Gorbudan

Gorbudan is the eldest son of Oparan, the Alkhand of Usmai, and heir presumptive to the Mirror Throne by martial prowess rather than by the right of first birth. Known across the Usmai court as the Warrior Prince and in Mantekor as the Tiger-Crab, he is the dynastic fault-line around which the entire succession crisis of the series turns: his exile, his raids, his brief and violent usurpation, and his death in battle determine who sits upon the throne, who commands the Tesemer, and how Usmai faces the Palleseen and the Loruthi. No other character in the two books reshapes the political landscape so completely in so short a span, nor is any other figure so vividly caught between sincere conviction and catastrophic miscalculation.

His arc begins in confidence - duelling in pearl-ceilinged halls, laughing with foreign envoys, two exiles already behind him and another ahead - and ends with an anonymous trooper's shot killing him at the palace doors, a deicide's blood on his hands and no historian to record which soldier fired. Between those poles he burns Palleseen holdings against his father's decree, is publicly denounced and banished, seizes the throne in a single wailing-chaos moment at the Waygrove, purges a court in six days, imprisons his younger brother, goads a civic god into slaughter, and loses everything to a night attack he cannot resolve in time. He is the character who makes the reader understand that the books' central conflict is not between good governance and bad, but between two sons who love the same nation and believe, each with terrible sincerity, that only the other's removal will save it.

Thematically, Gorbudan embodies the books' deepest anxiety: that the most dangerous figure in a world of demons and necromancers is "a man who believes." His charisma is undeniable, his courage genuine, his reasons not baseless - and all of it together is what destroys Usmai's stability, gets his brother killed, and leaves a city in mourning for a regime that lasted less than a month. He is the proof that virtue mistaken for wisdom is indistinguishable from tyranny.

Character

Appearance

Gorbudan carries himself as a warrior at all times, even in the halls of state. At the Waygrove he wears his dead uncle Sorthist's old war colours with a clavar at his belt - ch 13. On the Mirror Throne he sits stripped of his father's cushions, a scabbarded clavar laid across his knees, working through a century of administrative business in plain, unornamented fashion - ch 18. At his coronation he appears in the four-panelled corselet of Usmiat noble cavalry armour rather than traditional regalia - ch 17. In battle he rides a taloned Usmiat horse with baton and lance, personally breaking enemy formations - ch 22. His throne at Mantekor is flanked by the open claws of a tiger-crab he killed - ch 5. Observers describe him as "rakish and dashing," "the elder, the hero," the Alkhand who would not smile - ch 10. His face communicates to the Tesemer in the way a commander's body-language communicates to soldiers, and his face in his final moments communicates nothing at all - ch 15. His personal courage was "sung about" in a way that his brother's never was - ch 47.

Personality

Gorbudan is rash, proud, and magnetic in equal measure. Twice exiled for "quarrels born of rash pride" with his father, he leaves a duel laughing with his opponent and drags most of the court out after him - ch 8. His charisma is so complete that his enemies judge suborning his followers impractical - ch 10. He is blunt to the point of crudeness in governance, speaking plainly where his father used a "light touch," and the narrator notes that "the Alkhand's word was an argent cloth, as the saying went. Lies did not become it" - ch 18. He feels genuine fraternal affection beneath his contempt: he tells the imprisoned Dekamran "I don't want you dead, Kama," and Kama, you would have been the best of Alkhands, in any other age - ch 20. He feels guilt over his brothers' fates - over Dekamran's death, over Premath's suicide - and converts that guilt into rage at those he blames - ch 25. Yet he is capable of paralysis under pressure: in the final battle he pauses on a cliff path "trying to work out what to do," and must be galvanised into action by the sight of troops marching on the palace - ch 25-26. He is, in the narrator's framing, "a sincere man. A clear-eyed man. A man who believes" - ch 15. His private thought at the moment of usurpation is "I have done this, he understood, but also, I had no choice" - ch 15.

