The-tyrant-philosophers/Hellgram

Hellgram is a foreigner in Ilmar, a former specialist soldier from a world beyond the Anchorwood, who spends the events of City of Last Chances working as bouncer at the Anchorage taproom in the Hammer District while searching five years' worth of districts for a wife he refuses to believe is dead. He is a man defined by a single, unyielding devotion: his soul was linked to his wife's in combat, "two halves together," and her disappearance at the edge of the Anchorwood during a gas attack on their home world reduced him to a searching instrument, "a hilt" whose "beautiful killing blade" was gone. His arc in the first book moves from marginal muscle at the edges of the Game and the Reproach to a full-tilt assault on the Vultures' Fort, where he discovers that the centipede creature kept in their pit is his wife, and where he kills the Vultures' leader Carelia to free her. He is, in the narrator's words, a man who "didn't fit" in Ilmar and who remains, throughout, a thing "evolved for the depths of the sea brought suddenly to the surface."

In Days of Shattered Faith, Hellgram is revealed to be the Under-warden of the House of Hard Angles - the same person, now recognised by Happy Jack in the Fever Lodge. His wife is the Warden of the House of Hard Angles, the vast segmented creature whose wards and the House's necromantic architecture have imprisoned her for centuries alongside generations of Under-wardens. The second book follows his desperate engineering of a device to shatter the House's spiritual walls, his brutal wounding by Palleseen soldiers, his rescue by the Fever Lodge crew, and his final passage through the Waygrove portal with his wife and the Warden, trailing the Palleseen world for a chance at home. The Under-warden and the Warden are co-conspirators, lovers, and mutual prisoners; his entire arc across both books is the question of whether a soldier can ever stop fighting long enough to go home.

Hellgram matters to the series as the thread that connects the Anchorwood's otherworldly horrors, the Reproach's immunity, the House of Hard Angles' necromantic machinery, and the Great War's spillover into Ilmar. He is the one character who moves between these zones untouched by their local magic, and whose personal tragedy - a soul-link severed by an interdimensional transit accident - illuminates the mechanical and emotional logic of the Wood, the Waygrove, and the wards that bind them.

Character

Appearance

Hellgram is a long-boned, big, bony man whom Palleseen witnesses describe as "haunted" - ch 36. In his working life at the Anchorage he wears a glass-eyed leather mask; when mobilised for the Reproach or the Fort he adds hoses, lenses, a conjured helm, knives, cannisters, and a sword he calls from the netherworld - ch 15, ch 42. As the Under-warden he wears a taxidermied-machine mask, braces, and shirtsleeves, sometimes with remnants of a non-Palleseen uniform visible - ch 7, ch 45, ch 49. His right fighting hand is the site of severed tendons re-set by Jem; he heals his own wounds by carving sigils into his forearm with a consecrated knife - ch 42. Others notice his emotional opacity: Ivarn Ostravar finds "no human warmth or contact" in him - ch 31. He speaks awkward Pel in the House of Hard Angles - ch 7.

Personality

Hellgram is cold, monomaniacal, and "not all there" in the colloquial sense - useful, efficient, and emotionally sealed to everyone except the obsession that drives him - ch 24, ch 27. Jem calls him "safe" precisely because his devotion to his missing wife makes him unreachable to anyone else - ch 15. He is indifferent to the Allorwen refugees, to the politics of the Gownhall, to the Game; "He didn't care about any of it, or didn't want to" - ch 42. His single-mindedness is total: Langrice sees behind his mask in the Fort and recognises a devotion that would "burn everything else at its altar" - ch 49. He is not cruel for its own sake; he obeys a soldier's code, pays comrade's debts, and apologises to allies - ch 42, ch 46. But his capacity for violence, when the one link is threatened, is absolute: he cuts the Varatsin Duke in half, detonates wards to free a killing creature, and dismantles Carelia's guards without hesitation - ch 18, ch 44. Langrice's private assessment - that he is "a perfect employee" whose "Ilmar is seeping into him, replacing him piece by piece with locally sourced materials, erasing what he was" - captures the slow dissolution she watches with unease - ch 24.

