armed General Halseder appears, speaks Bracite to Masty, and draws a knife; Banders punches Halseder, and his hidden squad seizes both Masty and Banders. Banders, locked in a cell, expects to be sacrificed to a foreign cult, recalling an orphanage "joke" about wicked priests and fish. Jack appears instead, is punched by Banders, and they set off to find Masty. Jack reveals God will not heal Banders specifically: "God just says... He won't do you. Can't, sorry. He says can't" - ch 30. Banders takes a shaved-headed man hostage at knifepoint to navigate the Wolf Palace. Masty is found seated on the Hackle Throne; Halseder announces him as Feder the Fourth, rightful king of Bracinta. Banders calls Masty "her old comrade" and hugs him when he escapes the ceremony. She dreads having to report to Ollery that Masty is lost - ch 30.

In ch 31, Banders causes the market brawl alongside Jack. She fights with pugilist's fists, smacks a pursuer, and is seized by locals; Cosserby intervenes and is thrown into the crowd. Ollery arrives, strikes two men holding Banders's arms, and she asks if he got his business done. The provosts arrive; their Cohort-Monitor officer recognizes Ollery, calls him "Murderer," and orders the entire group arrested - ch 31. Ollery reflects on Banders's "peculiar genius" for acquiring candles that a quartermaster or scholar desperately needs, profiting the department; he assesses that Cosserby's clockwork mannikin gift will not change how she feels - ch 31. The narrator notes Cosserby is in love with Banders, while she likes him but not in the way he wants, and treats sex as transactional - ch 31.

The Fireberg Battle (ch 32-35)

In ch 32, Banders is imprisoned with the group in the last free cell in Magnelei's town prison. She presses Ollery about what happened at the market; he deflects. Lidlet snaps at her; Banders dismisses her as "new girl." Banders retreats to whisper with Cosserby, her "only current ally" in the cell - ch 32.

In ch 33, during the fireberg bombardment, Banders works grunt duty and suffers a burned leg. Cosserby brings her to the medical tent. She attempts to negotiate "banking" her injuries for later healing, but God flatly refuses: "I cannot heal her. She cannot come to me. Not her, out of all of them" - ch 33. The narrator notes that Banders notices a patient die under Jack's hands rather than God doing so - ch 33. In ch 35, Banders manages the wagon reins despite a bandaged leg; Prassel notes the missing and pushes ahead - ch 35.

The Magnelei Standoff (ch 36-39)

In ch 36, Lidlet tries to motivate the wounded Cosserby by invoking Banders's approval: "On your feet for Banders. Won't she be impressed" - ch 36. The narrator notes Cosserby is not Banders's "type" - ch 36. In ch 38, Banders hugged Cosserby on his return from battle, but he could not enjoy it because of the "echo of his torn-up flesh" - ch 38.

The Draining of the Gods (ch 40-42)

In ch 41, Banders brings water to the hospital tent, "almost cheerful" about routine amid the "thunderhead of change." She berates Cosserby but gives him buckets of water and a brief grin: "Go back to your bell-making" - ch 41. The Fisher King broods on his box, staring at Banders; Jack thinks he "really needs to sit down and talk with Banders" but "his time's up" - ch 41. In ch 42, Jack references Banders as having described an execution method to him - ch 42.

The Purge of the Hospital (ch 43-45)

In ch 43, Banders appears at the prisoner tent at dawn with a medicine box containing Zenotheus, having bribed the provosts. She hands it over as a "peace offering," then, weeping, begs Jack for help: Jack... I really need your help - ch 43. Jack agrees to listen.

In ch 44, Banders takes POV. She reflects on her orphanage childhood; the hospital is being purged, Jack pulled from the tent, Alv gone, stretcher bearers arrested. Ollery declares "It's a purge, at last." The Butcher, Tallifer, and Lochiver share an "old guard look" that excludes Banders. A Statlo messenger summons her to Thurrel's decantary. There, Thurrel questions her about the orphanage, forces her to wear goggles and tablethi, and makes her look at a tiny angry figure with a broken spear. She recognizes it as "the Stick-Man," a statue in the sea-caves beneath her orphanage. She recounts the childhood dare: sneaking down at high tide, losing her bat, punching the statue in the face to prove she'd been there - ch 44. Thurrel reveals the figure is the Fisher King, chief god of the Islermen who became the Palleseen, and tells her: "He says you're consecrated to him. Your life given over to him." She protests: "I'm not anyone's" - ch 44. Thurrel confesses his scholarly obsession with lost Palleseen lore and tells her he wants to take the mantle through a formal blood-ritual duel. He gives her Jack's gods - the "gross scorpion thing" and "a monkey got up in a bedsheet" - as a peace offering. Banders explains the situation to Jack in prison; he offers to "work something out." She discovers Cosserby is also imprisoned because Lidlet healed him. She calls him "a stupid son of a bitch," punches him, hugs him fiercely, and runs away - ch 44. The narrator records: "Jack, I never wanted to be special" - ch 44.

