Ollery

Ollery is a Palleseen alchemist and field surgeon who serves as Chief Accessory and lead medico of the experimental field hospital attached to the Forthright Battalion in House of Open Wounds, where he is universally known by the epithet "the Butcher" for his brutal triage and surgical methods. A veteran of the army's medical corps, he runs his tent as a private domain of alchemical reagents, dark humour, and cold pragmatism, working alongside a small band of misfits and outcasts while feeding the army's necromantic department with the bodies of the hopeless. His arc in that novel traces the slow corrosion of institutional loyalty: from a man who will "use" necromancy "if it works for him" without believing in it, through a market-brawl arrest and public flogging, to the coronation feast at the Wolf Palace where he attempts to poison the entire Palleseen and Loruthi delegations in a single stroke of alchemical vengeance. When the poison fails and the group flees the camp, Ollery walks away from the army for good. In Days of Shattered Faith, he reappears under the alias "Oathan," running a medicine-delivery operation from the Fever Lodge in Alkhalend, branded a deserter by the Resident. The cross-book identity is made explicit at the opening of that novel's eighth chapter, where the same physical description, the same ward Kilbery, and the same alchemical methods confirm that Oathan is Ollery in exile.

His significance to the series is structural as much as personal. He is the spine of the Forthright Battalion's medical department, the figure whose "old guard" loyalty to his colleagues-Tallifer, Lochiver, Banders, Masty, Alv-defines the group's moral centre even as his own hands are stained with the poison of Revelation House. He is also a hinge between the novel's institutional critique and its intimate portraits: the man who can lecture an apprentice on henq salts and Firesian bile one evening and break a provost's firing hand the next; the husband who poisoned his wife's lover at a regimental dinner and then spent fifteen years writing a treatise good enough to buy his life; the surrogate father who "drummed the list" into an orphan boy and cannot bring himself to stitch battle wounds again-until "He's just a boy" undoes that vow. By the end of Days of Shattered Faith, Ollery has been married to a serpentine demon entity, lost his second wife Caecelian 'the Viper' in the battle for Alkhalend, and chosen to remain in a war-zone with a grieving god-incarnate, his surgical skills turned toward whatever comes next.

Character

Appearance

Ollery is repeatedly described as a "big" man-physically imposing enough that he draws most of the soldiers' batons in a confrontation and that Jack can describe his hands and face as instruments of violence in their own right. - ch 6, Days of Shattered Faith ch 45. His working attire is an apron bearing twenty pockets of philtres and powders, described as "a personal love-language of agony and alchemy." - ch 1. During the Great Advance his eyes go red from alcohol he drinks to keep himself going, and after the fireberg battle his shoulders are written with bloody lash-stripes while he doses himself for pain. - ch 12, ch 35. No further physical detail-hair, complexion, age beyond being "ten years" Prassel's senior-is given in either novel. - ch 2.

Personality

Ollery is blunt, profane, and darkly comic, with a readiness to belittle anyone he considers functionally beneath him-Cosserby earns a steady stream of taunts about cursed prosthetics and lacking authority, and he mocks the provost's own officer to his face. - ch 8, ch 31. Beneath the abrasiveness sits a fierce, almost volcanic protectiveness toward those he considers his own: he throws Tallifer clear of a war-beast, carries his wounded boy under his arm during the retreat, applies salves to Masty's back personally under cover of the others' singing, and physically overpowers Prassel to protect his department's secret. - ch 13, ch 14, ch 23, ch 50. He copes through work, through drinking, and through contraband Loruthi smut novels read by lamplight, and he cooks elaborate meals with a prized Jarokiri cruet as a small act of civilisation in the middle of war. - ch 6, ch 10. His grief is private and tidal-"the sort of deep hidden current that drags swimmers to drowning"-rather than performed. - ch 7. In Days of Shattered Faith, stripped of institutional cover, he is more openly fearful and fatalistic, warning Kilbery that a client is "a dangerous woman," boiling tea while soldiers march through the Sand Lanes, and declaring flatly Don't trust pirates. - Days of Shattered Faith ch 8, ch 26, ch 17.

Beliefs & Motivations

Ollery has no religion and says so plainly, but will deploy necromancy, healing rituals, or a fourfold-concentration poison without hesitation if they serve his ends. - ch 1, ch 50. He rejects moral self-justification: "Doing harm is what an army's for. Us, the Loruthi, your Maric lads before you got smashed down four years back. It's a world of harm." - ch 5. He tells Jack that the hospital exists not to save lives but to keep some officer's boils soothed, and that "nobody's too useful to be used." - ch 6, ch 7. His survival depends on being indispensable: his treatise The Synthesis of a Rational Alchemical Framework bought him fifteen years of life after the Revelation House poisoning, and Prassel's terror at losing him-"what were they supposed to do if he didn't play his part nicely?"-is the only guarantee he has. - ch 32, ch 18. He refuses to be bound by Jack's healing creed, insisting "I will be keeping my options open." - ch 32. His deepest loyalty is to people, not institutions: he forbids Prassel from speaking Erinael's name, he sends Banders and Masty on a fake errand to spare them the escape, and in Days of Shattered Faith he breaks his own vow never to stitch battle wounds again because his ward has stayed to fight. - ch 39, ch 46, Days of Shattered Faith ch 49.