Beliefs & Motivations

Hellgram lives by one rule: find his wife. "I've not searched there yet" is both his justification for entering the Reproach and his entire philosophy of persistence - ch 15. He refuses to accept her death. Who knows? But I must see - ch 17. He will not touch her when he finds her, because "We are of elsewhere, she and I. But what a terrible place to be caught in. I have to look" - ch 15. He obeys the bonds of soldiers even when the war is over: he owes Langrice a comrade's debt, and the "bonds of soldiers remain" even when without war-pressure he is losing his shape - ch 42. His relationship to the Warden is not servitude but marriage: "She is my wife. My soulmate. Who am I to deny her anything?" - ch 44. He is bound to the Warden not by the House's wards (which would release him if he chose) but by the fact that "the Warden cannot leave" and he will not leave without her - ch 29. His stated desire, confirmed to Drathel, is simply: "We want to go home. We've been trying for... long" - ch 29.

Affiliations

• Anchorage - bouncer

History

City of Last Chances

The Murder of the Sage-Archivist (ch 1-3)

Hellgram serves as bouncer at the Anchorage, a foreigner in the employ of Langrice, watching the window for Palleseen patrols and guarding the hidden back room where the Game of chaq is played - ch 3. When Ochelby and his escort enter the Anchorwood following the Indwellers, Hellgram signals Langrice that two sentries remain at the trees - ch 3. After a beast kills Ochelby and panic erupts in the taproom, Hellgram catches Fleance's wrist, physically expels him from the room, and bolts the door behind him - ch 3. Langrice, anticipating a Palleseen interrogation of the Anchorage, remarks, "Nobody is getting any sleep tonight" - ch 3.

The Proclamation of the Wood (ch 4-8)

Hellgram appears only briefly the following day, described as a long-boned bouncer and "Langrice's man"; he brings tea to the Indweller who enters the Anchorage and later warns Lemya's group to leave - ch 6.

The Assembly of the Reproach Expedition (ch 9-16)

On the evening the expedition is assembled, Hellgram arrives at the Anchorage dressed for the Reproach rather than for work: knives, cannisters, and a glass-eyed leather mask, gear "from Where He'd Come From" - ch 15. He evicts locals from the corner booth so that Jem can serve the gathering, then yields his own seat when Shantrov Sirovar and Vidsya Sirovar join the table - ch 15. Years earlier, Hellgram had stumbled out of the Anchorwood collapsed and calling a name; after he stopped a gang from assaulting Jem, Langrice gave him a job on the spot - ch 15. Jem loves him in silence but accepts his unreachability; his devotion to his missing wife makes him, in her words, "safe" - ch 15. As Hellgram prepares to leave, Jem wants to say "Don't," but he says only "I'll take care," and explains, "She might be there. Trapped" - ch 15. When Jem asks whether he has looked everywhere, he replies, "I've not searched there yet," and adds, "Will not touch her. We are of elsewhere, she and I. But what a terrible place to be caught in. I have to look" - ch 15.

Into the Reproach (ch 17-18)

Hellgram joins the party crossing the firebreak into the cursed district - ch 17. The Reproach "has no hold on him. He's not a part of its world" - ch 17. He performs a divination using incense, a compass, and a book of tables, detecting a disruption in the Reproach's influence and pointing toward the Ducal estate grounds - ch 17. When Grymme spots a figure calling from a broken tower, Hellgram confirms someone is holding out inside - ch 17. His stated purpose for entering the Reproach is to cross regions he has not yet searched; Ruslav summarises it: "He means his wife. The dead one." Hellgram responds, Who knows? But I must see - ch 17.

When the Varatsin Duke arrives, Hellgram demands, "Where is my wife?" and cuts down a courtier; the Duke attempts to "banish" him, and Hellgram cuts the Duke in half - ch 18. The Duke reforms from bones, earth, and branches, drawing a gem-hilted enchanted sword; Hellgram remains untouched by the court's enchantment, described as "Something that neither would nor could belong to the Reproach" - ch 18. He shouts "She's not here! Go!" and runs, leading Ruslav and Lemya back through the firebreak into morning - ch 18. The Anchorwood beast erupts from the trees behind them; Hellgram draws a sword from nowhere and wounds the beast, but is bowled over. The beast abandons him to pursue Ruslav and Companion-Archivist Nasely - ch 18.