Beliefs & Motivations

Gorbudan loathes the Palleseen, blaming them for his exile and seeing Pallesand as a predator to be fought - ch 13. He was present when his mother Kaleithi walked away into the Grove, and the loss shapes his conviction that Usmai must not be made soft by foreign accommodation - ch 13. He cultivated the Loruthi friendship of Tarcomir as a deliberate counterweight to Palleseen influence - ch 5, ch 9. He believes the world demands strength and that his father's "light touch" invited predation - ch 18. He sees himself as the rightful heir who was displaced by Kepishi manipulation, declaring the Alkhand named me heir, before the Kepishi twisted him from true - ch 15. He will not permit a living brother to sit on any throne as a potential figurehead for enemies, yet he will not call his decisions murder, insisting of Dekamran's death that it was not murder - ch 18. His ambition is real but not cartoonish: he demands his brother step down "with my blessing," offers to kneel before the throne as a son, and returns to court swearing to cause no trouble - only to reverse that oath within hours when the Alkhand vanishes - ch 13, ch 15.

History

Lives of Bitter Rain

The Cleansing at Alkhalend

Gorbudan is the eldest son of the Alkhand and holds the position of heir presumptive - not by primogeniture but by prowess, a distinction the court acknowledges openly - ch 8. He has already been exiled twice to Mantekor, his fortress stronghold, for quarrels born of rash pride with his father - ch 8. When Angilly arrives in Alkhalend in her first month as Palleseen Resident, she witnesses Gorbudan engaged in a clavamachy duel against Tarcomir, the Loruthi delegate, in a vaulted, pearl-ceilinged hall; both combatants are skilled and the assembled spectators watch out of respect - ch 8. The duel ends when Tarcomir concedes a hit, and the two men leave the hall laughing together; most of the onlookers follow them out - ch 8. Tarcomir has spent six years in post building the rapport that Angilly hoped to establish herself, and Gorbudan appears to reciprocate that familiarity naturally - ch 8. The gender structure of Usmai confines clavamachy to men and skiamachy to women, so Angilly cannot challenge the heir directly: "one does not mix clavamachy and skiamachy. Men cannot duel women, and vice versa. It isn't done." - ch 8. She must find another path to the heir's favour for Pallesand's benefit - ch 8.

The Alkhand's Vigil at the Pools

Three years into Angilly's posting, Gorbudan is known in the capital by the epithet the Warrior Prince - ch 9. He returns to Alkhalend from a month-long hunt, a deliberate absence taken to let tempers cool after arguing with his father over foreign policy - ch 9. Angilly's assessment of him is flatly hostile: he is "a mythic hero whose worst vices are other men's dreamed-of virtues," and she decides she hates him - ch 9. What concerns her is not his personal character but his political orientation: "What should concern her about Gorbudan's accession is that he favours the Loruthi over her own people. As Usmai carries the weight in this part of the world, that will shift the balance of power against the Pals dramatically." - ch 9. Tarcomir has edged out Palleseen influence in Gorbudan's orbit, spending his capital time with the prince - ch 9. At the Alkhand's public vigil at the pools outside the Alborandi's sacred grove, Gorbudan is present among the court and the Alkhand's four children when the masked monks unmask before Oparan and none is Kaleithi, and the Alkhand's composure shatters - ch 9. Afterward, Tarcomir reassures Angilly over ramaht at a hostelery overlooking the waterfalls: "Gorbudan crowned will be a calmer man than Gorbudan prince. The robes of state will weigh him down. There will be concessions." - ch 9. Angilly's deeper unease is not merely geopolitical: she fears the skull, the stone eyes, the succession pattern, and what Gorbudan will want a skull to play with - ch 9. Four days after the vigil, word arrives from Peor that war has been declared between Loruthi and Pallesand - ch 9.

The Waygrove

During the war, Gorbudan leads repeated cross-border raids from Mantekor against Palleseen factoras, mills, and plantations along the Usmiat-Peost frontier, at the Loruthi's behest - ch 10. The connection is an open secret in Alkhalend, though the Alkhand's court publicly denies everything; Angilly writes a polite, useless note to Palinet because she has no sanctioned lever - ch 10. Gorbudan's personal charisma makes suborning his followers impractical, and he has never been near Angilly in person during the war - ch 10. In the speech the Alkhand later delivers at court, Gorbudan is accused of calling the Palleseen people "killers of gods, devourers of ways" and of placing the White Petal Crown on his own brow - ch 10. The declaration itself is the war's political climax: the Alkhand stands in open court and denounces his eldest son - "You have broken my decree. You have taken your followers into Peor. You have set upon the Kepishi of Pallesand, at the behest of the envoy of their enemy." - ch 10. He banishes Gorbudan and all who ride with him; "the Moerends harry them into the sea" - ch 10. Immediately afterward, the Alkhand calls again, "Bring me my son," and names Dekamran heir - ch 10. Gorbudan is sent back to Mantekor; Tarcomir's influence in the court collapses - ch 10. Dekamran never learns what elevated him, and Angilly tells nobody of her role in engineering the scene - ch 10.