Affiliations

- Landwards - chief accessory - Pal - alchemist and lead medico

History

House of Open Wounds

The Field Hospital (ch 1-5)

Ollery is introduced as the Chief Accessory and lead medico of an experimental field hospital tent attached to the Forthright Battalion, nicknamed "the Butcher" for his surgical methods. He is an alchemist who triages, doses, and surgically repairs the wounded, working amid constant screaming in a tent the narration calls "hell" - "The worst kind of torturer, who preys only on those already in agony" - ch 1. His apron holds twenty pockets of philtres and powders, described as "a personal love-language of agony and alchemy" - ch 1. He sorts incoming casualties: some to his surgical staff, one to Alv for sympathetic healing, one to the far corner where Lochiver plays a pipe whose music "serves a practical medical purpose" despite being hated by everyone including the player - ch 1. He administers alchemical philtres, salts wounds with powder to stave off necrosis, and works the line with "his devils," a collection of unnamed assistants described as "a collection of miscreants and misfits not otherwise seen this side of the army paymaster's rolls" - ch 1.

His central operational role involves the hopeless: he gives double or triple doses from the black flask to those beyond saving, then marks their foreheads with the Sign of the Forlorn Hope, "a symbol known and loathed throughout the army as meaning Property of the Necromancers" - ch 1. Prassel, a Fellow-Inquirer of Correct Speech and the hospital's nominal commanding officer, arrives to collect these dead; he speaks words and raises them as necromantic servants. The narration states Ollery's stance plainly: "The Butcher is a good Palleseen soldier. He has no religion. But he'll use it, if it works for him" - ch 1. The chapter ends with a new string of stretchers heading back from the front; Ollery will try to decide whether "the thing that got him sent to hell" was worth it - ch 1.

In ch 2, Prassel visits his domain to demand corpses for mine-clearing; Ollery deflects, saying his patients are all clinging to life, then mentions a rumour from Banders about a Loruthi detachment overrun west along the line. He tempts her with pure Oloumanni-Alta tea in exchange for the tip, and she agrees to go west. He drinks tea with his son, a boy of about ten who fetches items at his command - ch 2. When Maric Jack arrives as a new prisoner-Accessory, Banders leads him to the field hospital where Ollery is eating eggs; Ollery evaluates Jack with dark humour about the hospital's "ration of corpses" and says, "Look what they send us, boy. They're just desperate for us to fail. This is how the Fellow-Inquirer will get her ration of corpses. Good soldiers or bad doctors, who kills more in this man's army, eh?" - ch 3. He assigns Jack tasks during a rush of burned arrivals, testing whether the new orderly can "take away pain" and stave off death - ch 4.

In ch 5, Ollery carries a crate of reagent to his tent and bluntly tells Jack that everyone in an army does harm: "Doing harm is what an army's for. Us, the Loruthi, your Maric lads before you got smashed down four years back. It's a world of harm" - ch 5. He has his son demonstrate what the uniform means - "Means we're soldiers!" - ch 5 - and tells Jack to go find the healed spy himself.

The Whipping at the Alder (ch 6-9)

Ollery's chapter-POV perspective in ch 6 establishes his private life: he reads a contraband Loruthi smut novel, reflecting on the stultifying nature of official Palleseen literature, and lectures his unnamed apprentice on alchemical processes involving henq salts, argamesh, and Firesian bile. He explains the hospital's true purpose: "This is why we exist. This is what keeps us alive, and the hospital open. Not that we save lives, but that some son of a bitch in Higher Orders can get my unguents for his boils, or a noseful of powdered clappa to take his mind off the fact that he's just sent five hundred poor bastards to their deaths" - ch 6. When Prassel orders six lashes as correction for Jack grabbing her sleeve, Ollery retrieves the Alder from the post beside Tallifer and Lochiver's tent, applies ulmel, and strikes the first blow. When Jack's back heals instantly via God, Ollery stops and explains the Tally system: the exact number of visible stripes must be verifiable or both men are punished. Jack begs him not to "take him away"; Ollery proceeds, and this time the marks stay. He administers all six strokes, calling the count - ch 6.

Afterward, outside the Tally Officer's tent, Ollery offers a salve but Jack says the healing wasn't his doing. Ollery tells Jack he must learn the army's hierarchies, then takes him to Mother Semprellaime for recuperation. He tells Jack: "You see this face? You see these hands? They do not belong to a good or kind man. Good, kind men do not prosper in war" - ch 6. In ch 7, Ollery leads Jack through the camp's wagon district and delivers a warning about the previous Chief, Chief Accessory Erinael: "That's not enough. There was a - a woman. The Chief before me. She was useful. She was useful enough that the rest of us needn't have been there" - ch 7. He tells Jack that "nobody's too useful to be used" - ch 7. His grief for Erinael is described as "the sort of deep hidden current that drags swimmers to drowning" - ch 7. He shares reagents and long-standing favours with Semprellaime, and introduces Jack to her wagon, handing him a coin for tea before departing - ch 7.

