City of Last Chances

Adrian Tchaikovsky · The Tyrant Philosophers

City of Last Chances is the opening novel of The Tyrant Philosophers, a standalone fantasy set in a single occupied city. It follows the Palleseen conquest of Ilmar, a Maric city-state whose ancient compact with a forest called the Anchorwood grants passage to other worlds, and whose foreign rulers have imposed an ideology of "Correct Thought" through five bureaucratic Schools. The Occupation is three years old. The Sage-Archivist who governs the city's learning is killed inside the Wood when his protective ward is swapped for a straw doll, and the incident ignites a chain of factional manoeuvring, supernatural corruption, and street-level revolt that escalates over a handful of days into open insurrection, a workers' strike, a student barricade fight, a demonic uprising in the factories, and the final breaking-open of a cursed district called the Reproach.

The novel is told through a rotating mosaic of close-third viewpoints: a last priest of a dead god, a Vulture street-thug, a Gownhall student, a Palleseen Inquirer, an Allorwen pawnbroker, a foreign soldier searching for his lost wife, a Zenotheist priestess sowing chaos, and several others whose threads converge in the climactic fighting at Gownhall Square and the Wood's threshold. No single character governs the narrative; the structure is deliberately polyphonic, and the book's moral argument emerges from the collision of these perspectives rather than from any one protagonist's arc.

As the first volume of The Tyrant Philosophers, City of Last Chances establishes the series' central conceit: that the gods of a conquered people persist as diminished, shabby, resentful entities clinging to their last worshippers, and that the machinery of empire-its schools, its languages, its power cells called tablethi-is indistinguishable from a more ancient magic it claims to have superseded. The book resolves the Ilmari rising but leaves the wider Sway, the Anchorwood's further worlds, and the fate of its surviving cast open for subsequent volumes.

Plot

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

The novel opens with Yasnic, the last priest of God, scraping through a day of poverty in occupied Ilmar. God lives on a shelf in his room, emaciated to the size of a cat, shrinking nightly, and demanding blankets Yasnic cannot provide. God's strictures are absolute: "Bring me the faithful, priest. Or convert her here and now. But to unbelievers, nothing." - ch 1. When a student girl asks for a blessing on an "endeavour" she embarrassedly calls "an art exhibition," Yasnic declines to fake one, and she gives him a blanket out of pity - "Mad but honest. Apparently, that was enough to get you a blanket these days." - ch 1. He burns the blanket as a sacrifice because God is cold. That night, news arrives that the Sage-Archivist of the School of Correct Erudition has been killed in the Anchorwood, two streets away. - ch 1

The Sage-Archivist Ochelby's final hours are then narrated from his own point of view. He arrives at the Anchorage inn with an escort of twenty soldiers and his secretary Nasely, plans a "formal embassy from Pallesand" into the Wood, and indulges a private vice at Mother Guame's circle house beforehand. His warding bundle is swapped for a straw doll while he is vulnerable. In the trees, the Anchorwood beasts appear - "It made a sound like deep, liquid chuckling." - ch 2. Ochelby fires his baton (the beasts are immune), shoots the lead Indweller, and begs the creature to take Nasely instead: "Go after her! Look, there she goes! She's escaping you! Take her, not me!" - ch 2. He is bitten in half. Nasely flees into the darkness. - ch 2

That same night, the chaq Game runs at the Anchorage. Langrice and Blackmane coordinate to fleece newcomers; Ruslav gambles badly; the nervous Heron Fleance stakes circle chalk from Mother Guame's and, unable to match the pot, produces a perfect warding bundle of Ochelby's design. Immediately the ground shakes: the beast that killed Ochelby erupts from the trees, kills a sentry, and chases the retinue woman. In the panic the bundle vanishes - someone at the table grabbed it. Hellgram expels Fleance and bolts the door. "Nobody is getting any sleep tonight." - ch 3

The Proclamation of the Wood (ch 4-8)

Ruslav, a Vulture thug, attends the art exhibition not for Lemya's sake but in pursuit of a courtship game called the Pursuit. He encounters the paintings of Shantrov Sirovar and is genuinely shattered by them: "The art saw through all the fine clothes and affected manners to the creature Ruslav knew himself to be, the dog he kept chained until it was time to unleash it. He was seen." - ch 4. Benno finds him outside and relays the Bitter Sisters' order to hunt Blackmane for the treasure Fleance brought to the Game. They find Blackmane's shop already ransacked by Palleseen soldiers. - ch 4

Blackmane, who has survived four prior executions by last-minute pardons, is led to the scaffold a fifth time. The hangman Hoyst offers silk nooses and upsells. A fifth pardon arrives. The crowd is disappointed. Hegelsy, Fellow-Inquirer of Correct Speech, stops him to demand information about the stolen ward and the Sage-Archivist's murder. Blackmane walks through the Hammer Districts, returns to his ransacked shop, learns the Pals are searching for a "skinny little riverman," and dictates a message naming Ivarn Ostravar and Statlos Shrievsby to Hegelsy. - ch 5

At the Anchorage, Lemya brings Yasnic inside and recites forbidden Maric poetry from a table. An Indweller enters and proclaims the Anchorwood closed to Pallesand: "The folk of Pallesand have shed the blood of the Wood. They are barred from the trees on pain of death. Let it be known among all your kin. You are forbidden our ways until restitution is made." - ch 6. The Statlos orders the mask removed and takes the Indweller to the Donjon. At the Gownhall, soldiers arrest Ivarn Ostravar in his own study; students throw books and stones. - ch 6

Vidsya Sirovar, acting "beak" of the Ravens, attends a Vulture meeting at the Fort where Useless, the Heron who commissioned Fleance's theft, is sentenced to enter the Reproach. A messenger's door-bang startles Useless into the centipede-demon's pit. The meeting dissolves without unified action. At the Sirovar townhouse, Lemya demands they rescue Ostravar; Vidsya weighs the danger and offers only papers for legitimate access. - ch 7. Ivarn, in his Donjon cell, tasks two students with carrying a message to Blackmane: find and move a Pal woman out of the Reproach. He tells Shrievsby, "You'll never find it." - ch 8

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

Mother Guame, interrogated by Correct Conduct and beaten, is transferred to Fellow-Invigilator Temsel of Correct Appreciation. She reads Temsel's suppressed curiosity and confesses to everything she denied the Monitors, offering to demonstrate conjuration "In private perhaps. For you. For your better education." Temsel echoes the phrase. Guame is released. - ch 9

Three groups leave the Donjon: Lemya and Shantrov bearing Ostravar's words; Shrievsby and a squad toward the Reproach; Guame toward Blackmane's shop. The city is surveyed in a mosaic chapter: the factories that "guzzle demons," the Reproach as "a hole in the collective vision and memory of Ilmar that nobody can look straight at," the students at the Gownhall gates. Shrievsby storms Ostravar's rooms, destroys paintings and cuts books, finds nothing. - ch 10

In the Reproach, Shrievsby's squad is half-consumed by the district's madness. His soldier Plummel responds to the starvelings in antique Maric; Murredy repeats a courtly greeting in the same voice. The Anchorwood beast tears through the dancers, ignoring the starvelings but seizing Murredy. Shrievsby hears Nasely screaming from a tower and runs after her, but when he opens his mouth to answer her, antique Maric pours out against his will. - ch 11

Blackmane receives Ostravar's letter in his shop, pours a binding spirit for Guame - "To the ongoing health of my good friend Ivarn Ostravar" - and refuses to act for three nights. He predicts the targets are already dead: "They will be wearing the phantom velvet already." - ch 12. Hegelsy secures thirty soldiers from the rotting Perfector Culvern, who sits in a bronze bath consumed by the Old Duke's curse: "The Duke's last revenge, to pass his affliction to his conqueror." - ch 13. The expedition assembles at the Anchorage: Ruslav, Lemya, Hellgram, Dostritsyn, Meraqui, Grymme. Jem watches Hellgram leave for the Reproach and whispers "Don't." He replies, "I've not searched there yet." - ch 15. At the Tosthevar factory, a demon breaks its wards because the Kings Below shipped a political dissident in its place; Aullaime re-binds it and Orvechin watches "the look of betrayal, in a monster that had been negotiating in good faith." - ch 16