The Hanging at the Donjon (ch 23-26)

Hellgram returns to the Anchorage bruised and grim from the Reproach expedition; his wife remains lost in the Anchorwood - ch 24. Langrice's narration characterises him as useful, cold, monomaniacal, "a perfect employee," and weighs privately whether his wife is dead, waiting, or running from him, admitting she exploits his obsession to get errands and intelligence done - ch 24. She reflects, "Ilmar is seeping into him, replacing him piece by piece with locally sourced materials, erasing what he was," and thinks, "She's dead. Or never even made it through the Wood" - ch 24. Hellgram is sent to buy eggs because the usual farm stall was shut down for operating a printing press with raven-and-hawk pamphlets; he returns with eggs, cheese, ham, and a torn official Perfecture poster announcing a public hanging - ch 24. He points out that Ruslav and the student girl went with him into the Reproach, connecting their condemnation to the expedition - ch 24.

The Rescue from the Donjon (ch 27-31)

Hellgram discovers Cheryn's stabbed body when he comes to remove the chamber pot from the hidden cellar behind the Anchorage's false wall - ch 27. Evene arrives with Lodge soldiers and suspects Hellgram or Langrice killed Cheryn over a gambling debt; Hellgram is dragged down and forced to his knees by four of Evene's men, offering only mute, animal defiance - ch 27. Langrice negotiates his survival, insisting, "He's not all there, it's true. Wife died and he won't stop looking for her. But he wouldn't just knife someone" - ch 27. As Evene's men leave, one strikes Hellgram on the way out; Jem comes back down and helps him to his feet, and he responds like an automaton, all inward - ch 27.

In the cellar after the faked execution, Hellgram retrieves the lost-property trunk of clothing and blades that Langrice provides for Lemya, Ruslav, Yasnic, and Fyon to arm themselves - ch 29. When Fleance materialises in a fog demanding "his treasure" and attacks Ivarn Ostravar with a knife, Hellgram physically throws Fleance off Ivarn and draws a Forbiddance sigil in the air - a "silver-green," "wire-sharp" mark that repels the Heron and clears the fog - ch 31. He tells Ivarn, "I hit him with a Forbiddance. But it won't hold long. He's not of the Wood, nor of here, nor anywhere" - ch 31. Ivarn thinks of it as "Foreign magic... Something from beyond the Wood," and finds Hellgram emotionally cold, "no human warmth or contact" - ch 31.

The Last Calm Night (ch 32-36)

Hellgram escorts seventeen Allorwen refugees to a hidden cellar beneath the hidden cellar of the Anchorage, bringing the total to nineteen plus the wards - ch 36. When Fleance, possessed by an Indweller ghost wearing its flayed skin, bursts in, he slashes Hellgram across the palm; Jem bandages the wound with Divinati paper - ch 36. Hellgram remains at the Anchorage with the refugees and Jem as Evene escorts Blackmane and Langrice out toward the Fort under the dawn sky - ch 36.

The Battle of Gownhall Square (ch 37-41)

On the day of the failed Siblingries' march, Yasnic reaches the Anchorage door and Hellgram flings it open, sword in hand, goggled and masked, arm bloody with cuts - ch 41.

Hellgram's War (ch 42-44)

Hellgram's chapter opens with the narrator's flat assertion: "He didn't fit" - ch 42. He recalls the Great War on his home world - gas, demon artillery, screaming monsters - and the narrator notes, "He didn't think of the war anymore. Which wasn't true" - ch 42. He was a specialist soldier, soul-linked to his wife, "two halves together," masters of the trench; the narrator states, "They had not made Hellgram into a weapon. They had made him into a hilt, and now his blade, his beautiful killing blade, was gone" - ch 42. The night of the failed offensive, gas fell "like a sulphurous curtain"; they emerged from the Anchorwood into Ilmar at night, but she was too far ahead, desperate to track the war, and the chain went slack. She was gone - ch 42. Five years of fruitless searching follow; he is nearly out of districts, and thinks, "Am I free, now?" Answering: no. More chains - ch 42.