In ch 8, Ollery taunts Cosserby about a prosthetic arm being "cursed" and about Cosserby's lack of authority in the hospital, belittling him despite Cosserby's nominally higher rank as Cohort-Monitor. He asks, "There is no such thing as a cursed arm, Chief Accessory," to which Ollery replies, "Really? In this wide world, so full of heathen imperfections? I find that very unlikely" - ch 8. In ch 9, Ollery is referenced only for the alchemical chemicals his work requires, as Jack is questioned by Thurrel and Maserley in a workshop hut.

The Great Advance (ch 10-13)

The evening before the major advance against the Loruthi lines, Ollery cooks an elaborate meal in the main hospital tent, using a prized Jarokiri-made cruet - "well beyond non-regulation and into actual punishable unorthodoxy" - and a silver cutlery set obtained in trade for a pox cure from a "particularly pox-ridden Sage-Inquirer" - ch 10. He presides at the head of the table but yields his seat when Prassel arrives. He deflects Cosserby's questions about the coming battle, and Tallifer, nudged by Banders, confirms the advance. When Prassel arrives and reads a sealed flimsy, she announces: Drink up. Busy day tomorrow - ch 10. In ch 11, Ollery and Tallifer check medical supplies against records in the dead of night, suspecting Banders of pilfering; they discuss reagents, children, and Tallifer's relationship with Lochiver. His boy tallies reagents; Ollery curses his slowness but sends him to rest - ch 11.

During the assault itself, Ollery supervises supplies, shouting at soldiers who outrank him, and triages the first casualties before the department has even packed up - ch 12. He works five hours without pause in the forward surgery, escalating the stimulant regime from orange salts to blue salts to lilac salts. When a blinded scout is brought in with her face burned to ash, Ollery reaches for the black flask; Alv refuses to let the woman die and heals her by taking the full burn onto her own face. Ollery murmurs, "If Erinael was here..." when Masty leads Alv past, but the narration notes: "He's no angel of mercy like Erinael was" - ch 12. He demands "Blue salts!" and later spits out "Lilac salts!" His eyes are red and he has probably been drinking to keep himself going. When Banders asks whether he has mixed any of the red, he replies, "Oh we've got the red to come, never you worry" - ch 12.

The advance collapses when a three-horned war-beast crashes through the hospital tent. Ollery throws Tallifer clear of the beast's path; the creature's shoulder/hip strike breaks Lochiver's leg - ch 13. Ollery throws yellow powder in the beast's eyes, causing it to rear and destroy the remaining tent. Masty sprints to Ollery's boy, trapped under corpses, hauls him free, and throws him to the Butcher's hands - ch 13. The wagons flee; Jack and Masty are left between the lines. Ollery gestures Masty to run, calling "No medico left behind," but Masty refuses to leave Jack - ch 13.

Between the Lines (ch 14-15)

During the retreat, a wagon arrives carrying members of the department: Ollery, Tallifer, Lochiver with a heavily splinted leg, and hospital supplies. Ollery's wounded boy is tucked under his arm - ch 14. He asks about the missing orderlies - Masty, Banders, and Jack - and seems too worn to lash Cosserby, who pre-emptively offers an excuse. Tallifer reports that Masty was left behind when they stopped to treat Lochiver; they realise Banders is also missing - ch 14. In ch 15, Ollery is mentioned only as the owner of the ceramic flask from which numbing liquor is passed around among the stranded group; Jack's hospital is called "Hell" after him.

The Gallete Island (ch 16-19)

Eight days after the battle, Ollery brews bulk medicine and cooks an evening stew with dumplings, pulled meat, flatbreads, and a single orange each when the whole department reunites after Jack, Masty, and Banders return from behind enemy lines - ch 16. The next morning, a massive flying Gallete island descends as transport for the entire battalion; Ollery tells Jack, "That is our ride. That's what's taking the whole of Forthright across the sea" - ch 16. In ch 17, Ollery bickers with Banders over counting bandages aboard the island; Banders mocks his fear of heights and sky-sickness. He grows pale at the mention of air and mutiny - ch 17.

Prassel, summoned to a tribunal concerning one of her people, assumes it is Banders, then upon hearing the charge is murder thinks of Ollery, whom she considers "a good servant" and "irreplaceable," wondering "what were they supposed to do if he didn't play his part nicely?" - ch 18. The person before the tribunal is Jack, not Ollery. In ch 19, Ollery judges Lidlet not a good fit for the department, watching the staff react: Tallifer asks what she can do, Lochiver gets fresh and triggers her pain, Masty is cautious. After everyone leaves, Lidlet sits alone and abandoned on a bedroll - ch 19. Two nights later, Ollery stays up reading a contraband pamphlet Banders supplied, then wakes Kilbery for a run to the Gallete village to trade herbs with the herbalist. There he finds Jack healing a Gallete man with lemon blood fever, past the point Ollery's tonic could help. Ollery proposes mutual non-disclosure; Jack agrees. They trade herbs grown in island-magic soil. Jack notes that Ollery says "they," not "we" - "And me born on the Archipelago. That sound like the rank of a man who claims the army as kith and kin?" - ch 19.