Into the Reproach (ch 17-18)

The expedition crosses the firebreak. Grymme, already corrupted by a prior solo trip, spots a broken tower and cries, "See, what guests I have aquir'd for your delight! New friends and faces for your revels!" - ch 17. The full Varatsin court materialises: minstrels, jousters, lords in antique finery. Ruslav kills the mad Shrievsby with a thrown knife. Nasely is revealed in the tower window, her protections crumbling. Dostritsyn and Meraqui flee; Grymme joins the dance. - ch 17

In the tower, Nasely panics and shoots Lemya; Ruslav reflexively shoots Nasely in the shoulder. Hellgram demands "Where is my wife?" and cuts the Varatsin Duke - a composite of rats and bones - in half. The Duke reforms. Lemya pulls Ruslav from the Duke's seductive trance. They drag Nasely through the firebreak into morning. The Anchorwood beast erupts behind them; Hellgram wounds it with a spectral sword but is bowled over. The beast turns on Ruslav and Nasely. He goes down, reaching for a knife. The beast lunges, jaws closing like a trap around his body. - ch 18

The Healing of Ruslav (ch 19-22)

Lemya hammers on Yasnic's door. Ruslav lies gutted in the street. Yasnic explains God's stricture: "I can only heal the faithful." Ruslav offers money; it isn't about money. He fakes death, then reveals he "agreed" to God's faith to scam a healing: "Got you! You and your god! Easy marks, the pair of you!" God confirms: "He's one of mine now." When Ruslav shoves a soldier to draw attention from Yasnic, his wounds reopen instantly - "You raise a hand against another, and it all comes back." The soldiers seize Ruslav, Yasnic, and Lemya. Nihilostes catches Yasnic's eye and vanishes into the crowd. - ch 19

Fleance, hiding at the Anchorwood's edge, watches the beast carry Nasely's broken body to the Indwellers as an offering. He follows the Indwellers through their mist into the city. - ch 20. In Correct Speech's cells, Ivarn Ostravar sits with an Indweller prisoner and learns Nasely is dead. Lemya, Ruslav, and Yasnic are thrown in. Fyon, Dorae, and Tobriant arrive next. Soldiers take Yasnic away. - ch 21

Nihilostes infiltrates the Vultures, the Siblingries, and the Gownhall faculty, planting seeds of uprising. At the Gownhall she tells the academics, "The whole Gownhall was like a stack of tablethi waiting for the word to explode." Alone in her room, resolved by Yasnic's arrest, she decides to "implant the seeds of chaos into every fertile mind she could find." - ch 22

The Hanging at the Donjon (ch 23-26)

Culvern confronts Yasnic in the decanting chamber, demanding he heal the Duke's curse. "My flesh eats itself and is never consumed nor sated." - ch 23. Yasnic explains the non-violence stricture; Culvern cannot accept it: "the Perfecture would collapse in days." He threatens: "We'll render your divinity down into tablethi and use them to shoot every Ilmari who demands we release you." God refuses an exception: "No exceptions." - ch 23

Langrice reads the execution poster from Hellgram: the healer, Ruslav, the student girl, and Ivarn Ostravar are condemned under "Working Against the Perfecture." Blackmane announces he will attend "to see that they do it properly." - ch 24. Fleance, wearing a murdered Indweller's cloak and mask, murders Johanger Tulmueric with a knife, searching for "the ward": "Where is it?" - ch 25. Dorae narrates the scaffold: the crowd has come for Yasnic and Ostravar, not the others. Ostravar asks wryly, "Will it? Ah well, I'm reassured then." The trapdoors open. - ch 26

The Rescue from the Donjon (ch 27-31)

Evene finds Vulture ambassador Cheryn stabbed dead in the Anchorage's hidden cellar with bloodied footprints leading nowhere. Hellgram is beaten as they leave. - ch 27. Orvechin tracks his muck-stained boots across the Sirovar carpets, demanding Raven solidarity with the Wielding of the Hammer. "How many teacups do they cost? How many carpets?" Petric Lesselkin retorts. - ch 28

Lemya wakes in a cellar of corpses. Blackmane bribed Hoyst with the Old Duke's cursed rope to fake the execution. God's visible presence transfers to Ruslav - a "little hairy sod in rags" - because the Palleseen reclaimers tried to decant Him. Yasnic follows Ruslav, unable to part from a divinity he can no longer see. Blackmane confronts Ivarn over a Pal artifact Ivarn admits he never possessed. "You're all dead. The moment the Pals understand that isn't true they'll not rest." - ch 29. Hegelsy discovers the Indweller's mask was the only item stolen from the Evidence Office and consolidates military command without Culvern's authorisation. - ch 30. Ivarn reaches the Gownhall, is seized by soldiers, and Shantrov Sirovar runs the Statlos through with an heirloom sword. "It's Maestro Ostravar! He's alive!" - ch 31

The Last Calm Night (ch 32-36)

Revolutionary flyers naming the Phoenix of Telmark spread across Ilmar. Hervenya kills a Palleseen soldier from a Gownhall window - "We got one!" - and Fyon leads the students in a charge that routs the first patrols. Lemya drags a haunted Ivarn before the crowd as their resurrected hero. Ruslav talks Shantrov through the guilt of killing - "The sword's only shiny until you shove it into someone" - and kisses him in his studio. The Bitter Sisters execute prisoners and assign looting targets while Nihilostes watches the strands converge. Vidsya drives Shantrov from the city in a coach; the masked madman Fleance knifes her on the Rathbridge. The Reproach speaks to Shantrov at its ward-line: The undoing of all things was so wretchedly simple. - ch 32-35. Evene takes Blackmane and Langrice hostage from the Anchorage at dawn. - ch 36

The Battle of Gownhall Square (ch 37-41)

Students hold the barricades against Palleseen forces with crossbows, pikes, and boiling soup. Vorkovin's parlay under the Charter of Correct Conduct is broken when Hegelsy receives word of the labourers' march and orders an immediate advance: "Arrest this ringleader. Move in on the overlooking buildings and the barricades. Immediate advance, all troops." - ch 37. On Liberation Way, a contract assassin on a Gownhall rooftop kills Father Orvechin mid-speech - "a Maric syllable" whispered to ignite the tableth - and the Siblingry march shatters when Nisbet flanks to slaughter the families at the rear. - ch 38

Ruslav charges the soldiers invulnerable but screaming: Damn religion. To hell with all religion. - ch 39. Ivarn is hanged a second time and cut down by students; Hervenya is run through defending him. Afterward Culvern receives the Indwellers' demand for amends and places a wooden object on his desk. - ch 40. Yasnic tends the wounded while discovering he can see every abandoned god in the Gutter Districts: "Ilmar was where religions went to decompose." - ch 41

Hellgram's War (ch 42-44)

Hellgram recalls the Great War, his soul-linked wife, and the weapon that scattered them through the Anchorwood. He carves healing sigils into his own arm, drinks vials of preserved rest, and arms himself: "He was a soldier of the Great War." - ch 42. Aullaime descends into the factory pens and invokes a final-appendix clause - "How negligent of me" - to re-contract every bound demon to kill Palleseen soldiers. - ch 43. Hellgram storms the Vultures' Fort, shatters the wards binding the centipede creature in the pit, and reveals it as his transformed wife: "You had my wife. All these years, you had my wife." The creature tears both Bitter Sisters apart while Hellgram calls his spectral sword and she coils protectively around him. "She is my wife. My soulmate. Who am I to deny her anything?" - ch 44

The Reproach Breaks Free (ch 45-49)

Lemya, possessed by the ghost of Tatiana Eleretsin, dances toward Palleseen soldiers who back away in terror. Brocklesby's volleys pass through phantoms as the Reproach's host of glorious and rotting Ilmar materialises: "They were glorious and bright. They were terrible and dark." The Wood opens behind it. - ch 45-46. God partially heals the dying Shantrov and Lemya at the Anchorage under the old covenant, banishes the Varatsin Duke back into a rat-gnawed mask, and the bronze standard is carried northward by the two students. Langrice opens the Wood for the refugees and students, sends Hellgram and his wife through, and watches the forgotten gods gather outside her door. Culvern forces Hegelsy to wear the dead Indweller's mask as restitution. Yasnic promises they will come back. Langrice says, Something'll come back wearing their faces. - ch 47-49