In the present, Jem has re-set the severed tendons in Hellgram's right fighting hand, cut by the Indweller ghost in Fleance's body - ch 42. Hellgram carves healing sigils into his own forearm with a consecrated knife from his medical kit, draining three tablethi and scribing around Jem's woven magic, then drinks two vials of preserved rest he decanted a year before - ch 42. He reflects that without war-pressure he is losing his shape, "a thing evolved for the depths of the sea brought suddenly to the surface," but the bonds of soldiers remain; he owes Langrice a comrade's debt - ch 42. When a priest in the taproom wants something from him, Hellgram says, "You do what you want. I'm going after her," meaning Langrice, taken by the Vultures to the Fort - ch 42. He pulls on his mask, hoses, and lenses, conjures his helm, shakes his straps and packs, flexes his healed fingers, and calls his sword from the netherworld: "He was a soldier of the Great War" - ch 42. The narrator closes, "The Vultures had no idea just what spectre they had invited to their feast" - ch 42.

Hellgram appears in an archway at the Vultures' lair, then stops dead, shudders, and retreats; Langrice realises the rescue she staked on is not happening - ch 44. He is subsequently brought in as a prisoner; Carelia identifies him as Langrice's "chucker-outer" and he is dragged to the pit's edge - ch 44. Hellgram smiles, breaks a glass ward from his gauntlet cuff, and detonates the wards binding the centipede creature in the pit; torches and lamps die, and the creature escapes - ch 44. He draws his spectral sword but points it at Carelia, not the creature; the centipede coils protectively around him, and Evene is in the creature's jaws, being dismembered - ch 44. He reveals, "You had my wife. All these years, you had my wife" - ch 44. When Carelia threatens to burn Blackmane's wards with her rod and Blackmane begs Hellgram to hold, Hellgram replies, "She is my wife. My soulmate. Who am I to deny her anything?" - ch 44. The creature rushes Carelia; her first shot destroys the wards and a finger, her second damages the creature's legs, but it seizes her, lifts her to the ceiling, and kills her - ch 44. Afterward, Hellgram kneels before the creature, touching his brow to its mandibles; Langrice touches Blackmane's arm and says, "Let's go home" - ch 44.

The Reproach Breaks Free (ch 45-49)

Hellgram sits vacant beside his wife in the Anchorage taproom, which is crowded with students, Gownhall academics, Allorwen refugees, and Hammer District people; Blackmane's nineteen fugitives shelter there - ch 47. Langrice announces "The Wood's open" and the warding bundle is placed on the counter for passage - ch 47. Hellgram nods to go through the Wood; Langrice sends him off, tells him to keep hold of his wife, and gives him no back-pay - ch 47. When Jem asks to go with him, Langrice refuses: "Not with him. Not with the pair of them. You think you see one monster over there, but there's two, believe me" - ch 47.

In the aftermath, Hellgram is absent from the Anchorage. Jem is still moping over him; Langrice recalls his words in the Fort and what she saw behind his mask - single-minded devotion that would "burn everything else at its altar" - ch 49.

Days of Shattered Faith

The Attack on the House of Hard Angles

In the aftermath of the assassination attempt on the House of Hard Angles, the Under-warden arrives at the scene where Loret lies stabbed in the side, pressing a hand-held device that clicks, sparks, and gives off a "faltering blue radiance" to her wound, causing her to scream; his insectoid creature looms in the dark behind him - ch 7. He is described as the Warden of the House of Hard Angles's assistant, wearing a taxidermied-machine mask and speaking awkward Pel - ch 7. The chapter narrates the origin of both the Warden and the Under-warden: both emerged from the masked monks' monastery at the Waygrove at the start of the war, caused trouble, and were co-opted as the prison's rulers - ch 7. Gil lies to the Under-warden while tying off Loret's shawl with torn fabric - ch 7. The Under-warden commands his creature to go or stay, and regards it with ambiguous devotion: "His charge, his ward, his mistress, his god, who even knew?" - ch 7.

Dekamran's Escape to Peor

Seven days after Dekamran's imprisonment, the Under-warden visits the cell in the House's deep underground levels, speaking Pel, asking why a death god's prison holds living prisoners and whether they are ghosts - ch 20. When the Warden emerges from below as a vast segmented creature, the Under-warden caresses its flank with evident affection; he is described as the Warden's human servant, "inextricably bound to it" - ch 20. Happy Jack mediates with the Warden on the Under-warden's behalf; the two men share drinks and "important club business" - ch 20. Two days later, Gil and Drathel arrive with the Under-warden; Drathel empties a sack of religious artefacts, tablets, statuettes, and jewellery onto the floor as payment to the Warden's collection, items obtained not by free trade and ready coin - ch 20. The Under-warden, consulting with the Warden's presence overhead, agrees: "She says yes. And tell Jack, yes. We have our deal. Yes." - ch 20. The Warden then lunges from the dark, seizes the cell-door section of bars, and tears a hole in them, allowing Gil to embrace Dekamran through the opening and flee with him - ch 20. The Under-warden's bribe arrangement leaves Gil "seriously in hock" to Decanting - ch 21.