- implied, ch 10: The cross-border raids are Gorbudan's doing, confirmed by the Alkhand's public denunciation. - implied, ch 10: Gorbudan's banishment removes the principal obstacle to Dekamran's succession; the throne question, unresolved in ch 9, is settled by exile rather than by contest.

Days of Shattered Faith

The Duel with Tarcomir (ch 1-5)

Gorbudan is the First Son of Alkhand Oparan, the elder brother of Dekamran, and by the time of the events in Alkhalend he has been disinherited and banished to Mantekor with armed followers - ch 3. The chapter states plainly that Dekamran's overseas schooling was arranged "to keep him out of the way of his brother" - ch 3. Gorbudan is described as "warlike" and withdrawn in a turbulent exile - ch 3. His disinheritance resulted from seizing small powers, courting loyalty away from the Mirror Throne, and generating "the growing murmur of adulation about the court" that alarmed Oparan - ch 5. He is called the Tiger-Crab, an epithet named after Usmai's most feared predator; his throne at Mantekor is flanked by the open claws of one he killed - ch 5.

Coregan, the Custodian who imprisons Gil after the duel with Tarcomir, owes his position at court to patrons who backed Gorbudan in the succession - ch 4. Coregan sends a message to Gorbudan reporting Tarcomir's death - ch 5. Gorbudan reads this message and contemplates mutilation, fratricide, or ghost-binding as methods for dealing with his remaining siblings - ch 5. His recent campaign in Peor against the Palleseen is referenced; he burned Palleseen holdings there against Oparan's injunction - ch 5. The narrator poses the question of "the precise minimum level of disfigurement that might render a man definitively ineligible to sit upon the Mirror Throne, without veering into fratricide" - ch 5. Gorbudan feels contempt for Dekamran as a dupe of the Palleseen but bears no true ill will - ch 5. He had cultivated Tarcomir's Loruthi friendship as a counterweight to the Palleseen - ch 5.

The Day of Milk and Flowers (ch 9-10)

Gorbudan is referenced in passing as "the elder, the hero," rakish and dashing, the Alkhand who would not smile - ch 10. Dekamran is described as "no longer in the shadow of his brother" since Gorbudan's withdrawal - ch 10. Tarcomir is noted as Gorbudan's ally in a past war - ch 10.

The Treaty Renewal at the Tesemer Compound (ch 11-12)

During the journey to the Tesemer compound, Gil tells Drathel that the Tesemer's combat record against a rebel Emorandi clan four years ago was led by Gorbudan - ch 11. Gil refers to him as "Dekamran's unruly brother" - ch 11. Drathel admits she "might have gone to poke Mantekor a bit" for decanting purposes; Gorbudan's people chased her out - ch 11.

Gorbudan's Coup at the Waygrove (ch 13-16)

Gorbudan arrives at the Alborandi compound near the Waygrove to meet Dekamran, wearing their dead uncle Sorthist's old war colours, a clavar at his belt - ch 13. Dekamran deliberately closes the distance, arms spread, inviting a strike; Gorbudan lunges but turns it into an embrace - ch 13. The brothers sit in a bare Alborandi hut; Dekamran offers Gorbudan a place at his right hand as his "most beloved and valued advisor" - ch 13. Gorbudan rejects the offer, calling Dekamran a fool for trusting the Palleseen, and counter-demands: "Step down. Now, or when the time comes that our father can no longer govern. Step down, with my blessing." - ch 13. After pressing his case, Gorbudan partially relents: he will return to court, swear to kneel before the throne as a son, and ask Oparan's permission, but makes no promise about the future succession. He unbuckles his clavar and lays it between them - ch 13. His final words before the wailing interrupts: "Tell him I swear to cause no trouble, that I will kneel before the throne as a son should. I make no promises to you, about whose throne it will be later." - ch 13.

Gorbudan loathes the Palleseen, blaming them for his exile, and sees Pallesand as a predator to be fought - ch 13. He was present when their mother Kaleithi walked away into the Grove - ch 13. He notes Gil's absence before deciding against violence; her presence would have been a provocation - ch 13.