Themes & Motifs

The novel's governing argument is that power and magic are the same substance wearing different uniforms. The Palleseen Schools present themselves as rational administrators who have "deconstructed" primitive magic into tablethi, yet their authority rests on the same extractive logic as the Old Duke's hangings or the Kings Below's demon contracts. Culvern's curse - inherited at the moment of the Duke's execution - literalises the transfer of a tyrant's rot to his successor. Hegelsy's career is built on finding fractures and applying pressure; his final humiliation is being made to wear a dead man's mask, reduced to the same instrument of restitution the Indwellers demand from the Perfecture. - ch 13, 30, 48

God's stricture of non-violence is not a moral lesson but a mechanical constraint: "Rules and axioms were what wove gods from the cosmos. Cut through them and they sprang back into nothing." - ch 19. The book repeatedly tests whether principle can survive contact with a world that operates on force. Ruslav's invulnerability costs him every fight; Yasnic's apostasy opens his eyes to every abandoned god simultaneously; the Siblingries' lever against the owners requires the demon to keep turning the wheel. Orvechin recognises the compromise and hates it: "he was a collaborator in a larger war." - ch 16. There is no clean position; the book's moral texture lives in the awareness of that.

The resistance factions are not noble allies but competing predators - the Vultures are "the criminal Lodges by another name," the Ravens are Armigers protecting property, the Shrikes are murderers who "dig a grave and invite no mourners." Even the student uprising is shaped by Nihilostes, a priestess of chaos who receives her mandate from a scorpionfly god and plants her agitations from a table in the corner. The novel refuses to grant any resistance a unified virtue; its solidarity is situational, reluctant, and often self-defeating. - ch 7, 14, 22, 34

The Anchorwood and the Reproach function as mirrors of each other: one is a living forest that opens and closes its gates; the other is a petrified court of the dead that never stops dancing. Both corrupt by seduction rather than violence - the Reproach does not attack, it invites you to join the revels. Ruslav escapes only by anchoring himself to Shantrov's painting, a perception of the dark that refuses the illusion's comfort. - ch 17-18. The Wood, by contrast, requires the old covenant, a ritual labour of passage that Langrice performs as "someone whose place it was to live at the boundary between Wood and world." - ch 44, 47

Language is another axis of control. Pel is designed to be "easy to learn, clear in meaning, the ideal means to communicate Correct Thought," yet the Palleseen themselves freight it with barbed subtext. Maric poetry cannot be rendered in it. Ivarn Ostravar's self-image as "a custodian of Maric culture" is both genuine and self-serving; the book never lets him be only one. - ch 6, 21, 48.

Timeline

The Murder of the Sage-Archivist

• ch 1-6 - the killing of the Sage-Archivist - the Sage-Archivist of the School of Correct Erudition murdered in the Anchorwood, two streets from the boarding house; reported as wildfire news
• ch 1-27 - the Occupation - Palleseen rule over Ilmar; three years underway; locals recruited as collaborators in pale-grey uniforms; Correct Thought ideology
• ch 2 - Ochelby's murder - the swapping of the warding bundle for a straw doll at Mother Guame's circle house, leading to the Anchorwood beasts killing Ochelby and most of his escort
• ch 3-31 - Game - gambling venue also called "the Anchorage Game"; run by Langrice; where Vulture soldiers and others drink and gamble

The Proclamation of the Wood

• ch 4 - the Sergyen incident - the previous day's botched "chastisement" of Sergyen the chandler by Ruslav, Benno, and Ergice; Sergyen fled or was killed; a substitute was roughed up instead
• ch 5-47 - Varatsin Duke - named as one authority whose turf is the Anchorage, alongside the Pals and the city
• ch 6 - the Proclamation of the Wood - the Indweller declares the Anchorwood barred to Pallesand on pain of death until restitution is made

The Assembly of the Reproach Expedition

• ch 13 - the arrest of the Gownhall scholar - a Gownhall academic detained for matters "touching the heart of the Perfecture"; caused continuing student unrest
• ch 16 - the Kings Below's purge of dissidents - a street-to-street roundup of political organisers in the Infernal Realms; the rounded-up demons were shipped to Ilmar on contracts as if they were ordinary labour

Into the Reproach

• ch 17 - the usurpation of the Varatsins - the Armiger families cast down the Varatsin Dukes, exterminated their line, scattered their adherents, and took their palace and grounds

The Healing of Ruslav

• ch 19 - the Palleseen conquest of Nihilostes' homeland - temples torn down, gold and relics carried off or rendered for raw magic; the big gods' persecution of little gods ended, but the conquered people's subversive cults were exported across the Sway

The Rescue from the Donjon

• ch 28-48 - the Hammer - the workers' action of abandoning the mills to confront the Duke and Armigers; "Wielding the Hammer was always just abandoning the mills to go remind the Duke and the Armigers who it was put money in their posh velvet purses"
• ch 28 - The hangings - a recent large public execution carried out by the Pals; treated by the workers as the rope tightening around the city's throat; included a Gownhall maestro and a student
• ch 28 - The night of the thirteen - the Pals kicked in doors across the Hammer Districts, arresting thirteen Siblingries organisers; took them to the Donjon
• ch 30 - The raid on the Impounded Evidence Office - an overnight incursion using a mind-erasing mist/fog; two workers left mentally empty, one vanished, only the Indweller's mask taken

The Last Calm Night

• ch 32 - Last Calm Night - the night between the student uprising and the expected Palleseen counter-assault; "the city holds its breath"

The Battle of Gownhall Square

• ch 37 - labourers march - the factory mob crossing the river toward Gownhall; Nisbet reports it is larger than expected and containment is uncertain
• ch 37 - Wielding of the Hammer - mentioned as something Vorkovin has "only the vaguest notion" of; presumably a planned uprising action elsewhere in the city
• ch 41 - the Siblingries' march - the failed uprising; produced the wounded flooding into Yasnic's cellar and the subsequent arrests

Hellgram's War

• ch 42 - the Great War - the total war on Hellgram's home world; "Great, because on his world, it had eclipsed all creeds and boundaries and divisions and occupations"; deployed gas, demon artillery, monsters, and the weapon that separated Hellgram from his wife

The Reproach Breaks Free

• ch 45 - Aullaime's diversion - the freeing of mill demons that attacked Palleseen patrols across the city; marked by ragged demon bodies near the Anchorage
• ch 46 - the Reproach's breaking free - "The Reproach had left its prison at long last and had come to the Wood"
• ch 48 - the Advent of Perfection - a historical moment referenced in relation to how long the people of the Anchorwood have "lived with the Wood and what's beyond it"