In ch 45, Banders looks "as though her name sits on an arrest warrant," silent about what has happened to her. Tallifer notes someone has "slit the throat of Banders's bonhomie" - ch 45.

The Escape from Camp (ch 46)

Ollery sends Banders and Masty on a deliberate fool's errand (four nonexistent crates of adduction catalyst) to get them away before the prisoners' escape. Banders realizes something is wrong and decides to disobey - ch 46. When the escape column moves through camp, provosts challenge them; Lochiver/Sturge incapacitates the provosts with plague and pustules. Banders and Masty catch up and refuse to be sent away. Ollery tells them: "Because they will hunt us, and probably catch and kill us, and we didn't want to make you part of it... Go away, Banders. You too, Masty. There's no reason you need to be dragged down with us. Go live your lives and good luck with the army" - ch 46. Banders and Masty follow anyway, helping carry the wounded Cosserby. Masty calls her "your highness" mockingly; she forced partners with him on the errand - ch 46. Lochiver is shot and killed during the flight; Jack cannot heal him - ch 46.

The Coronation of Feder IV (ch 47-50)

In ch 47, Banders is consecrated to the Fisher King and holds his mantle. She plays the stone-in-hand trick that Thurrel attempts to claim; she calls out his transparent cheat but nonetheless pricks her finger and streaks his forehead with blood, completing the transfer - ch 47. She tries to recall a heroic deed by Cosserby and cannot, because he "hadn't been that kind of man" - ch 47. After the transfer, Banders declares she is going back to the army: "Only without the department" - ch 47. She had been holding a torch for Tallifer, and knew saying it "wouldn't help" - ch 47.

In ch 49, Banders smuggled Jack into the camp and lent him a uniform so he could consult Mother Semprellaime about Caeleen's contract - ch 49. In ch 50, Banders returns to the Wolf Palace kitchens with Jack, who is disguised as a Bracite servant. The group assembles: Ollery, Tallifer, Lidlet, Jack, Banders - ch 50.

The Dispersal (ch 51)

Banders returns to the army with Prassel, using the secrets of the coronation dinner as leverage: she argues Prassel is "the only senior officer in a hundred miles who can actually give a coherent order" and must return to command. Prassel, hounded but showing "seeds of ambition," asks "Is that what this has come to?" and takes time to think; she and Banders depart for the army - ch 51. Banders calls Prassel "Magister" - a title she once noted would be a court-martial offence if used by an Accessory against her - ch 51. She admits she fears going back alone: "It's just me and her. I don't want that" - ch 51. Jack suggests she go to Thurrel instead. When Masty appears in Palleseen uniform shirtsleeves, having abandoned the king's regalia, Banders whoops with relief and tries to convince him to come back to camp. She calls him family: "Come on, Masty. We're your people. We're like family" - ch 51. When he refuses, she punches him and hugs him fiercely before leaving - ch 51. She says "the army's all I've got" - ch 51.

Pretenders to the Throne Of God

The Osseach Meeting at the Pandaemonium

The Mouth of the Sea serves as Herald of the Pope of Tides, running the Lighthouse's bureaucratic affairs in Eres Ffenegh during the siege - a role she occupies as the Pope's "first disciple," delivering his words to rival powers in the city - ch 8. When Devil Jack returns Vestry to the Lighthouse, the Mouth delivers the Pope's formal rebuke to Abellaime through Jack: "His Holiness the Pope of Tides does not appreciate your woman twitching her skirts aside, to give shelter to every stray who can't abide the life here" - ch 8. She escalates the threat against the Allorwen conjurer's household: "no more crumbs from the Fisher King's table find their way to your den of vice. Or the sea will have its due" - ch 8. The confrontation is conducted without violence; Jack neither apologises nor defies, and the Mouth dismisses the cult's enforcer Reddaen before speaking with Jack alone - ch 8.

