Tobriant
Tobriant is an Allorwen cabinet-maker, a man of small workshop and plain ambition, whose craft-cabinets, chairs, the honest furniture of domestic life-makes him invisible to the powerful and expendable to them. In City of Last Chances he is swept up by Hegelsy's agents in their search for a stolen warding bundle, arrested alongside his business associate Dorae and a third man, Fyon, and thrown into the private cells of the School of Correct Speech beneath the Donjon. His imprisonment is not the result of any resistance activity; he is condemned because he is Allorwen, because his work passes through an antiques shop, and because the machinery of occupation needs a body on a scaffold. He matters to the novel as the ordinary life that the political apparatus grinds up: a man who insists, right up to the moment the trapdoor opens, that he is "just a carpenter."
His arc is a single, brutal compression from cell to scaffold to cellar to the threshold of the Wood. Sentenced to hang the morning after his arrival, Tobriant is saved only by Blackmane's bribery of the executioner and wakes among corpses in a cellar beneath the Anchorage, legally dead, his family arriving with money to spirit him away. He endures the condescension of the exiled Maestro Ivarn Ostravar, shelters with Blackmane's nineteen countryfolk through the Reproach's march through Ilmar, and prepares-among students, academics, and refugees crowding the Anchorage taproom-to cross into the Anchorwood when the passage finally opens. He is the last calm night given a name.
Character
Appearance
Tobriant is described as physically large: his arrival in the converted wine-cellar cells is marked by his "filling every alcove" of the space - ch 21. No further physical detail is given. What others notice about him is less his body than his plainness: he is a man who protests in the plainest possible terms that he makes "cabinets and chairs," and who weeps openly as the scaffold baton falls, gripping nothing because his hands are bound - ch 26.
Personality
Tobriant is gentle, communal, and unpretentious. Even in the cellar beneath the Anchorage, freshly hauled back from the dead, he offers beer to the assembled group - ch 29. He protests his innocence on the scaffold not with political rhetoric but with the simple, bewildered insistence of a tradesman who cannot imagine what crime he might have committed - ch 26. He carries no revolutionary identity; his self-conception is bounded by his workshop and his family.
Beliefs & Motivations
Tobriant's governing rule is that he is a maker of furniture, not a player in the conflicts of the Occupation. He sees himself as "just a carpenter" who "makes cabinets and chairs," and his insistence on this plain fact is his only defence against a system that reads a cabinet-maker's trade through the lens of forger and enemy alien - ch 26. After his rescue he asks nothing beyond survival and passage: he waits with his wife and Blackmane's community for the Wood to open, accepting the ritual wards-string wrapped around sticks and herbs, decorated with trinkets and charms-that will see him through the Anchorwood - ch 29.
History
City of Last Chances
The Healing of Ruslav
Tobriant is an Allorwen cabinet-maker brought into the private cells of Correct Speech beneath the Donjon alongside Fyon and Dorae, filling every alcove of the converted wine cellar - ch 21. Ivarn Ostravar, already imprisoned there, reads Tobriant as a forger whose work surfaces in Dorae's antiques shop with a fake pedigree, and notes that the two men were beaten harder than Fyon because "plenty of the Occupation force had done a turn in Allor and built up a solid head of prejudice" - ch 21. Their arrival signals to Ivarn that Hegelsy's agents have shifted their search for the stolen warding bundle into Mirror Allor - ch 21.
The Hanging at the Donjon
The following morning, Tobriant is marched to the execution scaffold in the Donjon yard with the other condemned. He protests his innocence - "I didn't do anything! I'm not the right man! I'm just a carpenter! I just make cabinets and chairs!" - and is cuffèd, tripped, kicked, and had his shoulders twisted by the guards - ch 26. Dorae, standing beside him, is certain Tobriant is blamelessly honest and "wouldn't even age a fake," while Dorae himself has sheltered resistance fighters and fugitives in his shop's back room - ch 26. In the crowd, Blackmane nods to Dorae and Tobriant but fixes Ivarn Ostravar with "a particularly keen needle of a stare" - ch 26. As the baton falls, Tobriant weeps openly; Dorae wishes his hands were free to grip the man's fingers - ch 26. The trapdoor opens and Tobriant drops with the others - ch 26.
The Rescue from the Donjon
Tobriant wakes among the rescued in a cellar strewn with corpses beneath the Anchorage, alive and free, having been saved by Blackmane's bribery of the executioner Hoyst - ch 29. Blackmane speaks to Tobriant and Dorae in Allorwen as a community elder, informing them they are legally dead, that their families are arriving with money, and providing them with ritual wards - "string wrapped around sticks and herbs, decorated with trinkets and charms" - to cross the Wood - ch 29. Tobriant offers beer to the group and receives his ward alongside Dorae - ch 29.
The next day, in a second cellar of the Anchorage, Tobriant watches alongside Hellgram, Dorae, and the unmasked Indweller as Ivarn Ostravar rages at him and Dorae for being Allorwen outsiders who "didn't even belong here in his city" - ch 31.
The Last Calm Night
Tobriant is among the Allorwen refugees sheltering at the Anchorage on the night before the Wood opens - ch 36. His wife is among those herded up from the cellar when Blackmane assembles the group for passage through the Anchorwood - ch 36.
The Reproach Breaks Free
In the aftermath of the Reproach's march through Ilmar, Tobriant remains among Blackmane's nineteen countryfolk sheltering in the Anchorage taproom, which is crowded with students, Gownhall academics, Allorwen refugees, and Hammer District people - ch 47. When Langrice hammers the bar and announces "The Wood's open," Tobriant is among the Allorwen preparing to go through with the others - ch 47.
Relationships
- Dorae - Business partners and fellow prisoners. Tobriant's work surfaces in Dorae's antiques shop, which is how Ivarn Ostravar identifies him as a supposed forger - ch 21. Dorae is certain of Tobriant's innocence, insisting the man "wouldn't even age a fake," and on the scaffold wishes his own hands were free to grip Tobriant's fingers in a last moment of solidarity - ch 26. They are rescued together and shelter together at the Anchorage, subjected to Ivarn's reproaches side by side - ch 31.
- Ivarn Ostravar - A fellow Allorwen exile in the Anchorage cellars who directs hostility at Tobriant and Dorae, raging that they are outsiders who "didn't even belong here in his city" - ch 31. The bond is one of shared nationality undercut by Ostravar's resentment of their presence in a city he considers his own.
- Blackmane - A community elder among the Allorwen at the Anchorage. Blackmane arranges Tobriant's legal death and rescue by bribing the executioner Hoyst, speaks to him in Allorwen as an elder addressing his own, informs him his family is arriving with money, and provides him with a ward for the Wood - ch 29. He later musters Tobriant and his wife among the nineteen countryfolk for passage through the Anchorwood - ch 36.
- Fyon - A third man arrested alongside Tobriant and Dorae. Fyon is beaten less than the two Allorwen men because, as Ivarn observes, "plenty of the Occupation force had done a turn in Allor and built up a solid head of prejudice" - ch 21. They share the cells and the scaffold.
- Tobriant's wife - Tobriant's wife is with him at the Anchorage. When Blackmane assembles the group for passage through the Anchorwood, she is among those herded up from the cellar alongside him - ch 36.
Notable Quotes
- "I didn't do anything! I'm not the right man! I'm just a carpenter! I just make cabinets and chairs!" - Tobriant, City of Last Chances, ch 26
Tags
- carpenter · #allorwen · #prisoner