Arrival in Bracinta (ch 20-21)

The field hospital arrives at the assault site in Southern Bracinta; no tent has been prepared because Landwards Battalion led the advance and Forthright was not included in planning. Lochiver complains; Ollery stomps off to get a tent shouted into existence - ch 21. When Alv arrives agitated that her student cohort was held back at deployment without anyone informing her, stripping the department of its minor-injury resource, Ollery assigns Jack to set up a stitching station - ch 21. The planned assault turns out to be bloodless: the Loruthi melted away before superior numbers, the gates were opened by a welcoming populace, and the whole day passed without a single shot fired. The only casualty tripped into a rabbit burrow - ch 21.

Leave in Magnelei (ch 22-26)

During camp leave, Ollery heats rummell on the stove and warns about expected injuries, sitting around the fire telling stories with Tallifer and Alv - ch 22. When Masty is flogged by a Landwards Battalion officer named Tunly during a night walkabout, Masty sneaks into Ollery's tent to steal salves for his back and is caught; Ollery applies the salves himself outside, under cover of Lochiver and Banders's singing - ch 23. Ollery says he will ask Prassel to issue something so Landwards "don't get fresh again," then presses Masty on what is wrong. Masty confesses, "I'm not enjoying being here," meaning the department and the army are "home" - the only home he has had since being taken from Bracinta at six or seven - ch 23. In ch 25, the narration mentions that Ollery previously dumped Jack on Semprellaime and had provosts remove him; she names him among the few people she can "be even half herself with" - ch 25.

In ch 26, during the group's trip into Magnelei, Ollery departs to buy alchemical reagents (actually smutty pamphlets) and privately reveals to Banders that Masty was five years old in Magnelei when the dynasty fell and civil war engulfed the streets; the Palleseen marched in to keep the peace, which says how bad things were - ch 26. Banders realises the cruelty of her casual words and apologises to Masty. Ollery confirms the Accessories have their idiot passes, gives Banders a final warning look, and departs to rejoin the camp. The narration notes his parting words - "I'll see you next back at the camp" - proved to be poor prophecy, though none of them knew it at the time - ch 26.

The Market Brawl (ch 27-31)

Ollery is the POV character of ch 31. He is in a Bracite market with Cosserby and Lidlet in the evening; Cosserby shows him a clockwork mannikin he intends to give Banders as a gift. Ollery internally assesses that Banders will watch the automaton for a minute, then trade it away, and will not like Cosserby more for the gift; he nearly tells Cosserby to simply ask her for sex but decides against it - ch 31. He reflects on Banders's "peculiar genius" for acquiring candles that a quartermaster desperately needs, profiting the department. When Banders, Jack, and Masty are chased by locals and a general brawl erupts, Ollery arrives, strikes two men holding Banders's arms, and Banders asks if he got his business done - ch 31.

The provosts arrive; their Cohort-Monitor officer surveys the damage and demands to know who is senior. Ollery steps forward; the officer freezes, recognizes him, draws a rod, slots a tableth into it, and calls him "Murderer" - ch 31. The officer fires at Ollery's face; Masty pushes the man's wrist upward, and the shot destroys an epic stone hero on the wall instead. The provost's own men challenge their officer; he reasserts military discipline, stares hatred at Ollery, and orders the entire group arrested for brawling - ch 31. Ollery tries to place the face - "A father, a favourite uncle?" - but cannot - ch 31.

The Fireberg Battle (ch 32-35)

The group is imprisoned in Magnelei. Prassel arrives to collect them and reveals they nearly had Ollery shot; she forced a provost to back down by threatening him with Correct Speech. She sentences Ollery to sixteen lashes with the Alder and confinement to camp - ch 32. Jack, in his tent, hears the entire flogging-every lash, the bit in Ollery's mouth, the inhuman roars from the ninth lash onward. He cannot watch - ch 32. Masty summons Jack to Ollery's tent. Ollery's son is at the door with bloody wrists; he has been trying to apply the paste but flinched. Ollery sends the boy aside and asks Jack to work the ochre-coloured alchemical paste deep into every lash-stripe. Jack applies the paste. Ollery downs five cups of liquor. As Jack works, Ollery refuses Jack's offer to heal him: "I will live with my lashes and let time and alchemy fade them. I will not be bound by your creed, boy. You understand me? I will be keeping my options open" - ch 32.

Ollery then tells Jack the full story of his past: his wife Ennit had an affair with a Fellow-Invigilator; at a regimental dinner Ollery poisoned the entire Higher Orders of the regiment with a precise alchemical dose, having given Ennit antidotes beforehand; the provosts broke down the door and arrested him; he never heard Ennit's final words. He says, "I loved her. I'd never" - ch 32. Jack flees the tent. Later that night, Masty confirms the story and explains that Ollery was to be executed publicly fifteen years ago, but the discovery of The Synthesis of a Rational Alchemical Framework in his rooms made him too valuable to lose. Masty adds that Ennit now trusts nothing she hasn't prepared herself, "and even then it doesn't help much" - ch 32.

During the fireberg battle, Ollery runs the medical tent, ordering all available hands to stretcher duty. His cauldron is nearly boiled dry as new burn casualties arrive; soldiers caught directly in fireberg impacts are "ashen smears" - ch 33. The Butcher's Ladder, an in-universe medical classification of injuries in ascending severity, is named after him - ch 33. When the sky-flash topples the medical tent and the next surgical tent is ablaze, Ollery sends everyone available to carry wounded from a jam at the front - ch 33. After the battle, Ollery sits injured on the retreating wagon with lashes written in blood on his shoulders, dosing himself for pain, refusing to stop working. Prassel promotes Tallifer to deputy chief and orders her to run the department at the new camp. Ollery tells Prassel: "Some. Useful lesson. Reminds me how it doesn't stop the pain. Just puts it in the next room for a while. And only some. Need a clear head" - ch 35. Prassel returns to the hospital to find Ollery still working over his cauldron, his boy asleep at his feet using his boot as a pillow. Prassel thinks, "I did that" - ch 35.