Cast

• Ivarn Ostravar · ch 3-47 - imprisoned Maestro of the Gownhall; interrogated once by Hegelsy; reflects on the stolen warding bundle, his political self-image ("the Great Nationalist"), and the Indweller beside him; receives Lemya, Ruslav, Yasnic, Fyon, Dorae, and Tobriant into the cells
• Blackmane · ch 3-49 - Allorwen pawnbroker, sorcerer, and community leader being prepared for execution for the fifth time; a last-minute pardon saves him again. Afterward he returns to his ransacked shop in Mirror Allor and sends a message naming his enemies to the Palleseen spy-master
• Reproach · ch 7-49 - a cursed district of Ilmar created by the Varatsin Dukes' curse; colloquially called "madness-town"; full of mad descendants, illusions of Varatsin grandeur, and undying courtly revels; its boundaries may be growing
• Ruslav · ch 1-49 - Vulture thug; stares at a painting left for him by Lemya, burns matches without lighting a fire, violently puts down Benno and Ergice to reassert dominance, then meets Carelia at the pit and accepts orders to visit the Anchorage
• Allorwen · ch 1-47 - presumably sharpening knives after Fleance's theft on their turf
• Langrice · ch 2-49 - keeper of the Anchorage; intermediary between the city and the Wood under the old covenant; confronts the Varatsin Duke, deals with Blackmane over the warding bundle, sends off the Allorwen and students
• Lemya · ch 4-47 - student at the barricades around Gownhall Square; has a crossbow, a flag, and a sabre sharpened by Emlar; later distributes water, wine, and tablethi; leads a push of a dining table over the barricade; vaults the barricade; watches Emlar get shot
• Yasnic · ch 1-49 - beggar and priest of God outside the Anchorage; Lemya befriends him, learns he is the last of his faith and that his god is "quite useless"; reveals the Sage-Archivist's death; shields Lemya from the soldiers
• Fellow-Inquirer Hegelsy · ch 5-48 - investigates the raid on the Impounded Evidence Office, discovers the Indweller's mask was the only item stolen, then summons two peers and manipulates them into ceding military control to his authority, effectively sidelining Sage-Invigilator Culvern
• Hellgram · ch 3-49 - bouncer at the Anchorage, foreigner from beyond the Anchorwood; seeks regions of the Reproach he has not yet crossed; searches for his dead wife; unaffected by the Reproach's hold; uses divination tools and a book of tables; remains in the Reproach at chapter's end
• Shantrov Sirovar · ch 4-47 - Armiger student and artist; killed a Palleseen soldier with his family sword; paraded on shoulders in an antique military jacket; struggles with the reality of killing; visits his studio with Ruslav; is ultimately extracted by his cousin Vidsya with Armiger cavalry
• God · ch 1-49 - divine entity; appears as a tiny, wizened, creased creature (a "wrinkled gnome" with a monkey's agility); had been clinging to Ruslav, left him so as not to spoil his happiness, and runs back to Yasnic's heels; cold, crotchety, senile, healing nobody
• the Old Duke · ch 4-40 - predecessors in the ducal seat, once resident on the other side of the river, bearing the Varatsin coat of arms; their knowledge of the Indwellers died with them
• Fleance · ch 3-47 - a Heron riverman and gambler hiding at the edge of the Anchorwood, starving and terrified; he watches the beast arrive, loses the thread of his own self-pity, and follows the Indwellers into the city under cover of their mist
• Ochelby · ch 2-49 - Sage-Archivist of the School of Correct Erudition, second most senior academic of the Ilmari Perfecture; arrives at the Anchorage with an escort to join the Indwellers' crossing into the Anchorwood; his warding bundle is swapped for a straw doll and he is killed by the Anchorwood beasts
• Statlos Shrievsby · ch 1-37 - Palleseen officer of Correct Conduct, formerly Ivarn Ostravar's accomplice in corruption, now carrying out his own death sentence by searching Ostravar's rooms for Ochelby's ward; storms through the Gownhall in despair after finding nothing
• Jem · ch 3-49 - Divinati bartender at the Anchorage; re-set the severed tendons in Hellgram's right hand, woven binding magic through it; keeps trying to move the Allorwen to the cellar; does not want Hellgram to leave
• Guame · ch 2-49
• Mother Guame · ch 2-49 - runs a circle house Ochelby patronises; a "skilled conjurer" and "bawd"; the place where Ochelby indulged his "particular kink" earlier that evening and where the straw doll was hung on the wall before being planted in his satchel
• Carelia · ch 7-44 - Vulture leader and half of the Bitter Sisters; meets Ruslav at the pit's edge, feeds the creature indirectly through a junior recruit, gives orders about the Anchorage and Fleance, speaks of Herons and Pals
• Evene · ch 7-44 - half of the Bitter Sisters, leader of the Vultures (referred to as "Aunt Evene"); arrives with a dozen Lodge soldiers to inspect Cheryn's hiding place, questions Langrice, considers punishing Hellgram, ultimately leaves without violence
• Culvern · ch 9-48 - Sage-Invigilator and Perfector of Ilmar; cursed with a putrefying stench and suppurating skin, receives a delegation of Indwellers to make amends for the killing of one of their number
• Maestro Ivarn Ostravar · ch 7-44 - Gownhall academic, stands tall and dignified, arms tied behind his back, the crowd's second focus; shakes and clenches his jaw before the end; exchanges one wry line with Dorae
• Mother Ellaime · ch 1-39 - Allorwen landlady; eats bread in her kitchen, gives Yasnic special rates for priests, bars the door during Nihilostes' visits so the priestess can flee Correct Speech
• Dorae · ch 21-47 - Allorwen antiques dealer in Mirror Allor, marched to the scaffold and hanged; reflects on his quarter-life of subservience and hidden resistance harbours
• Nasely · ch 2-30 - Companion-Archivist, Ochelby's secretary (twenty years old); watches the trees at the Anchorage, cannot see through them; flees back along the path when the beasts attack, abandoning Ochelby
• Nisbet · ch 30-48 - Fellow-Broker of Correct Exchange; filed her own report placing blame for the Liberation Way clash on Hegelsy, recommended for promotion by Culvern
• Orvechin · ch 6-39 - Father and leader of the Siblingries; a millwright who tracks his working-muck boots onto the carpets of the Armiger district as deliberate provocation; negotiates with Vidsya Sirovar for Raven solidarity ahead of a planned workers' strike
• Vidsya Sirovar · ch 3-35 - Armiger matriarch of the Sirovar family and Raven leader; younger than typical Armiger matriarchs; publicly performs the role of hedonist and ineffectual rake but is in fact a shrewd operator; hosts the negotiation and withholds full commitment to the strike
• Aullaime · ch 16-45 - referred to only as "the conjurer" and "one of the hellieurs"; she descends into the factory, delivers individually drafted contracts to each demon, invokes the final-appendix clause, and demands signatures to send the demons into the streets of Ilmar to kill Palleseen soldiers
• Hervenya · ch 6-45 - student who carries a six-inch knife and wants to be a Shrike; confronts the Raven-affiliated table, starts singing the old factory song
• Kosha · ch 1-41 - previous priest of God, dead; taught Yasnic, raised him in the faith when Ilmar was tolerant and they had three rooms above a tanner's
• Shrike · ch 5-37 - "a lean, twitchy man with a carved-up face" at the Vulture meeting, presumably a Shrike
• the Anchorwood beast · ch 2-20 - grotesque fish-headed creature from the Anchorwood that hunts Nasely and Ruslav through the streets
• the Statlos · ch 1-36 - officer of the Palleseen patrol; hesitates at the Indweller, then orders the mask removed and the figure taken to the Donjon; later arrests Ivarn Ostravar
• Tobriant · ch 21-47 - Allorwen furniture maker/carpenter, protests innocence ("I just make cabinets and chairs!"), is cuffed and kicked by guards, weeps before the drop; Dorae believes him blamelessly honest
• Benno · ch 4-36 - a small, mean Vulture thug who hates Ruslav but is assigned to work with him; finds him outside the exhibition to relay orders about Blackmane
• Father Orvechin · ch 6-39 - Siblingry leader with a distinctive beard and voice; marches at the head of the workers, addresses the Palleseen soldiers with personal anecdotes and appeals to their own class interests, and is assassinated mid-speech
• Fyon · ch 21-37 - Shrike murderer; had been hanged alongside Lemya previously; led the idea of placing students in overlooking buildings; defends a townhouse against Palleseen soldiers, holds the stairs with furniture and batons; shoots through an exploding armoire of gold; sends the students away and fights alone with knives
• Gowdi · ch 6-49 - Gownhall faculty seated at Vorkovin's table, watching him suspiciously
• the student girl · ch 1-26 - ground-floor lodger with her own fireplace, arrived two weeks ago; asks Yasnic to bless "an endeavour" (an art exhibition), gives him a blanket despite his refusal to perform a false blessing
• Emlar · ch 6-45 - student; sharpened Lemya's sabre; distributes spare tablethi; is shot in the shoulder and knee by the Palleseen Hands operator's fire
• Hoyst · ch 5-29 - the executioner/hangman, solicitous ("Wouldn't want you to sustain an injury, eh?"), dressed Dorae's rope in silk, fits nooses with a tailor's attention, dances his usual caper but senses the crowd isn't laughing