When Oparan takes the Alborandi mask and vanishes into the Grove, Gorbudan seizes the moment. He signals his retainers, whose faces say "At last, my prince!" - ch 15. He strides to Dekamran with his clavar drawn and declares to the court: "The Alkhand Oparan has retired from the world." - ch 15. He challenges Lhisamena directly: "Will you bare your neck for the Palleseen blade now?" - ch 15. His face communicates to the Tesemer: "I will make you warriors again" - ch 15. Lhisamena cries out, mounts her hookloper, and proclaims "The Tiger-Crab of Mantekor! The Alkhand of Usmai!" - ch 15. Violence erupts; the Tesemer reverse their semicircle to defend Gorbudan. He moves through the fight, drags Dekamran by the collar, cuts down challengers; an Ibaleth sniper kills one of his retainers - ch 15. Surviving courtiers, Tesemer, and some Ibaleth kneel and cry "Alkhand Gorbudan!" - ch 15. He commands: "We ride for Alkhalend." He asks Dekamran where the Kepishi have gone; Dekamran refuses, but Gorbudan knows someone in the court overheard the arrangements with the Palleseen Resident - ch 15. The narrator's epigraph frames him: "A sincere man. A clear-eyed man. A man who believes. And there are demons and necromancers and monsters from beyond the Grove in the world, but none of them more dangerous than a man who believes." - ch 15. Internally, Gorbudan thinks: "I have done this, he understood, but also, I had no choice." - ch 15.

Gorbudan on the Mirror Throne (ch 17-19)

Seven days after the Waygrove, Gorbudan has arrived at Alkhalend's gates, held a ceremony at the pools with Kakrops and His Quietude the Grand Moerend Arkanith, and declared himself Alkhand - ch 17. The coronation was held at the pools halfway up the waterfall cliffs, visible from most of Alkhalend; "Nobody had really got into the festive spirit" - ch 17. He wears the four-panelled corselet of Usmiat noble cavalry armour at the ceremony - ch 17. He does not like Pals, "not liking any foreigner who had been using the old Alkhand's light touch" - ch 17.

In his own point-of-view chapter, Gorbudan governs in blunt, plain style from the Mirror Throne, stripped of his father's cushions, sitting with a scabbarded clavar across his knees, burning through a hundred years of Alkhalend's business in six days - ch 18. Half the court is purged; Emorandi families are forced into retirement or monastic retirement; three Emorandi clans who tried to bluff him are exiled from the capital and their estates held by the crown - ch 18. He recalls calling in the Tesemer to demonstrate the old royal guard's loyalty, reasserting his warrior-prince image after two years of exile made the court forget him - ch 18. He works through the Emorandi, native merchants, then foreign factors, sparing the Palleseen for now but trusting none of them - ch 18.

Follo, Preceptor of the Usrani, visits the throne to solicit treasury pledges; he never mentions Dekamran, and the omission draws Gorbudan's attention to it - ch 18. Arkanith follows with demands for money, sinecures, and public positions for his Moerend followers; Gorbudan gives in, aware he is handing out positions already promised to others, and resolves that his only solution is to expand Usmai's wealth by force - ch 18. Lhisamena reports the failed assassination of the Palleseen Resident; Gorbudan plans an invasion of Peor and more spending on sea-wall defences - ch 18. Tarcomir had told him how to counter Palleseen flying islands before his death - ch 18.

Gorbudan visits Premath's chambers. Premath, painted with faded skull imagery, refuses a family meal, saying "Double mourning. Our poor brother," meaning he does not trust Gorbudan not to poison him - ch 18. Gorbudan considers letting him join the priesthood to win Arkanith's credit, but fears a living brother on the throne could be seized by enemies - ch 18. The narrator notes: "the Alkhand's word was an argent cloth, as the saying went. Lies did not become it" - ch 18. Gorbudan visits Enshili, who glares at him with open hatred; he resolves to exile her to a foreign court as a diplomatic match - ch 18.

Enshili refers to him as "Gorbudan Kinslayer; Gorbudan Exile" - ch 19. The Alkhand Oparan has vanished; Gorbudan killed Dekamran in a succession fight and seized power, backed by armed followers and the Tesemer - ch 19. He has visited Enshili two or three times, and she suspects blood on his hands - ch 19. He has palace staff watching her, and denies Premath his paints to prevent him becoming a figurehead - ch 19.