The Magnelei Standoff (ch 36-39)

That night at the hospital fire, Ollery cooks salts while Tallifer and Lochiver pass a flask. Alv arrives and confesses: "They are making me into a weapon" - ch 39. Lochiver rages about the Palleseen debt for Erinael and for his temple. Ollery shuts down the argument. Prassel joins the group, already drunk. Ollery corrects her: the boy Kilbery is not his son but taken from an orphanage on the Isles - ch 39. When Lochiver presses Prassel on what happened to Erinael, and Prassel states Erinael refused to heal soldiers and was "of no use save one," Ollery stands and forbids her from speaking of Erinael: "You will not speak of her" - ch 39. Alv tells Ollery, "I am on the brink of being unwise," and leaves - ch 39.

The Draining of the Gods (ch 40-42)

Provosts storm the hospital tent during the battle. Ollery roars them back but is struck by a Statlos's truncheon. His boy shields him; Jack takes a blow to the face. God heals Jack instantly, horrifying the provost, who take Jack - ch 41. Ollery's red salts and black flask are part of the hospital's medical kit in use that day - ch 41. In ch 42, Ollery is mentioned only as one of Jack's former companions he fears will be implicated when Thurrel interrogates him.

The Purge of the Hospital (ch 43-45)

Ollery is mentioned in ch 43 as "the Butcher," the medicine boxes Banders uses being his, and Jack hoping he is safe from the bombardment. In ch 44, the Butcher declares the arrests "a purge, at last." The Butcher, Tallifer, and Lochiver share an "old guard look" that excludes Banders - ch 44. The Butcher's flask of medical moonshine is present during the hospital crisis. In ch 45, Ollery is the sole denizen of the hospital from its founding fifteen years ago. Tallifer boards the hospital wagon; Lochiver hauls her up; Ollery assists. They share a look of understanding about the change coming. In the wagon, Alv is hunched and unresponsive; Ollery warns her: "You have to heal. Or they'll do you like they did Erinael" - ch 45. The narration asks of Ollery: "He was Pal, after all. Which arm of the scales was weighted heaviest, nationality or notoriety?" - ch 45.

The Escape from Camp (ch 46)

Ollery runs triage in the hospital during the Loruthi shrapnel bombardment. He sees "some terrible thing, self-destructive and new" in Alv's face when she volunteers to take a case, but yields - ch 46. He sends Banders and Masty on a deliberate fool's errand - four nonexistent crates of adduction catalyst - to get them away before the escape, reasoning: "Because they will hunt us, and probably catch and kill us, and we didn't want to make you part of it. In fact unless you get the hell out of the way we may not even get clear of the camp. Go away, Banders. You too, Masty. There's no reason you need to be dragged down with us. Go live your lives and good luck with the army" - ch 46. The hospital evacuates; Ollery and the boy leave with bags. Ollery, laden with packs, meets Prassel at the tent. After a moment's standoff, Prassel says nothing and steps aside. Ollery and the boy join the fleeing group - ch 46. When Tallifer tries to immolate pursuers with Mazdek's flame, Ollery grabs her, refuses to let her burn, calling her "you mad witch" - ch 46. He has "drummed the list into the boy" - ch 46. Lochiver is shot and killed during the flight; Jack cannot heal him. Cosserby dies from contingencies he coded into his Sonori. The group reaches the trees by evening - ch 46.

The Coronation of Feder IV (ch 47-50)

In ch 47, Ollery looms to defuse Thurrel's cockiness when the Fellow-Archivist arrives at the woodland camp; neither Ollery nor Tallifer is a signatory to the Ninety-Seven Loopholes, which removes their immunity to Thurrel's leverage and makes them dangerous - ch 47. In ch 50, Ollery has been running the kitchens of the Wolf Palace in Magnelei during the coronation feast of Feder IV. Prassel goes to the kitchens and confronts him. He overpowers her physically; she stabs his biceps but cannot wound him. He reveals the poison scheme: a fourfold-concentration blend in the food, with the "real kicker" in the wine bottles for the king's health toast. He tells her: "Did you not see my old cruet at the top table? Only the best condiments for the King and his advisors. Remarkably fortifying, what's in those jars. And they won't drink, at the end. The real kicker's what's in the bottles. The king's health, eh?" - ch 50.

When Tallifer enters the great hall disguised as a local Jarokiri woman and announces "You're all dead," Ollery reveals himself as the Butcher of Revelation House and explains the poison - fourfold concentration, swift death. No one has died because the blessing already protects them - ch 50. A Fellow-Broker on Scaffesty's staff shoots at Lidlet in defiance; Lidlet is unharmed; the Broker dies agonizingly from the withdrawn blessing. Ollery tsk - ch 50. The poison threat, combined with the conditional blessing, holds both Palleseen and Loruthi delegations in the hall, unable to act without withdrawing the blessing and receiving the poison.