• Nihilostes · ch 19-32 - foreign priestess of Zenotheus; visits with tea, attempts to convert Yasnic, offers a pain phial to Ruslav, fades into the crowd at the end with a look suggesting she will exploit the arrest
• Vorkovin · ch 6-49 - Maestro of the music faculty at Gownhall; spent the night drafting demands with Gowdi, Porvilleau, and students; volunteers as ambassador under the flag of parlay; is arrested by Hegelsy's order mid-parlay
• Companion-Archivist Nasely · ch 11-30 - the Sage-Archivist's assistant, hiding in a tower of the palace in the Reproach; calls to Shrievsby for rescue, then retreats in horror when he speaks in the delusional courtly tongue
• Fellow-Broker Nisbet · ch 30-39 - Palleseen commander of the street blockade, School of Correct Exchange; sits on a folding stool under an umbrella, follows the "Pal playbook" of bottlenecking the march, then gives a contradictory "go around" order before the assassin's bolt removes the situation from her hands
• Grymme · ch 15-18 - ruin-diver, third venture, second with Dostritsyn; saw the Varatsin revels on a solo trip and was changed; fully succumbs to the curse mid-chapter, joining the court's dance
• Loruthi · ch 12-36
• Maestro Vorkovin · ch 6-49 - Gownhall master arrested and released, now installed as a "Fellow-Trustie" by the Pals; trying to reingratiate himself with faculty while under constant surveillance
• Sage-Invigilator Culvern · ch 9-30 - the Perfector of Ilmar; described as consumed by an "affliction" that takes "not just his body, but his mind"; Hegelsy considers him unfit to decide and works around him
• an assistant · ch 8-40 - one of Culvern's clerks, "poked her beak around the door" at the end of the meeting; part of a staff who stuff fragrant herbs into long-nosed masks and burn their robes weekly
• Brockelsby · ch 30-46 - Fellow-Monitor of Correct Conduct; presumed dead, ten per cent of his troops missing, another twenty-two per cent showing effects of contact with the Reproach
• Cheryn · ch 3-27 - Vulture ambassador, called "Fish" for obscure reasons; found dead in the hidden cellar with over a dozen stab wounds, killed with "maniac zeal"
• Dostritsyn · ch 15-17 - ruin-diver on his eighth venture into the Reproach; leads the group; motivated by legend and reputation; abandons his goat and leaves Meraqui behind; emerges at dawn with loot intact
• Ergice · ch 4-14 - Vulture thug; accompanies Benno, is slammed against the wall by Ruslav, then joins in laughing at Benno's chamberpot mishap
• Fellow-Invigilator Temsel · ch 9-10 - Palleseen Invigilator of School of Correct Appreciation (Invigilators); conducts the second interrogation with "hungry curiosity" about Guame's conjuration practices; positions as "directly under the Perfector"
• Hellgram's wife · ch 24-42 - lost in the Anchorwood five years ago; Hellgram believes she is still out there; Langrice privately doubts this
• Johanger Tulmueric · ch 3-25 - Loruthi merchant of the cartel, based in Ilmar six months a year; stays in his rooms during the unrest; is murdered by Fleance with a knife while being interrogated for "the ward"
• Meraqui · ch 15-17 - ruin-diver, third venture; needs money for family in Mirror Allor and debts to the Lodges; provides paper charms to the group; charms expire; lost to the Reproach
• Orvost, the Divine Bull · ch 23-41 - a once-mighty bull god with brass hooves and gold-doored temples; forgotten for hundreds of years; God's former rival
• Palleseen sentries · ch 3-20 - two men at the Anchorwood edge who miss the beast entirely, then bungle the response; reinforcements arrive but accomplish nothing
• Palleseen soldiers · ch 4-36 - found ransacking Blackmane's shop when Ruslav and Benno arrive
• Porvilleau · ch 22-39 - Maestro at Gownhall; sat with Vorkovin overnight drafting demands
• Sachemel Sirovar · ch 7-35 - dead former head of the Sirovar family and voice of the Ravens in resistance gatherings
• Temsel · ch 9-10
• the cart driver · ch 10-28 - Allorwen alchemist's servant who gives Mother Guame a lift down Liberation Way toward the river
• the factory woman · ch 41-45 - unnamed Allorwen-accented leader of the hidden group; distributes food, commands the safe-houses network, vows "a sorcerer's revenge" on the Palleseen; splits off toward the Hammer Districts
• the glassworker · ch 22-36 - refugee whose name Blackmane cannot recall
• the lead Indweller · ch 2-40 - masked guide of the Indwellers; speaks to Ochelby, permits only his party to cross; shot and killed by Ochelby during the beast attack; gender uncertain to Ochelby (he decides "the woman")
• the messenger from the Donjon · ch 29-39 - clerk who reports the Vulture assault on the Donjon to Hegelsy
• The servant with the brass plate · ch 22-23 - presents a plate to Gowdi, who taps her pipe out on it
• The servant with the samovar · ch 1-28 - pours expensive tea
• the youth with the standard · ch 46-47 - a thin, dirty youth in an antique military coat with an empty scabbard, carrying a splintered spar topped with a twisted verdigrised bronze sigil; he bows to the dancing woman and rallies the Reproach's host
• Zenotheus · ch 19-22 - scorpionfly god of chaos; Nihilostes received her commandments from his mandibles in a subterranean temple
• Archivist Gadders · ch 23 - a broad Palleseen man in shirtsleeves who operates the decanting apparatus with Riechy; bickers about a chipped cup; dismisses the old ceremony of "cleansing superstition"
• Archivist Riechy · ch 23 - a younger Palleseen woman who works the decanting equipment alongside Gadders; shows more sympathy toward Yasnic; pins her hair in a bun, wears black-painted nails, a slotted leather mask, and goggles
• Auntie · ch 34
• Blackmane's nineteen fugitives · ch 47 - Allorwen refugees sheltering in the Anchorage's cellars
• Brachalven · ch 34 - old man who led the Sisters' efforts over Yennitch Park; executed by Carelia as a Pal informant
• Cohort-Monitor Riggel · ch 30 - the third person who vanished from the Office; a search is underway but seems futile
• Companion-Monitor Estern · ch 30 - head of the Impounded Evidence Office, berated by Hegelsy for the raid; explains the fog/mist and the mindless bodies; his people search the evidence and find only the mask missing
• Culvern's servants · ch 13 - masked attendants with "leather snouts like gargantuan shrews"; one scribbles the requisition
• Estern · ch 30
• Fellow-Monitor Brockelsby · ch 30 - Estern's direct superior; summoned to Hegelsy's office; pouchy, sour, condemned to a provincial post, harbours familial ambitions "back home"; reluctant but ultimately agrees to Hegelsy's plan
• Furenya · ch 16 - oversaw the wards at the Tosthevar factory; also vouched for
• Gadders · ch 23
• Hegelsy's prisoners · ch 23 - "the Indweller," "that lanky, treason-talking academic," and others Culvern offers to release
• his wife · ch 16 - Orvechin's spouse, a day-shift mill-line worker; awake beside him when the demon screams
• Hoyst's trusties · ch 26 - unnamed assistants who "hauled the levers in perfect unison, practised as clock-tower figures"
• Isvillich Tosthevar · ch 16 - Armiger youth, son and heir presumptive of the factory owner; arrives drunk, shouts at workers, threatens wage dockings, is cowed by Orvechin's physical presence
• Mother Elvaer · ch 16 - Allorwen who came over from Mirror Allor to mind the presses; brings news that the Gownhall has ground to a halt under Pal soldiers after an arrest
• Mother Isildor · ch 5 - Allorwen community figure to whom Blackmane sends a note urging the community to brace for further incursions
• Murredy · ch 11 - member of Shrievsby's squad; urges them to move, then turns and speaks in the delusional courtly voice of the Reproach; killed by the beast from the Anchorwood
• Orvechin's wife · ch 28 - told where he was when the Pals came looking for him
• other demons in adjacent pens · ch 43 - the conjurer's "fellows"; one demands "What have we done?" and another says "This is madness"; the POV demon is described as one of "a job lot of twenty" sold by the Kings Below
• Palleseen Hands operators · ch 37 - crew of the linked-baton weapon; one killed, one wounded, a replacement shot before reaching the device
• Petric Lesselkin · ch 28 - scrapherd of the Siblingries; his brother was beaten and arrested that night; present at both meetings; steals a silver spoon from the Sirovar townhouse as they leave
• Petric Lesselkin's brother · ch 28 - beaten in the face and struck with a baton during arrest; children witnessed it; now in the cells
• Plummel · ch 11 - member of Shrievsby's squad; reports seeing Nasely, then responds to the starvelings in antique Maric, revealing she has gone native
• Pravil · ch 33 - another drunk Armiger servant; pushes Yasnic and sneers at him
• Riechy · ch 23
• Sergyen the chandler · ch 4 - a man the Vultures went to "chastise" for talking to the wrong people; has fled the city or been killed
• Shevorn · ch 36 - Vulture thug; sent below to scout
• Tatiana Eleretsin · ch 45 - dead sorceress of the Varatsin court, loved music, held lovers thrall, burned; her ghost is the possession afflicting Lemya
• the abandoned gods of Ilmar · ch 41 - the collective degraded, forgotten divinities that survive in the city's filth; diminished to hand-sized figures; they beseech Yasnic for alms and priesthood because his apostasy left a visible "god-shaped gap"
• The apprentice · ch 28 - brings the scrap cart to ferry the three delegates to the Sirovar townhouse