Drathel's Operations in Alkhalend

Drathel marches her escort to the House of Hard Angles and demands to see the Under-warden, invoking her papers - ch 29. She finds him at the edge of the central necromantic chasm, several levels down. When she probes his desire to go home, he confirms: "We want to go home. We've been trying for... long." - ch 29. The Warden arrives, a segmented serpent-like creature from another world with compound eyes and crooked fangs, bound by the wards; the Under-warden reaches toward it with frustrated need - ch 29. Drathel offers him a bag of Palleseen artificer materials (copper wire, crystals, brass cogs) to aid his secret device-building, in exchange for access to the House's deepest secrets; he accepts - ch 29. He then shows her the crypt: a single sarcophagus at the building's heart, surrounded by a thousand trapped ghosts that have been passively charging the entire structure like a building-sized tableth over centuries - ch 29. He is confirmed as a living alien magician from beyond the Waygrove, imprisoned by wards that would release him if he chose, but who stays because the Warden cannot leave - ch 29.

The Arrival of the Salient

In the days following the assassination at the House of Hard Angles, the Under-warden is ushered into the Fever Lodge by Happy Jack, described as a big, bony man, "haunted" - ch 36. Loret had thought him trapped in the House; Enshili corrects her: "Not him. She is." (referring to Caecelian) - ch 36.

Gil's Arrest and the Destruction of the House of Hard Angles

Drathel enters the House of Hard Angles for what she suspects is her final visit and observes the Under-warden in his chamber, where he has built a machine from her stolen Decanter equipment, wired in copper to the House's own sigil-system, with a chalkboard covered in alien-notation calculations of stress, tolerance, and power flow - ch 44. She deduces his plan: to breach the House's spiritual walls and free the Warden's cursed centipede monster, powered by her stolen gear; she has already ordered a squad of soldiers to descend and destroy it - ch 44. She characterises his methodology as: The man's a sledgehammer in a crystal cave. - ch 44.

In the House's bowels, the Under-warden sits by Pal work lamps, working far beyond his brief on a device from his home world - a terrible place of war - ch 45. He recalls explaining his origin to Happy Jack; Jack found it preferable to stay anywhere else, and the Under-warden had no answer for why return, only force of habit - ch 45. A squad of Pal soldiers enters, batons levelled, wearing wards Drathel gave them; the Under-warden, in braces and shirtsleeves, stands and stares, incredulous - ch 45. The centipede creature bursts from the darkness and attacks, but the soldiers' wards protect them - ch 45. The Under-warden fights with a silver sword that sears flesh, bone, and magic wards, killing one soldier and shorting out another's wards, then clips three fingers from a Pal woman before being shot three times by baton-fire, falling, and losing his sword - ch 45.

The soldiers dismantle his work while the creature writhes impotently against Drathel's wards. Jack, the Reckoner, and Oathan arrive; Jack is unarmed and skinny, the Reckoner slight and unnoticed, Oathan big and drawing most of the batons - ch 45. The Reckoner strips the soldiers' wards ("a finger on the scales"), and the creature kills every soldier - ch 45. Jack props up the Under-warden, calling him by name; Oathan forces a pain potion down his throat. The Under-warden lurches up, staggers to the wall, reconnects wires with shaking hands, and begs: "Please," the Under-warden gets out. "She needs to be free." - ch 45. The Reckoner cannot take his wound because it "belongs to a different world," but she corrects his maths, adds sigils, and makes the final wire connections - ch 45. The House shudders; the ghost-trap cracks spiritually; the wards go out "like candles in a storm" - ch 45.