The Dispersal (ch 51)

The morning after the dinner, Ollery prepares to travel away from both armies toward a civilian hospital in a non-combat city, travelling with his boy and alchemical paraphernalia. He is listed among those remaining with Jack, alongside Caeleen, Alv, and Tallifer - ch 51. The question of where the Butcher's group goes to set up a civilian hospital, and whether such a city exists that isn't at war, remains open - ch 51.

Days of Shattered Faith

The Attack on the House of Hard Angles

The figure known throughout the Sand Lanes as Oathan is introduced in chapter 8 as the alchemist of the Fever Lodge, a big Palleseen man who runs a medicine-delivery operation through his fifteen-year-old ward Kilbery and who is not his real father, and 'Oathan' is not his real name - ch 8. Kilbery was an orphan from the Archipelago whose parents both went to war; Oathan took him from the orphanage when the boy was seven, and they came to Alkhalend with the army three years before the novel's events - ch 8. Oathan will never enter a camp again, and the Resident regards him and the Lodge as deserters, though "the dread might of Palleseen authority had yet to be exercised to their detriment" - ch 8. His workshop produces philtres, unguents, and painkillers that Kilbery ferries around the palace and the Lanes; among his clients are Dolethi the poet, who uses a throat philtre brewed by Oathan, and the pompous functionary who buys unguent in private and never says thank you - ch 8. Oathan warned Kilbery not to go near the Resident, whom he describes as "a dangerous woman" who does formal swordplay that sometimes turns lethal - ch 8. At the close of the chapter, Kilbery arrives very late to the Lodge and is shouted at by Oathan, though the boy does not care - ch 8. Kilbery's private catalogue of his guardian reduces him to "a menial courier for Oathan, his father, who wasn't either Oathan or his father" - ch 8 - and later imagines introducing himself to the fighting girl at the House of Tranquillity as someone "out from under his lying father's shadow" - ch 8. In the Taumachy den he tells the street gangs that Oathan is "a murderous brute," a fabrication he invents on the spot - ch 8.

The Day of Milk and Flowers

On the night of the sanctioned transgression, Oathan goes to a brothel, refusing communion without a price tag - ch 10. The shark ring the Cotto pirate Hullseer Orhuhst had paid Kilbery for news is noted as having been possibly meant for Oathan - ch 10.

Gorbudan on the Mirror Throne

Seven days after Gorbudan seizes the throne, Oathan hosts the Lodge's emergency council around the table with the last of the Oloumanni blend, a tea he had been saving for "serious" occasions - ch 17. Kilbery returns with undelivered goods and dumps his satchel expecting a cuffing; instead Oathan, The Reckoner, and Tally stare at the pile in fear - ch 17. The boy's interiority describes Oathan as "not his father, but all the father he had right now" - ch 17. Oathan receives Kilbery's intelligence: the Tarsier (ship) has fled, Magister Fallery is gone, Sier Lioban is exiled, the House of Hard Angles has gained seven new prisoners overnight, and the Faraslandi priestess and Doctor Grau have been arrested - ch 17. The discussion of escape routes produces Oathan's flat verdict on the Cotto - "Don't trust pirates" - and his fear regarding Caecelian 'the Viper': "She's going to get us all fucking hung. Or shot. Or fed to the frog" - ch 17. He calls Happy Jack's alternative plan "an extreme option" - ch 17. When a wounded Pal pimp and his Maric bodyguard are brought in, the Lodge treats them and squeezes the pimp for payment - ch 17. A Pal woman with her shawl up arrives at the door begging help; the group forms a united front of refusal, and Oathan refuses her - ch 17. Kilbery observes the Palleseen face in the eyes of Oathan as fear - ch 17. Oathan also states: "I don't want to have to move into the House of Hard Angles. That is most certainly something I don't want to do" - ch 17.

The Killing of Kakrops

In Caecelian's night-vigil chapter, Oathan is referred to obliquely as "the big man who called himself Oathan"; she resolves to keep the boy - the Fever Lodge's newest charge - at a distance from Enshili specifically to avoid Oathan's intervention, and she plots "a proper throwdown" with Oathan and the other Lodge staff, the old woman and the Divinati healer - ch 24. During the night column's assault on Alkhalend, the Fever Lodge huddles behind locked doors while Palleseen and Peost troops with demons march through the Sand Lanes; Oathan boils tea, says they are doomed whether they stay or flee, and argues with the boy, who challenges his fatalism - ch 26. The narrator frames their dynamic as surrogate father and child; the boy picks fights with him - ch 26.

The Fever Lodge Takes In Loret

Oathan cooks the household dinner in the big central room while the boy serves and Happy Jack's chair sits empty - ch 32. His domestic authority is casual and immediate: "Let them wait," Oathan called from the kitchen, "Unless they're actually about to die or something" - ch 32. When Loret arrives filthy and mud-caked at the door, Oathan rejects the idea of "one more lodger" and suggests the Cotto as an alternative, which sends Loret into terror at the thought of being "free of... Of all of it" - ch 32. The Reckoner overrides him - "Keep her... Just for a few days. It won't be for long" - and Oathan deflates, accepts, and asks the girl's name - ch 32. The narrator notes that Oathan will not fight her, not from fear of her eldritch powers but from respect for her judgment - ch 32. He and the boy are "thick as thieves" - ch 32. The Difficult Wives Club is introduced as Oathan's nickname for Jack's supposed club, a joke masking the group's real escape-planning meetings - ch 32.