Alone with Jack, she pours Pal-army-standard tin cups and exchanges the old military greeting "Not dead yet" - ch 8. The narration records that "the people they were now stretched like tight clothes over the people they had once been," confirming their shared history in the Pal army - ch 8. She asks whether the arcane learning is worth its cost; Jack answers "What I'm learning - yes. Any price. Yes." before catching himself and apologising for saying too much - ch 8. The Mouth's internal assessment of the cult's social environment is blunt: "Decent conversation didn't survive the reverence." - ch 8.

After Jack departs, the Mouth slips out of the Lighthouse, navigates through three embattled Wards, changes into Pal uniform in a cellar, and crosses to the Palleseen forward camp under her former identity Cohort-Broker Anders - ch 8. She greets sentries, trades a bottle of rum and Loruthi smut, and enters the tent of the coterie she cultivated during her Pal army years - Quellery, Istreddy, Aspel, and Lovern - ch 8. She supplies Aspel with Lancewort Specials for siege calculations and produces a bottle of Bile of the Earth from Austentarn: "From Austentarn. Seriously, you have never had anything with more kick, or rarer. It comes from the mines. Wells up between the rocks, but it's a thing you can drink. They call it Bile of the Earth." - ch 8. To Quellery she offers, "All the crab you can eat" - ch 8. Her romantic feelings for Lovern are specific and private: she saves the best grins for him, angling for a sexual encounter without success, and would "save" him if everyone were lined up for sacrifice - ch 8. A statlos interrupts the toast to summon Aspel to Dantell for assault instructions; the Heretics are stunned because winter is supposed to halt fighting - But... winter... I mean, stab me, really? - ch 8. Anders realises the Palleseen are launching a winter assault and must get back inside the city to warn the defenders - ch 8. The notes confirm that Anders is a former Pal army officer with a "roving brief" who defected during the uprising and now runs a cross-lines smuggling and trade operation under her old identity, though she insists she is not a spy - ch 8.

The Day of the Three Walls

On the day of the Palleseen single-day assault through three Ward walls, the Mouth of the Sea loiters at the Lighthouse ready to signal the cult's armed mob into theatrical action; she leads the Lighthouse mob in the absence of Niev ea Galeaff - ch 12.

The Palleseen Ultimatum

Anders fills Quellery's seat at a card game of Cross in the Heretics' tent, paired with Lovern against Istreddy and Aspel - ch 16. She asks what is wrong with Istreddy and learns from Aspel that he suffered a combat breakdown during the engagement near Godsgift Square in which the Carcers destroyed two engines with a warding - ch 16. Istreddy confirms plainly: I had a breakdown. We can say it. It was too much. - ch 16. Lovern signals Anders through his card play that he holds a weak hand; she reads him and matches his grin - ch 16. When Quellery announces that he has secured an invitation for the Heretics to attend Brandery's meeting with the Carcer grandees at the Pandaemonium, Anders declines, citing duty - ch 16. Internally she knows that as the Mouth of the Sea she would have attended at the Pope's shoulder, but cannot risk Lovern seeing both faces; her double life means they must never know each other's faces - ch 16. She masks her disappointment with forced brightness and a parting line: "Have fun," she said. "Fuck a demon for me." - ch 16.

The Peace Talks at the Pandaemonium

Anders is expected at a circle house in Eres Ffenegh but does not attend; Lovern admits he hoped she might be present, and Quellery teases him - "You are actually holding a torch for Anders" - ch 19. Later, in the Pandaemonium bar during the siege talks, Lovern waits for Anders and she does not come; her absence is explained by the fact that she would not enter the Pandaemonium while the Heretics are present, to protect her cover - ch 21.

The Assault on the Lighthouse

The morning after the talks with the Palleseen fail, the Mouth of the Sea takes breakfast with Devil Jack in the Pandaemonium's Middle Parlour, having fled the Lighthouse's dawn ritual - ch 24. She confesses her unhappiness: she joined the Fisher King cult only because she was the Pope's first adherent, the religion frightens her, and she wants to worm her way back onto army books - ch 24. She promises to cover for Jack regarding Reddaen, falsely reporting that the Palleseen got to him - ch 24. The narration identifies Jack as the only person who "knew her" and could keep her sane - ch 24. She entered the Pandaemonium through the back door used by rakes from the Right-city, treating it as a place of refuge from the Lighthouse - ch 24.