• The beery shopkeeper · ch 49 - unnamed man on a bar stool whom Langrice glares at to clear a seat for Yasnic
• the big woman · ch 33 - unnamed patron who slams a hammer on the Armiger men's table and orders them to leave
• the boy · ch 5 - an Allorwen errand-child of about eleven who reports on the Pals' searches and the raid on Mother Guame's; Blackmane sends him with money, a note to Mother Isildor, and orders to find Fleance
• The caged bird · ch 17 - Dostritsyn's bird hung on his back; keens and beats its cage as the Reproach's power peaks
• the coachman · ch 35 - drives the Sirovar coach, obeying Vidsya's orders, is later unseen (implied killed by the demon steeds' disappearance)
• the creature in the pit · ch 34 - a glittering winged thing with vast eyes, a scorpion's tail, claws, fangs, and a carpet of limbs; kept alive in the Fort's pit to consume the dead; the Sisters call it "our own bug god"
• the crowd on the Portbridge · ch 35 - processional of banners, flags, children, "bright faces" marching west to east, whom Shantrov mistakes for a general rising
• the dancers · ch 35 - emaciated figures dancing hand-in-hand in the ruins of the Reproach, the voice that speaks to Shantrov
• the dancing woman · ch 46 - a fugitive who steps forward from the group in a daze, executing a pirouette and holding out her hand as though expecting a partner
• the demon · ch 16 - a vast, horned, copper-skinned demon bound to the Tosthevar presses; it broke free because the Kings Below rounded it up as a political dissident in the Infernal Realms; shows "the look of betrayal" when re-bound
• the Divinati woman · ch 2 - small woman behind the bar at the Anchorage; not local, Divinati by appearance
• the Duke of Ilmar · ch 3 - former ruler; "the unmourned Duke of Ilmar had two fighting hawks on his shield"; dead
• the faceless crowned figure · ch 46 - "tall and elegant and faceless, in its bustling hand a gold-topped cane, atop its shapeless head a coronet. Its long cape scurried behind it on a thousand clawed feet"; described as part of the Reproach's host and later approaching the troops as "that hideous, rat-crawling figure"
• the foreign woman · ch 34 - immigrant priest of a bug god; urges the Vultures to unite against the Pals; executed by Evene and fed to the creature in the pit
• the four students unloading the wagon · ch 4 - paste-faced students moving crates; Ruslav startles them by muscling a crate
• The goat · ch 17 - Dostritsyn's slightly drunk goat; transforms into a barded destrier mid-chapter; Dostritsyn releases its leash
• the Gownhall maestro · ch 9 - a Gownhall master brought in after Guame; she knows he will not be beaten or racked, only mildly inconvenienced
• the Gownhall scholar · ch 13 - arrested academic; his detention is the cause of the unrest Hegelsy wants crushed
• the guards · ch 9 - present in the room during Temsel's interrogation, stationed at the back
• the gut-shot youth · ch 47 - Shantrov, wounded and possessed by the Reproach; Ruslav pleads for God to heal him, and Yasnic bargains for a partial healing
• The healer · ch 24 - unnamed; condemned to hang for "Working Against the Perfecture"; Blackmane calls him a charlatan
• The Ilmari girl · ch 24 - new hire at the Anchorage; Jem is training her; Langrice predicts she won't last
• The junior recruit · ch 14 - a terrified boy who empties a stained leather sack of meat chunks into the pit to feed the Bitter Sisters' pet
• The liveried flunky · ch 28 - grudgingly admits Orvechin at the Sirovar townhouse door
• The machinist · ch 22 - solid woman beside Nihilostes at the canteen; angry convert to Zenotheus's message since her son died in a machine
• the mad king · ch 10 - ruler of Teleomarn, held under house arrest by the Occupiers
• the madman · ch 35 - a beggar dressed as an Indweller in a wooden mask, clings to the coach, attacks and kills Vidsya Sirovar demanding an unnamed object ("it"), then corners Shantrov Sirovar at the edge of the Reproach
• the man in the doorway · ch 33 - unnamed solid man who blocks the exit and forces the Armiger men to settle their tabs
• the Maric youth · ch 12 - a street vandal trying to sell a broken magical cat statue to Blackmane; haggled down to five pence
• The mathematician · ch 22 - Gownhall academic who has said nothing but "the precedent" for days; possibly hiding a guilty secret
• The mill-hand · ch 22 - speaks sourly that "someone's pointed them at us"
• the nameless demon · ch 43 - a demon bound in a factory circle; formerly a craftsman who "woven straw to gold, raised palaces for emperors," now reduced to turning a wheel; his name is locked by contract until his bondage ends
• The nameless girl · ch 37 - student fighting alongside Fyon in the townhouse; darts down to strip ammunition from a dead Pal and is killed by three shots
• The old man with the furnace · ch 22 - keeps the academics' furnace burning through a demon contract fifty years old; reports the maestros are up in arms
• the one-handed thug · ch 8 - Lodges prisoner in the adjacent cell, "taken up for violence or larceny and doubtless destined for the noose"
• The Pal officer who reads the terms · ch 37 - unnamed officer under the flag of parlay; reads the Palleseen ultimatum and is flummoxed by Vorkovin's parlay demand
• the Pal woman · ch 8 - a Palleseen woman held in the Reproach; Ivarn wants her found and moved to safety as leverage
• The Palleseen officer · ch 45 - demands surrender from the alley; threatens execution for resistance
• the priest · ch 42 - unnamed priest present in the taproom; has "some story of his own"; Jem explains the situation to him; Hellgram does not listen to him
• the riverfolk leader · ch 7 - "a lean old boy in a grey coat, fingerless gloves and a russet scarf," speaks for the Herons/smugglers/boat people
• the Sage-Archivist of the School of Correct Erudition · ch 1 - second most powerful man in the Perfecture's hierarchy; killed in the Anchorwood that night
• the scarecrow figure · ch 11 - a "gone native" inhabitant of the Reproach who calls himself Count Dirovesnic; addresses Plummel and Shrievsby in antique Maric; shot dead by Shrievsby
• the tableth-maker · ch 18 - unnamed person who gave Ruslav the pirated activation word for his rod
• the tall bony outlander · ch 2 - employee at the Anchorage; proffers mulled cider; a traveller, lost, searching for his wife; came through the grove
• the thuggish lout · ch 26 - unnamed prisoner who railed and sulked in the cells; the crowd ignores him
• the Tosthevar foreman · ch 16 - factory foreman who fetches Orvechin; bullied by Isvillich, reports the demon has broken its wards
• the twenty Palleseen soldiers · ch 2 - Ochelby's armed escort; fire batons at the beasts; most are eaten
• The two Armigers' retainers · ch 49 - unnamed soft-looking men buying an artefact from Blackmane
• the two soldiers · ch 48 - Culvern's men, faces hidden behind leather snouts; hold Hegelsy while the mask is forced onto him
• the two women at the exhibition · ch 4 - visitors with "pinched-lemon faces" who discuss a painting without buying
• the unmasked Indweller · ch 31 - Indweller who shared Hegelsy's cells with Ivarn; sits motionless in the cellar, briefly animates during the fog as though reaching for someone, then goes still again
• The unnamed girl · ch 22 - Vulture, barely more than a girl, exalting at running word between the Bitter Sisters and the Gownhall
• the unnamed Pal officer · ch 39 - officer left in charge at Gownhall after Hegelsy departs; gives the order to hang Ivarn
• the unseen voice · ch 31
• the vast fish-like creature · ch 46 - a thing with "a vast fish-like eye" and "a great slash of a mouth filled with wedge-shaped teeth" that breathes behind Brocklesby in the Wood
• the watcher · ch 38 - unnamed small woman, a professional eyewitness and contract assassin working for "employers"; observes the march from an attic room, takes notes, then kills Father Orvechin with a baton bolt and departs to report success
• the woman in Ochelby's retinue · ch 3 - flees north from the Anchorwood pursued by the beast, screaming that the Sage-Archivist is dead
• the woman officer · ch 33 - a Palleseen soldier drinking inside Mother Guame's circle house with a young male companion
• the Wood's ambassador · ch 20 - arrested by the Palleseen at some earlier point; Fleance used the confusion to slip into the trees
• the young man · ch 33 - a Palleseen soldier with the woman officer
• Tobriant's wife · ch 36 - refugee, herded up from the cellar
• Tosthevar the elder · ch 16 - Isvillich's father, factory owner; Orvechin expects penalties from him
• Uncle Osten · ch 35 - named by Shantrov as a possible troop-mover; turns out nobody was coming
• Useless · ch 7 - Heron who commissioned Fleance's theft; tried by the Bitter Sisters, falls into the pit and is killed by the centipede-demon
• Varlechev · ch 16 - Maric conjurer who drew the contracts at the Tosthevar factory; Aullaime vouches for his competence
• Vinchec · ch 33 - a drunk Armiger servant at the Pledge (taproom) who tells a joke about learning Pel via the tablethi word; is forced to pay for the room
• Vorkovin's handler · ch 49 - unnamed Invigilator of the School of Correct Appreciation assigned as Vorkovin's constant shadow; Langrice knows she indulges vices at Mother Guame's circle house
• Zenotheus, Scorpionfly God of Chaos · ch 32