The Arrival of the Salient

When Sage-Broker Berkely arrives with four hundred troops and strips command from Gil and Flint, Oathan is referenced only in passing: his boy is at the Fever Lodge, "the only place he's ever known" - ch 35. Days later, at the assembly of Higher Orders around a medical table covered in circles, diagrams, and calculations, Oathan tells Loret she is not a part of this - ch 36. He "liked almost nobody, and her least of all" - ch 36. When the boy tries to leave the Lodge, Oathan calls back "Not you!" - ch 36.

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

On the night of the Housebreaking, Oathan arrives in the bowels of the House of Hard Angles alongside Jack and the Reckoner; he is big and draws most of the soldiers' batons - ch 45. The soldiers kick Jack and pin Oathan at baton-point; the Reckoner strips the Pal wards, and the Under-warden's creature-wife kills every soldier. Oathan and Jack avert their eyes - ch 45. Jack props up the wounded Under-warden, and Oathan forces a pain potion down his throat so the man can stagger to the wall and reconnect his wires, begging Please. She needs to be free - ch 45. In the crypt, after the Under-warden tells his wife she must go, Oathan spits bitterly about the unsettled bill - ch 45. He gives Jack another potion and black salts, which leave the big man unable to stand - ch 45. The narrator observes that Oathan's work with Tally and the Reckoner leads into very strange ventures - ch 45.

The Surgery and the Duel in the Constellar Gardens

Through the night after the dead soldiers are discovered, Tally operates on the Under-warden while Oathan keeps the man conscious by deliberate infliction of pain - acts the narrator terms "unmercy" - ch 46. At dawn Tally declares the patient will live. Oathan then discovers that Kilbery has slipped out with his Sand Lanes gang friends and swears to retrieve him, calling him "the little idiot" and "little turd, always putting me to the bloody trouble" - ch 46. Caecelian and Enshili join Oathan's party as he goes out into the streets; Tally and the Reckoner stay - ch 46.

The Battle for Alkhalend

During the coalition's assault on Flint's column, Oathan sets Kilbery's broken leg at a makeshift hospital in the Sand Lanes and argues with him about leaving; Kilbery stands firm - ch 48. Oathan then sees Caecelian walking across the killing gap; she holds Flint and Steggers motionless, kills Flint, and is shot twice. Oathan drags her fraying body from the battle - ch 48. The serpentine entity described as Caecelian's "fellow wife" is married to Oathan alongside Caecelian - ch 48. Oathan speaks of Kilbery as my apprentice and skivvy. And son, at the end - ch 48.

In the aftermath, Oathan drives the mule of the wagon carrying himself, Tally, the Reckoner, the Under-warden, and Jack away from Alkhalend toward the Waygrove - ch 49. He tells Tally to leave Jack alone when she berates him, and protects the grieving man from her barbs - ch 49. The Reckoner wakes and asks where Kilbery is; Oathan reveals the boy stayed in Alkhalend to fight - ch 49. Oathan had shouted, raged, threatened, and raised a hand at the boy, then lowered it when Kilbery muscled back - ch 49. At the portal, Oathan decides to stay behind because "He's just a boy," breaking his own vow never to stitch battle wounds again - ch 49. Tally accepts his choice - "You earned it" - and steps through with the Reckoner, the Under-warden, and the Warden of the House of Hard Angles - ch 49. Oathan and Jack remain with the wagon. Tally looks back once at the two men and their burdens. The narrator observes: "Behind every grand history, the dates of battles and the names of kings, there are a hundred small stories. The people that the scholars will never know and the bards never sing of. People just doing their best with the hand life dealt them. Their entrances onto the stage as unnoticed as their exits" - ch 49. Tally's parting words to them are: "You pair of bloody fools" - ch 49. The expensive Palleseen magical tricks that had once been required for safe passage through the Waygrove woods are noted as no longer needed, the Under-warden's wife serving as protection instead - ch 49. The Difficult Wives Club, the jest between Oathan, Jack, and the Under-warden founded on the fact that all three are married to demons, has its membership "disbarred" now that Caecelian is dead - ch 49.

Relationships

- Kilbery - Ollery took the boy from an orphanage on the Archipelago when he was seven; Kilbery serves as his apprentice, courier, and surrogate son. The relationship is gruff, affectionate, and fractious: Ollery calls him "idiot child," "the little idiot," "little turd, always putting me to the bloody trouble," yet drums the evacuation list into his head, shields him during the escape, and ultimately cannot leave him in Alkhalend because "He's just a boy." Kilbery in turn calls him "father" in private while seething at the lies of his name and existence. - ch 2, ch 32, ch 39, ch 46, Days of Shattered Faith ch 8, ch 17, ch 46, ch 48, ch 49.