In the Lighthouse's Eye chamber, the Mouth serves as butler while the Pope of Tides hosts Hamriddy oa Galeaff and Niev ea Galeaff; she observes the city's politics from the stair-head - ch 27. When Niev warns that Pal soldiers are past the wall, the Pope sends the Mouth to mobilise the cult's armed members; she relays the orders and watches them march off with batons, knives, axes, and boathooks - ch 27. Returning upstairs with fresh wine, she arrives as the Eye's chamber wall explodes inward; a shard of glass the size of a kite shield cuts Hamriddy nearly in two, and the Angler's Eye lens is cracked and ruined - ch 27. Drawing on army-medical instincts, she tries to treat Hamriddy but he dies of blood loss - ch 27. Three Palleseen commandos burst in from a summoned supernatural forest; one is already dead from a wound in the back. The Mouth draws her knife as the Fisher King manifests and stabs one soldier, driving him from the shattered window - ch 27. The Pope is killed by a charged rod fired by the surviving soldier - ch 27. The Fisher King's divine grasp searches for a new champion; the Mouth shrinks back, refusing the honour - ch 27. The surviving soldier turns and the Mouth recognises him as Lovern; he sees her - ch 27. Her grief for the Pope is tempered: "He could have been worse. Not the greatest of epitaphs but one so few people merited." - ch 27. The notes confirm she is a former army support member, not combat arms, and the cult's fighters do the actual fighting - ch 27.

The Culling Lists

Anders is shot in the calf and hiding with Lovern in a hidden house (an ironmongers shop, upper rooms) two streets from the Gaelensreach, between the siege lines - ch 33. She reveals she was "with" the Fisher King cult; Lovern had planned to vouch for her and smuggle her back inside the Palleseen lines - ch 33. Quellery, whom Lovern pulls from a mob of looting Carcer civilians, warns them both not to return to camp: Correct Speech is "cleaning house," Lovern's reputation as dead is useful, and Anders would be "peeled" for the cult-mark - ch 33. The reason Anders is hiding is resolved by the book: she joined the Fisher King cult, was shot, and cannot return to camp without being culled by Correct Speech - ch 33.

The Challenge to the Lich Queen

Quellery returns to the Heretics' tent and tells Aspel and Istreddy what he witnessed on the walls: Anders as "the maybe-traitor," Lovern hiding, the Stoat's indifference - ch 35. Quellery concludes, "I was right to tell him not to come home." - ch 35.

Past midnight, the night before the final Palleseen assault, five figures - the former Mouth of the Sea and four Palleseen officers in uniform - enter the Upper Parlour of the Pandaemonium; the room tenses for violence, but the Mouth waves it down and demands a drink - ch 36. Niev ea Galeaff and Kiffel ea Leachan recognise the Mouth, thought dead; she announces she brings "defectors" rather than prisoners - ch 36. She explains that the cults and hospital crew defected to avoid being rooted out by the Culling Lists and the post-war hard-line on orthodoxy in Pallesand - ch 36. She vouches that the defection is not a trick - ch 36.

The Final Assault at the Gaelensreach

On the final day of the siege, Anders is present in the Pandaemonium as the second-most senior member of the Fisher King cult - ch 41. When the Palleseen breach the Pandaemonium and Istreddy is shot dead after transforming into a werewolf to fight his own countrymen, Anders accepts the Fisher King's offer of championhood; the god manifests, blessing the defenders - ch 41. She fights with a baton alongside Quellery and Aspel during the street fighting in the Pandaemonium - ch 41. Lovern vanishes mid-battle, taking a hidden charged rod that Anders had kept for him - ch 41.

In the aftermath, the dead are sent to the sea: Istreddy and Lovern among them. Anders weeps for Lovern at the sea-funeral - ch 42. She has inherited the role of Pope of Tides against her will - ch 42. At the quayside she bids Devil Jack farewell and tells him she has demands for the Fisher King; she will not accept the Pope role passively - ch 42. The notes record that she loved Lovern, or was going to, and he died saving her; she will not let go of the idea of their happiness - ch 42.

Relationships

• Ollery - Her commanding officer, whom she calls "Chief." She runs his supply chain, procures his contraband pamphlets, and flings her arms about him after near-death; he calls her "boy," sends her on errands he knows she will botch, and privately acknowledges owing her a bonus. He sends her away from the escape specifically to spare her - ch 3, ch 16, ch 19, ch 46.

• Masty - Her closest bond in the series. He is "the best damn man," "her old comrade," "family." She punches him, hugs him fiercely, whoops with relief when he returns, and dreads reporting his loss to Ollery. He becomes King of Bracinta; she punches him and leaves anyway because he will not come back. In the second book their distance is implied by her refusal to enter the Pandaemonium while the Heretics are present - ch 23, ch 30, ch 51, ch 16.