In the aftermath, the Under-warden tells his wife: "You have to go." He made a deal - they help in the Waygrove, she tries to find home - ch 45. Oathan spits bitterly about the unsettled bill; Jack shouts he is not going; Oathan gives him another potion and black salts - ch 45. The creature wraps around the Under-warden, sinks fangs into his shoulder (venom, potions, and salts sustaining him), and he gasps: "Get me out. And then we'll all get out." They escape through the insubstantial avalanche of ghosts, finally laid to rest - ch 45. Jack and the Under-warden are characterised as "Jack the Viper's beloved and the Under-warden. The founder members of the Difficult Wives Club." - ch 45. The House of Hard Angles is revealed as a ghost trap built by ancient Imperial necromancers, and its wards had imprisoned the Under-warden's wife and all previous Under-wardens - ch 45. The Under-warden's wife is freed; his own survival remains uncertain at this point, sustained only by venom, potions, and salts - ch 45.

The Surgery and the Duel in the Constellar Gardens

Deep inside the Fever Lodge, Tally performs emergency surgery on the Under-warden through the night, extracting bone fragments; his many-legged wife watches from the ceiling, causing the man to stay conscious only through Oathan's deliberate infliction of pain ("acts of unmercy") - ch 46. Happy Jack assists Tally as a nurse - ch 46. At dawn, Tally declares the Under-warden will live: "He'll live! Means you bloody better keep your end of the bargain. We don't do charity any more. Except for Jack and he's an idiot." - ch 46. The Reckoner brings hot water to wash blood away, and the Under-warden tells her: "For the fight. For the work. For getting us out, comrade. I owe you more than I can pay back." She replies: "Well I owe the universe more than I can pay too. So somewhere we're quits." - ch 46. The Reckoner acknowledges she cannot affect beings "from outside the world" (him, or Caecelian) - ch 46. The Warden is present in the room, on the ceiling, "uncurling down" and glowering at the Under-warden's wife until the creature retreats - ch 46. Tally insists they leave at sundown - ch 46.

The Battle for Alkhalend

The Under-warden, still wounded, travels by wagon away from Alkhalend in braces and shirtsleeves with remnants of a non-Palleseen uniform; his demon wife prowls the jungle fringes, silencing all beasts and brigands - ch 49. Tally rages at the wagon's slow pace and at Jack for following the Under-warden's moral lead - ch 49. They arrive at the compound of the Alborandi monks at the Waygrove; the Under-warden's wife is their protection, making expensive Palleseen magical tricks unnecessary - ch 49. At the portal, where the trees bend to an infinite moonlit perspective, the Warden breaks from the trees to bear the wounded Under-warden from the wagon, coiling beneath his armpits and wrapping him in a "cloak of legs" - ch 49. The Under-warden reaches out to comfort Jack, who has been "disbarred" from the Difficult Wives Club because his wife is gone - ch 49. Tally, the Reckoner, the Under-warden, and the Warden step through the portal; Oathan and Jack remain with the wagon - ch 49.

Relationships

• Langrice - He is her bouncer, her "man," her most reliable instrument of violence and errand-running; she took him in when he stumbled out of the Anchorwood and gave him a job on the spot - ch 15. She trusts him absolutely with the Anchorage's hidden rooms and the Game, brooks his monomania, and exploits his obsession for intelligence gathering while privately wondering whether his wife is dead, waiting, or running from him - ch 24. She protects him from Evene's men by insisting "He's not all there, it's true... But he wouldn't just knife someone" - ch 27. He owes her a comrade's debt and goes to the Fort to rescue her, then breaks down at the sight of the centipede creature - ch 42, ch 44. She fires him with no back-pay, sends him through the Wood, and remembers behind his mask the single-mindedness that would "burn everything else at its altar" - ch 47, ch 49.

• Jem - She loves him in silence and accepts his unreachability; she calls his devotion to his lost wife what makes him "safe" to be near - ch 15. Loving a foreigner is "absolutely forbidden" among the Divinati, a prohibition she acknowledges without flinching - ch 15. She re-sets the tendons in his fighting hand after the Indweller ghost severs them, and comes back down to raise him from his knees after Evene's men beat him - ch 27, ch 42. She wants to go with him into the Wood; Langrice refuses, saying "Not with him. Not with the pair of them" - ch 47. After he leaves, she is still moping over him - ch 49.