Places

• Ilmar · ch 1-49 - occupied city, capital of a Perfecture under the Palleseen Sway; formerly home to the Mahanic Temple and many faiths
• Anchorwood · ch 1-49 - the forest/grove outside Ilmar; the dark between the trees "went on forever"; a magical world containing hungry beasts and hidden paths to other lands
• Donjon · ch 3-49 - the prison/fortress in Ilmar housing a torture chamber, Culvern's study, an enclosed yard with a scaffold; its air carries the stench of the Perfector
• Gownhall · ch 4-47 - faculty in "distinctive robes and flared, square-topped hats" among the crowd
• Anchorage · ch 2-49 - a wood-built hostelry on the outskirts of Ilmar, marked by an anchor symbol; predates surrounding architecture; taproom full of hidden alcoves, carved beams, brass trinkets, bones; a doorway (when the moon is right) opens from the grove beyond to other worlds
• Mirror Allor · ch 4-47 - the Allorwen quarter at the edge of the Gutter Districts of Ilmar, named for Allor; where displaced Allorwen sell goods, second-hand magic, and forgeries; windows garlanded with paper charms and painted banners
• Gutter District · ch 7-49 - streets of Ilmar where the truly poor live; north of the Anchorage
• Hammer District · ch 5-49 - a district of Ilmar; some of its people are in the Anchorage
• Armigine Hill · ch 4-49 - where "the ruling classes of Ilmar-that-was re-established themselves" and raised the Ducal Palace, leaving old Ilmar to become the Reproach
• Lodges · ch 3-34 - criminal organisations; employ pickpockets, rely on militia and Occupiers to "weed out the worst"
• Portbridge · ch 5-45 - the bridge across the river between the Hammer Districts and Mirror Allor.
• Ducal Palace · ch 10-48 - the city's seat of governance; the crowd's cheer for hanging the Perfector echoes from it
• Liberation Way · ch 10-48 - the stretch of street from Gownhall Square to the Portbridge, lined with shops with homes and attic rooms above; the route of the Siblingry march and the site of the confrontation
• Telmark · ch 1-15 - a nation; the Divine City "shared no land borders" with it, though its ships put in at every port
• Gownhall Square · ch 10-48 - the public square facing the Gownhall, barricaded by students with desks, chairs, and cabinets
• Allor · ch 1-15 - nation across the border from Ilmar; natives face worse treatment from Occupiers than locals
• Divinate · ch 5-10 - the small community of Divinati immigrants in Ilmar, presenting a united front that masks internal rivalries.
• firebreak · ch 17-18 - ring of streets burned to contain the Reproach; now overgrown with weeds, flowers, rats, and feral animals; contains fifteen-inch bronze sigils at each intersection
• Mother Ellaime's boarding house · ch 1-14 - Ruslav's lodgings; other boarders live upstairs; Ruslav's room has no fire lit for two nights
• Rathbridge · ch 31-35 - a northern bridge; a long, dangerous detour to reach it
• Rehevitz morgue · ch 41-45 - the building whose cistern shelters the fugitives

Groups & Factions

• Pal · ch 1-49 - colloquial adjective for Palleseen, used contemptuously ("This Pal woman," "a Pal baton," "the Pals")
• Indwellers · ch 2-48 - half a dozen appear from the trees in mist, wearing sightless wooden masks, cloaks, staves, and strings of snake oil and mummery; they communicate with the beast, receive Nasely's body, and walk through the Palleseen sentries by secret ways into the city
• Vultures · ch 3-49 - not named directly; implied by the resistance cell members (Fyon the Shrike, the student girl, the Indweller) being rounded up alongside
• Bitter Sisters · ch 4-47
• Siblingries · ch 10-49 - taken from their beds; organisers in mills and factories the Siblingries didn't reach; now held in the Donjon
• Correct Conduct · ch 5-48 - legal code governing parlay rules; Vorkovin cites specific paragraphs and appendix sections of it
• Herons · ch 3-41
• Mahanic Temple · ch 1-49 - mentioned as an institution that would have "some issues" with the students' religious-freedom demand
• Raven · ch 6-49
• Correct Exchange · ch 1-48
• Divinati · ch 2-47 - people of the Divine City, a single coastal city-state south-east of Allor; magicians who live in exacting balance of world-forces; no agriculture, no demon-conjuration; hold Ilmar in contempt; cast out children who fail assessment at sixteen
• Turncoats · ch 4-37 - auxiliary soldiers of Pallesand serving alongside the Pals; the charcoal uniforms of the Pals and light grey of the Turncoats are distinguished
• Correct Appreciation · ch 9-49 - legal code of Correct Appreciation; volume seven, article eight hundred and forty-two second subsection forbids a second execution after a sentence has been carried out
• Correct Erudition · ch 1-48 - the Palleseen school responsible for learning and magic; Ochelby's institution; tasks include "deconstructing primitive magical belief systems" and "deconstructing primitive magicians"
• Shrikes · ch 6-37 - Fyon's faction; "anyone who went Shrike was digging a grave"
• Infernal Realms · ch 10-46
• the Armiger families · ch 4-35 - how the Indwellers historically refer to Ilmar; "Not city, not even town, just houses. The things people had come and built after the forest had been cut back to that one grove"
• the Hand · ch 36-45 - a magical/mystical phenomenon that shatters the barricade at the moment Ivarn is preparing to declaim poetry
• the Kings Below · ch 10-43 - rulers of the Infernal Realms who sold the demon in a batch contract; the original contracts stipulated return to their "pens" / "cells"
• Varatsin · ch 17-47 - ancient family whose curse is named alongside Tatiana Eleretsin's ghost
• Occupiers · ch 3-10
• Pal soldiers · ch 16-31 - a handful drawn to the factory by the noise; Orvechin glowers at them, considers their involvement unwanted
• Ilmari · ch 2-35
• ruin-divers · ch 8-15 - a gutter profession in Ilmar, "more than half of them are Allorwen"; trade carries extreme risk/reward ("Two successful trips could set you up for five years... One successful trip was more than half of them ever got")
• the Palleseen Occupiers · ch 1-10 - military force occupying Ilmar; enforce Correct Thought, arrest for Incorrect Speech and Incorrect Exchange
• the Sirovar family · ch 3-35 - an Armiger house; livery is a quartered shield with harp, crossed scimitars and doubled shells, owl removed post-Occupation; Sachemel was the former head, now dead