• Maric Jack - She gives him his name, strips him into a uniform, and thereafter teases, torments, protects, and fights beside him. She punches him on sight and hugs him from behind in grief. He is the one person who knows why God will not heal her. In the second book they share tin cups and the greeting "Not dead yet," and she is the only person who can keep him sane - ch 3, ch 13, ch 30, ch 8, ch 24.

• Cosserby - Unrequited. He is in love with her; she likes him, slaps his ass for the colour he turns, pokes his bald spot, and calls him "a stupid son of a bitch" while hugging him fiercely. He is her "only current ally" in a prison cell. She cannot recall a single heroic deed he has done, because he hadn't been that kind of man - ch 21, ch 32, ch 44, ch 47.

• Alv - Banders reveres her aesthetically: "Alv was the most beautiful woman in the world, as far as Banders was concerned. And Banders didn't even like women that way." She checks on Alv's condition with practical tenderness, holding back from mockery when Alv looks "exhumed from a tomb" - ch 3, ch 16.

• Lovern - In the second book, Banders saves the best grins for him, would "save" him if everyone were lined up for sacrifice, and suppresses the feeling because her infiltrator role means the two faces must never meet. He waits for her at gatherings she cannot attend. He dies saving her; she weeps at his sea-funeral and will not let go of the idea of their happiness - ch 8, ch 16, ch 21, ch 42.

• Prassel - The department's commanding officer. Banders holds leverage over her via the coronation dinner's secrets and insists she return to command: "the only senior officer in a hundred miles who can actually give a coherent order." She calls her "Magister," a title that would be a court-martial offence for an Accessory. They depart for the army together; Banders admits she fears going back alone - ch 51.

• Tallifer - Close colleagues in the department. Banders "had been holding a torch" for Tallifer and knew saying it "wouldn't help." Tallifer's exasperated affection is constant; he reads her absence as "being Banders" and later notes someone has slit the throat of Banders's bonhomie - ch 14, ch 47, ch 45.

• The Fisher King - Consecrated to him by an accident of childhood vandalism - she punched his statue in the sea-caves beneath her orphanage. She calls him "the Stick-Man," refuses his championhood in the Lighthouse, and accepts it only when she can say "You need us." She inherits the Pope of Tides role against her will and intends to make demands of the god - ch 44, ch 27, ch 41, ch 42.

• The Pope of Tides - Her first master in the cult, whom she served as Herald. She knew him before he was Pope, when he was a Decanter. She fears him and his god; she entered the cult only because she was his first adherent. After his assassination she weeps for him with the epitaph: "He could have been worse. Not the greatest of epitaphs but one so few people merited." - ch 24, ch 27.

• Devil Jack - A former military acquaintance. They share the old greeting "Not dead yet," pour tin cups, and he is the only person who "knew her" and could keep her sane. She promises to cover for him regarding Reddaen. He is the one she goes to when the Fisher King's claim breaks her - ch 8, ch 24.

• [[the-tyrant-philosophers/Thurrel|Thurrel]] - The Archivist who forces her to confront the Fisher King's claim. He treats her with unexpected respect, shares a secret, and gives her Jack's gods as a peace offering. She is wary of him throughout - ch 44.

Notable Quotes

"You are now Accessory... You, you are an Accessory in the Palleseen Army" - Banders, processing Maric Jack, House of Open Wounds, ch 3

"Only because everyone 'incorriges' me." - Banders, to Masty, House of Open Wounds, ch 10

"They're the ones that come after the orange ones... Just hope we don't get as far as the purple ones. I didn't sleep for a week after those, and when I did, the fucking dreams, man. Reason help me, the dreams" - Banders, explaining combat salts to Jack, House of Open Wounds, ch 12

"You poor son of a bitch. Religion really does screw you up, huh? One more thing to bring the Perfection" - Banders, to Jack, House of Open Wounds, ch 17

"Jack, I never wanted to be special" - Banders, to Jack, House of Open Wounds, ch 44

"I'm not anyone's" - Banders, to Thurrel, House of Open Wounds, ch 44

"Come on, Masty. We're your people. We're like family" - Banders, to Masty, House of Open Wounds, ch 51

"Decent conversation didn't survive the reverence." - The Mouth of the Sea, alone with Devil Jack, Pretenders to the Throne Of God, ch 8

"Have fun. Fuck a demon for me." - Anders, parting from the Heretics, Pretenders to the Throne Of God, ch 16

"He could have been worse. Not the greatest of epitaphs but one so few people merited." - The Mouth of the Sea, on the Pope of Tides, Pretenders to the Throne Of God, ch 27

Tags

1. orderly · #former-cohort-broker · #palleseen · #bracite-conscript · #secret-agent