• The Warden of the House of Hard Angles - His wife, his soulmate, his "beautiful killing blade." In the House of Hard Angles she is the vast segmented creature bound by necromantic wards; he is her "human servant, inextricably bound to it," caressing its flank with evident affection - ch 20. He regards her with ambiguous devotion: His charge, his ward, his mistress, his god, who even knew? - ch 7. In the Vultures' pit, he reveals "You had my wife. All these years, you had my wife" before detonating the creature's wards and kneeling before it, brow to mandibles - ch 44. He spends Days of Shattered Faith building a machine to shatter the House's walls because "She needs to be free" - ch 45. During his surgery she watches from the ceiling; the Warden and the centipede are the same creature, and the Under-warden is the bridge between them - ch 46. She bears him from the wagon through the jungle, silencing beasts and brigands, and carries him through the Waygrove portal in a "cloak of legs" - ch 49.

• Happy Jack - Co-founders of the "Difficult Wives Club," both married to creatures beyond human ken - ch 45. They share drinks and "important club business"; Jack mediates with the Warden on the Under-warden's behalf - ch 20. Jack calls him by name in the House's bowels, props him up, refuses to leave him, and is called a "bloody idiot" by Tally for following the Under-warden's moral lead - ch 45, ch 49. The Under-warden reaches out to comfort Jack after Jack is "disbarred" from the club because his wife is gone - ch 49.

• Drathel - Antagonists. She invades the House demanding the Under-warden's Decanter equipment, has soldiers descend to destroy his work, and calls his methodology "The man's a sledgehammer in a crystal cave" - ch 44, ch 45. Her wards protect the soldiers who shoot him three times. He still accepts her bag of artificer materials in exchange for access to the House's secrets, because he needs the components for his device - ch 29.

• Oathan - An ally and reluctant financier. Oathan forces a pain potion down the Under-warden's throat in the House's bowels, resents the "bill going unsettled," and provides black salts - ch 45. He spits bitterly at the Fever Lodge's generosity but provides the pharmaceuticals and stays with the wagon at the Waygrove - ch 45, ch 49.

• The Reckoner - An ally who cannot affect beings "from outside the world" but who corrects the Under-warden's chalkboard maths, adds sigils, and makes the final wire connections that free the Warden - ch 45, ch 46. He tells her "I owe you more than I can pay back"; she replies that she owes the universe more than she can pay, "So somewhere we're quits" - ch 46. She brings hot water to wash blood from his wounds - ch 46.

• Tally - The surgeon who operates on him through the night, extracting bone fragments from his chest while his wife watches from the ceiling. Tally insists he will live only if the Fever Lodge keeps its end of the bargain: "We don't do charity any more. Except for Jack and he's an idiot" - ch 46. She rages at the wagon's slow pace toward the Waygrove - ch 49.

• Ivarn Ostravar - A brief, one-directional bond. Hellgram physically throws Fleance off Ivarn and draws a Forbiddance sigil to clear the fog; Ivarn registers only the foreign magic and the emotional cold - ch 31.

• Ruslav - Fellow travellers into the Reproach. Hellgram leads Ruslav and Lemya back through the firebreak; Ruslav is subsequently condemned for the expedition, a fact Hellgram connects to their shared entry - ch 18, ch 24.

• Fleance - A recurring nuisance and, via the Indweller ghost in his body, the cause of the severed tendons in Hellgram's fighting hand. Hellgram's Forbiddance sigil repels the Heron's fog but won't hold long. He's not of the Wood, nor of here, nor anywhere - ch 31, ch 42.

• Carelia - The Vultures' leader who kept Hellgram's wife in the pit. Hellgram kills her with the freed centipede creature - ch 44.

Notable Quotes

"She might be there. Trapped." - Hellgram, City of Last Chances, ch 15

"I've not searched there yet." - Hellgram, City of Last Chances, ch 15

"They had not made Hellgram into a weapon. They had made him into a hilt, and now his blade, his beautiful killing blade, was gone." - Narrator, City of Last Chances, ch 42

"She is my wife. My soulmate. Who am I to deny her anything?" - Hellgram, City of Last Chances, ch 44

"The Vultures had no idea just what spectre they had invited to their feast." - Narrator, City of Last Chances, ch 42

"Please," the Under-warden gets out. "She needs to be free." - Hellgram, Days of Shattered Faith, ch 45

"I owe you more than I can pay back." - Hellgram, Days of Shattered Faith, ch 46

"The man's a sledgehammer in a crystal cave." - Drathel, Days of Shattered Faith, ch 44

Tags

1. soldier · #bouncer · #foreigner · #demon-lover · #great-war