Dekamran's Escape to Peor (ch 20-21)

Gorbudan visits Dekamran's cell in the House of Hard Angles, escorted by Moerends. He expresses guilt: "I don't want you dead, Kama." - ch 20. He debates exile, mutilation, and kinslaying with his brother. He describes Sorthist's death and asks: "Tell me, brother, how much of you would I have to cut away, so that what was left could never be acclaimed Alkhand, yet would still be my brother." - ch 20. Dekamran argues that mutilating Usmai's heir mutilates the nation. Gorbudan acknowledges: Kama, you would have been the best of Alkhands, in any other age. - ch 20. He insists the world now demands strength against foreign threats. He draws a knife, then rings the bars with its pommel; the Moerends lead him away - ch 20. The Tesemer found him wasps: "The Tesemer found me wasps. I didn't even ask them." - ch 20. Gorbudan made concessions and deals with the Moerends to secure their backing for his usurpation - ch 20.

At Flint Postry's camp, Gil wonders if Gorbudan could have done what Dekamran does at the table with Flint - ch 21. Gorbudan is the usurper of the Mirror Throne; Dekamran is the rightful heir forced into exile - ch 21.

The First Engagement of the Brothers' War (ch 22-23)

Gorbudan commands the opposing forces personally, leading cavalry on a taloned Usmiat horse, riding with his baton and lance - ch 22. His cavalry and the Tesemer on hooklopers execute a feigned flight; when the Pal right flank overextends, his hidden cavalry wheels and shatters it - ch 22. Gorbudan kills two Pal soldiers with his enchanted baton, then charges the Pal artillery (a Palleseen Hand) with his lance and collapses it - ch 22. Lhisamena, hidden in the trees, remembers Gorbudan's night plan: half the Tesemer are in Alkhalend; the rest are scattered in fragments - ch 22. He laid out his battle plan in his tent, including "the part of his plan that was only for her and her people" - ch 22. Gorbudan's infantry, dismounted nobles and peasant archers in prepared positions, hold the Pal left flank - ch 22. He orders demons released only when his infantry line holds - ch 22. The battle reaches a grinding stalemate; his momentum is gone, and if he fights to Alkhalend he may lack the numbers to hold the city. He orders a retreat to Alkhalend - ch 22. The Tesemer chose Gorbudan's side; "If they'd declared for Dekamran, he knows, none of this would be possible" - ch 22. He engineered the howdah attack to demonstrate worthiness - ch 22. He is the crowned Alkhand against Dekamran the rival claimant - ch 22.

The chapter lays out Gorbudan's encampment: a connected chain of fortified camps using the Emorandi estates as fortifications, with siege engines on mansion roofs and in the cliff forts - ch 23. Dekamran's strategy is that if he takes the city, Gorbudan becomes an exile with "a bodyguard of raiders" who must either destroy his own city or retreat to Mantekor - ch 23. Drathel asks whether Gorbudan will simply talk; Dekamran says he won't - ch 23. The Ibaleth defect en masse at dusk; the entire river north of the city has abandoned Gorbudan - ch 23.

The Killing of Kakrops (ch 24-26)

Gorbudan views Premath's corpse in a room of morbid curiosities. Premath starved himself, then ingested toxic sacramental face-paint to kill himself - ch 25. Gorbudan feels guilt: he had already decided Premath must be removed - exiled to a mountain monastery, sent to the House at the Brink of Death, or locked in a palace wing with no visitors - and Premath's suicide removes that duty; rage follows the guilt - ch 25. He summons Arkanith and accuses him: "You filled his head with your necrotic creed. You taught him the joy of endings. He worshipped you." - ch 25. He nearly draws his sword on Arkanith for sacrilege, then orders him confined under guard - ch 25. Gorbudan has twice Dekamran's numbers in a defensive position but is outmanoeuvred by a night attack - ch 25. He mounts to ride to his army; looking back from the cliff path, he sees troops emerging from the Sand Lanes below, marching double-time toward the palace and the rear of his camp. He pauses, trying to work out what to do - ch 25. He dismisses Dekamran as "soft" - ch 25.