Objects & Technology

• Vulture · ch 4-47 - Carelia's ritual of naming and rejecting the Shrike, Heron, and Raven to assert Vulture supremacy; no rehearsal, Evene must prompt the responses
• tablethi · ch 1-42 - uncharged units of power, "grey and lustreless," "familiar from across the city since the Occupation"; used in lamps, batons, and apparently as storage for decanted divine essence
• Heron · ch 4-47
• tableth · ch 1-38 - gold unit of power fitted into a baton; a "nasty little homegrown imitation of a Pal baton" made by a Lodge hack-magician; lasts a couple of shots before splintering
• the Indweller mask · ch 36-48 - a small eyeless mask, "a piece of wood, really, barely carved, painted with faded hues," that belonged to the Indweller killed by Ochelby; Culvern forces Hegelsy to wear it as the one outstanding matter the Indwellers require resolved before reopening the Anchorwood to Palleseen traffic
• The Indweller's mask · ch 6-30 - the only item stolen in the raid on the Impounded Evidence Office; taken from the Indweller arrested at the Anchorage and hanged; its theft implies a targeted rescue operation

Events

• Varatsin Duke · ch 5-47 - named as one authority whose turf is the Anchorage, alongside the Pals and the city
• the Hammer · ch 28-48 - the workers' action of abandoning the mills to confront the Duke and Armigers; "Wielding the Hammer was always just abandoning the mills to go remind the Duke and the Armigers who it was put money in their posh velvet purses"
• Game · ch 3-31 - gambling venue also called "the Anchorage Game"; run by Langrice; where Vulture soldiers and others drink and gamble
• the Occupation · ch 1-27 - Palleseen rule over Ilmar; three years underway; locals recruited as collaborators in pale-grey uniforms; Correct Thought ideology
• the killing of the Sage-Archivist · ch 1-6 - the Sage-Archivist of the School of Correct Erudition murdered in the Anchorwood, two streets from the boarding house; reported as wildfire news

Systems

• Temporary Commission of Ends and Means · ch 2-40 - the supreme ruling body of Pallesand; its first axiom recites its own transient nature; seats held by "ambitious oldsters"; Ochelby aspires to one

Culture

• Correct Speech · ch 5-49 - conducted inspections across factories the previous week, levied fines passed down to workers
• Correct Thought · ch 1-48 - the overarching Palleseen governing ideology and code of rules; Brocklesby's career ladder, the legal framework, and the philosophy of discretion are all framed through it. Distinct from the five administrative Schools (Correct Erudition, Correct Appreciation, Correct Exchange, Correct Conduct, Correct Speech)
• The Peak and the Port · ch 32-38 - a patriotic song of Ilmar, banned by the Palleseen along with "so much else"; an obscene student version also exists

Terms

• Marics · ch 1-46 - the native ethnic/national term for the people of Ilmar; Carelia is "her fellow Marics"; Ruslav calls her "Auntie," "the old term of respect, once just for any Maric matriarch, now fallen into the gutter"
• Armiger · ch 4-49 - aristocratic status; Shantrov Sirovar and Vidsya Sirovar bear it; "Armigine Hill" named for them
• baton · ch 1-36 - a weapon carried by Pallesand soldiers; fires bolts of pale magic powered by tablethi; the Anchorwood beasts are immune to its fire
• Perfecture · ch 1-43 - an individual occupied territory; the Ilmari Perfecture is governed by the School of Correct Erudition
• Fort of the Bitter Sisters · ch 7-49 - underground circular room beneath a mill in the Hammer Districts; contains a pit housing a creature; the Vultures' meeting place
• Pel · ch 1-48 - the Palleseen language, "the perfect language, easy to learn, clear in meaning, the ideal means to communicate Correct Thought"; distinct from the now-extinct native Palleseen
• circle houses · ch 2-43 - establishments where one can have "something conjured up in the image of his heart's desire"; a trade the Allorwen in Mirror Allor control
• chaq · ch 3-27 - "that ancient clash of tiles and symbols of obscure origin"; played in tile-forts with face-up and face-down pieces
• Perfector · ch 10-40 - the title and office held by Culvern over Ilmar as individual occupied territory; appointed by the Temporary Commission of Ends and Means
• Sage-Archivist · ch 6-40 - murdered by the Indwellers; Fleance says "They'd murdered the Sage-Archivist" and that the event broke his control over the Game
• warding bundle · ch 2-36 - a rare and expensive protective item ("sticks and feathers, carven wood and precious metals") that prevents the Anchorwood beasts from attacking; made by "a dozen artisans and enchanters"; the shadow-markets of Ilmar swarm with fakes
• decanting · ch 2-23 - the Palleseen practice of extracting magical power from captured magicians ("magicians ripe for interrogation or decanting")
• demon steed · ch 10-35 - the coach's horses, actually demons; they shriek "more like hawks than horses" and evaporate at the wards of the Reproach
• Fellow-Inquirer · ch 37-40
• hellieur · ch 16-43 - Allorwen word for a conjurer who negotiates and assesses infernal contracts; "a demon repairwoman"
• rasophore · ch 1-19 - a title used by Ruslav to address Yasnic as a priest; no further gloss given
• resistance · ch 10-27
• trustie · ch 8-26 - Hoyst's assistants at the scaffold; they "hauled the levers in perfect unison, practised as clock-tower figures"
• Turncoat · ch 31-34 - a collaborator who props up a Pal office desk
• workers · ch 10-16

Chapter Epigraphs

Chapter 32

"Pull away. Soar on the wings of whatever bird you choose. Carry the word across the city, fleet as thought. The Gownhall flies the banner of the Dukes of Ilmar, the Phoenix of the Kings of Telmark! Your flaming wings carry embers and sparks to the tinder-dry districts of the city! The blood of the Occupiers is shed before its gates! Revolt and uprising! Ilmar forever!"

• a revolutionary flyer/pamphlet distributed across Ilmar; no specific author is attributed in the text

Chapter 43

"Allor's reputation among its neighbours is rooted in their relations with the infernal, that otherworld ruled by cruel princes and monstrous denizens whose services can be bargained for. To a Maric or Palleseen of a century ago, nothing good could come from that place. Traditional Allorwen circlecraft was interwoven with their culture, though. One did not marry or come of age without the otherworldly being bound into the ceremony. That was the gift your family gave you, the blessing on your road. The need of motive power for mills and factory lines gave rise to a new art of industrial conjuring that knew none of the old checks and balances of Allorwen custom. Increased demand led to significant changes in the Infernal Realms, the Kings Below entering into mass contracts for the services of their subjects. The old individual demon-human arrangements were relegated to the circle houses and other illegal trades."

• unattributed reference text (encyclopaedic entry on Allorwen demon-craft)

Chapter 44

"Before there was the city, there was a grove in a great forest. Before there was an inn there was a lone warden, an anchorite, in a hut between the trees. And the tide of human history washed away the forest and threw up the buildings, but the grove it could not touch. And always and forever, there was someone whose place it was to live at the boundary between Wood and world."

• none (unattributed)