- Tallifer - Twenty-plus years of partnership, beginning as refugees on the run after the conquest and continuing through the entire army service. They co-run the hospital, check reagents together at night, and share an "old guard look" that excludes others. Ollery throws her clear of a war-beast, restrains her from immolating pursuers with Mazdek's flame, and in Days of Shattered Faith she is the one who tells him "You earned it" when he chooses to stay behind. - ch 10, ch 11, ch 13, ch 44, ch 46, Days of Shattered Faith ch 49.

- Prassel - A relationship of mutual contempt and long-standing friction conducted through the formal titles "Magister" and "Chief." She commands the hospital in name; he runs it in practice. She protects him from a provost's execution by invoking School of Correct Speech, sentences him to sixteen lashes with the Alder, and ultimately steps aside to let him walk out of the camp. At the coronation feast he physically overpowers her and reveals the poison scheme. - ch 1, ch 10, ch 32, ch 35, ch 39, ch 46, ch 50.

- Chief Accessory Erinael - Ollery's predecessor as lead medico, whom he revered and loved with a grief "the sort of deep hidden current that drags swimmers to drowning." Her death-refusing to heal, being rendered "of no use save one"-is the warning he hands to Jack. He forbids Prassel from speaking of her, and mutters "If Erinael was here..." when his own methods fall short. - ch 7, ch 12, ch 39, ch 45.

- Guest-Adjutant Alv - Friends bound by a debt Alv calls "a hook in her flesh that nothing can heal." Ollery summons her for sympathetic healing and tries to shield her from overuse; she defies him during the advance. In Days of Shattered Faith she remains part of his travelling circle. - ch 1, ch 11, ch 12, ch 39, ch 46, Days of Shattered Faith ch 49.

- Maric Jack - Subordinate and confidant. Ollery personally administers Jack's flogging, warns him about Erinael, and forges a tacit pact of mutual non-disclosure over Jack's secret healing. Jack calls him "Chief"; Ollery refuses Jack's divine healing, choosing to keep his options open. In Days of Shattered Faith they remain together at the portal, two men and their burdens. - ch 3, ch 4, ch 6, ch 7, ch 19, ch 32, ch 45, Days of Shattered Faith ch 49.

- Caecelian 'the Viper' - Wife. Oathan drags her fraying body from the killing gap in the battle for Alkhalend. She had earlier resolved to "keep the boy" at a distance from him and plotted "a proper throwdown" with the Lodge staff. Their marriage, along with the serpentine entity's, gave rise to the "Difficult Wives Club" jest. Her death "disbars" the club. - Days of Shattered Faith ch 24, ch 48, ch 49.

- Masty - Orderly and protégé. Ollery applies salves to his back in secret, confesses Masty's Bracinta origins to Banders, and sends him on a fake errand to spare him the escape. - ch 23, ch 26, ch 46.

- Lochiver - Ollery mandates the pipe music that serves a practical medical purpose, tolerating it "because the Butcher says so; because it works." He throws yellow powder at the war-beast that breaks Lochiver's leg. Lochiver rages about the Palleseen debt owed for Erinael and his temple; Ollery shuts the argument down. - ch 1, ch 13, ch 39.

- Ennit - Ex-wife of ten years. Ollery loved her; she had an affair with a Fellow-Invigilator; he poisoned the entire regimental dinner, having given Ennit antidotes beforehand. He never heard her final words. "I loved her. I'd never" is as much as he gets out. She now trusts nothing she hasn't prepared herself. - ch 32.

- Banders - Orderly with a "peculiar genius" for procurement. They share an easy, affectionate familiarity: she flings her arms about him, he owes her "a bonus" for contraband pamphlets, and he sends her on a deliberate fool's errand to keep her from the escape. - ch 2, ch 16, ch 19, ch 31, ch 46.

Notable Quotes

"You see this face? You see these hands? They do not belong to a good or kind man. Good, kind men do not prosper in war." - Ollery, House of Open Wounds, ch 6

"This is why we exist. This is what keeps us alive, and the hospital open. Not that we save lives, but that some son of a bitch in Higher Orders can get my unguents for his boils, or a noseful of powdered clappa to take his mind off the fact that he's just sent five hundred poor bastards to their deaths." - Ollery, House of Open Wounds, ch 6

"Doing harm is what an army's for. Us, the Loruthi, your Maric lads before you got smashed down four years back. It's a world of harm." - Ollery, House of Open Wounds, ch 5

"I will live with my lashes and let time and alchemy fade them. I will not be bound by your creed, boy. You understand me? I will be keeping my options open." - Ollery, House of Open Wounds, ch 32

"You will not speak of her." - Ollery, House of Open Wounds, ch 39

"Because they will hunt us, and probably catch and kill us, and we didn't want to make you part of it. In fact unless you get the hell out of the way we may not even get clear of the camp. Go away, Banders. You too, Masty. There's no reason you need to be dragged down with us. Go live your lives and good luck with the army." - Ollery, House of Open Wounds, ch 46

"Some. Useful lesson. Reminds me how it doesn't stop the pain. Just puts it in the next room for a while. And only some. Need a clear head." - Ollery, House of Open Wounds, ch 35

"my apprentice and skivvy. And son, at the end." - Oathan, Days of Shattered Faith, ch 48

"He's just a boy." - Oathan, Days of Shattered Faith, ch 49

Tags

1. surgeon · #alchemist · #chief-accessory · #medico · #poisoner