At the palace, Gorbudan is paralysed between defending the clifftop camp and the streets. He sends riders to muster the Tesemer and a trickle of panicked, half-dressed troops down the cliffs - ch 26. He sees the Pals reaching the sacred pools level and realises they aim for the palace itself, which would make Dekamran Alkhand without a battle. He goes to meet them with his remaining forces. He decides to release Kakrops into the battle, slashing and goading the god into a rampage - ch 26. Kakrops erupts from its cave and leaps into Flint's right flank, crushing and devouring soldiers. Massed batons and the Hands kill the frog god - ch 26. Gorbudan, shattered by the god's death and his own role in it, rallies a desperate last stand at the palace doors. An anonymous Pal or Peost trooper kills him. His forces flee and carry the news to the clifftop camp; surrender follows - ch 26. The narrator states: "No histories will record whose shot it is that finds him." - ch 26.

City in Mourning (ch 27-28)

Three weeks after Dekamran's installation, Gorbudan is referenced as the usurper who performed the deicide; he still has supporters at Mantekor and friends who would rather no Alkhand than Dekamran - ch 28. Gil's dispatch to Flockersly reads: "I will work with the new Alkhand on the topic of elements who supported the usurper Gorbudan to ensure that those who would be most obstructive to our continuing mission here are placed where they have no power to impede us." - ch 28. Dekamran refuses to let anyone use the nickname "Kama": "Gorbudan called me that. I don't want anyone to call me that again." - ch 28. Gil's confession to Dekamran includes: "because Gorbudan would have had you killed" and "because Gorbudan hated us Kepishi" - ch 28.

Drathel's Operations in Alkhalend (ch 29-31)

After the frog god's death and Gorbudan's withdrawal, Flint is shaking down Gorbudan's former supporters for gold and jewels - ch 29. Gorbudan is described as a former nuisance who gave licence to those opposing Palleseen Decanters - ch 29.

The night after the sack of Mantekor, Gorbudan's garrison broke and fled rather than fight; Flint celebrates the capture of his war chest - gold coins, a serpent-shaped chain with jasper eyes, rings, armlets, onyx monkey game pieces - ch 30.

One month after Dekamran's coronation, Gorbudan appears in Dekamran's dream looking angry; he had raided Palleseen mills across the Peost border, causing his banishment - ch 31. Dekamran dreams of Gorbudan's dead face saying "I told you." - ch 31. The chapter records Gorbudan's fate: dead in battle - ch 31. Enshili's official story is death at Gorbudan's hands, though Dekamran believes she fled - ch 31.

Gil's Arrest and the Destruction of the House of Hard Angles (ch 41-45)

Gorbudan and Premath are dead; Gorbudan was once heir presumptive and raided and took sides with the Loruthi during the war - ch 43. He had called Dekamran a puppet on the Peost throne - ch 43. Oparan lost patience with Gorbudan's raiding - ch 43. Follo's grief declares that Gorbudan and Premath are dead, making Dekamran the last surviving son - ch 43.

Gil reflects on losing "not to the Loruthi, not to Gorbudan, but to her own people" - ch 45. The futility of the narrow path of Palleseen Ends and Means is framed against the fact that her defeats came not from Gorbudan's sword but from her own compromises - ch 45.

The Surgery and the Duel in the Constellar Gardens (ch 46-47)

Gorbudan's personal courage was sung about, unlike Dekamran's; Dekamran was "the soft brother... never supposed to become Alkhand" - ch 47. In the Constellar Gardens, as Dekamran challenges Gil to a five-pace tableth duel, the comparison to Gorbudan's warrior legacy hangs over his self-assessment; he is not the warrior prince his elder brother was - ch 47.

Relationships

- Oparan - Father and son. Gorbudan is heir by prowess, not primogeniture, and has been exiled twice for arguing with his father over foreign policy - ch 8, ch 9. Oparan publicly denounces and banishes him in open court after the Peor raids, naming Dekamran heir in his place - ch 10. Gorbudan was stripped of heirship by Oparan's decree but hopes to be permitted back to court, and on the day of the usurpation claims the old Alkhand had named him before the Kepishi interfered - ch 13, ch 15. Oparan vanishes into the Grove and Gorbudan inherits in the chaos; the old Alkhand is thereafter "the lost Alkhand" - ch 25.

- Dekamran - Younger brother and central relationship of the series. Gorbudan is "the elder, the hero," the warrior; Dekamran was sent abroad to keep him out of the way of his brother - ch 3, ch 10. Gorbudan feels contempt for Dekamran as a Palleseen dupe but bears no true ill will - ch 5. At the Waygrove he lunges at Dekamran but turns the strike into an embrace; moments later he seizes him by the collar and declares himself Alkhand - ch 13, ch 15. After the usurpation he imprisons Dekamran in the House of Hard Angles, visits him to debate mutilation versus fratricide, and weeps at the thought of killing him - ch 20. Dekamran dreams of Gorbudan's dead face saying "I told you" and refuses to let anyone use the childhood nickname "Kama" - ch 31, ch 28. Dekamran's own self-assessment as "the soft brother... never supposed to become Alkhand" is defined against Gorbudan's legacy - ch 47.

- Tarcomir - The Loruthi delegate and Gorbudan's closest foreign ally. They duel and leave the hall laughing together; Tarcomir has spent six years building the rapport that Angilly struggled to establish - ch 8. Tarcomir's influence edges out Palleseen presence in Gorbudan's orbit - ch 9. Gorbudan raids Palleseen holdings at the Loruthi's behest - ch 10. Tarcomir told Gorbudan how to counter Palleseen flying islands before his death - ch 18. Gorbudan cultivated this friendship deliberately as a counterweight to Pallesand - ch 5.

- Angilly - The Palleseen Resident who watches Gorbudan with open hostility, calling him "a mythic hero whose worst vices are other men's dreamed-of virtues" and deciding she hates him - ch 9. She must win his favour for Pallesand's benefit but is barred from the duelling ring by gender custom - ch 8. Gorbudan has never been near her in person during the war; his charisma makes suborning his followers impractical - ch 10. His accession would shift the balance of power against the Pals dramatically - ch 9.

- Lhisamena - Preceptor of the Tesemer and the instrument of Gorbudan's conversion from prince to Alkhand. He challenges her directly ("Will you bare your neck for the Palleseen blade now?") and she proclaims him "The Tiger-Crab of Mantekor! The Alkhand of Usmai!" - ch 15. The Tesemer's choice of his side is absolute: "If they'd declared for Dekamran, he knows, none of this would be possible" - ch 22. He lays out battle plans in his tent that include "the part of his plan that was only for her and her people" - ch 22.

- Kaleithi - Mother. Gorbudan was present when she walked away into the Grove - ch 13.

- Premath - Brother. Gorbudan finds him "weird, creepy" but has no wish to kill him; Premath openly refuses a family meal, suspecting poison - ch 18. Gorbudan had planned to exile or imprison him as a dynastic liability; Premath's suicide removes that duty and produces guilt followed by rage - ch 25.

- Enshili - Sister. She calls him "Gorbudan Kinslayer; Gorbudan Exile" and glares at him with open hatred; he has palace staff watching her and resolves to exile her as a diplomatic match - ch 18, ch 19.

- Coregan - The Custodian's position at court came from patrons who backed Gorbudan in the succession; Coregan sends Gorbudan a message reporting Tarcomir's death - ch 4, ch 5.

- Arkanith - The Grand Moerend who crowns Gorbudan and then uses that rite as leverage for preferment; Gorbudan gives in to his demands, aware he is distributing positions already promised to others - ch 18. After Premath's death Gorbudan accuses Arkanith of filling his brother's head with a "necrotic creed" and nearly draws a sword on him before ordering him confined - ch 25.

- Kakrops - The civic frog-god of Alkhalend. Gorbudan slashes and goads it into battle during the final night assault, and its death at the hands of massed batons shatters him - ch 26.

Notable Quotes

"Step down. Now, or when the time comes that our father can no longer govern. Step down, with my blessing." - Gorbudan to Dekamran, Lives of Bitter Rain, ch 13

"A sincere man. A clear-eyed man. A man who believes. And there are demons and necromancers and monsters from beyond the Grove in the world, but none of them more dangerous than a man who believes." - narrator, Days of Shattered Faith, ch 15

"Tell me, brother, how much of you would I have to cut away, so that what was left could never be acclaimed Alkhand, yet would still be my brother." - Gorbudan to Dekamran, Days of Shattered Faith, ch 20

"Kama, you would have been the best of Alkhands, in any other age." - Gorbudan to Dekamran, Days of Shattered Faith, ch 20

"No histories will record whose shot it is that finds him." - narrator, Days of Shattered Faith, ch 26

Tags

1. prince · #warrior · #usurper · #usmai