Aullaime
Aullaime is an Allorwen hellieur and conjurer attached to the Siblingries, the underground labour organisation operating across the Hammer Districts of Ilmar. Her specific expertise - demon-binding and contract law - makes her the invisible legal infrastructure behind the mills' demonic labour force: she negotiates, reads, rewrites, and renews the pacts that keep the bound creatures working the presses. Without her, the contracts fail, the wards collapse, and the machinery of the occupation grinds to a halt. She is the person who stands between the labour movement and catastrophic unbinding, and the person who ultimately decides that the contracts should end.
Her arc across the single book in which she appears moves from emergency response to quiet complicity to open revolution. She begins as the expert summoned at night to re-chain a rampaging demon, negotiates in good faith with a creature the Kings Below shipped to Ilmar against its will, and re-binds it because the immediate alternative is worse. She shelters Father Orvechin when Pal soldiers ransack the Siblingries' quarters, cradles his body when he falls during the workers' charge at Gownhall Square, and carries the private shame of an organisation that let her own kinfolk be deported while mourning its own arrested members. By the final act, when the Palleseen occupation has killed or arrested every human agent in the factories, she walks the line of demon pens and renegotiates a hundred-page chain into a single page that frees the creatures to kill the soldiers who have besieged the city. The escape clause she embeds - and the dozen other mills where she did the same work - were placed years earlier on a master's instruction, a contingency she did not know she would one day call down.
What makes Aullaime essential to the book's argument about occupation is her refusal to abandon the legal vocabulary of the oppressor. She does not smash the contracts; she reads them with the precision the law demands and finds the seams. She uses Correct Exchange's mandatory rubber-stamping to make the Perfecture a party to every demon's servitude, then invokes a breach clause the system's own drafters embedded to protect negotiators from having their capacity undermined. The machinery of control is turned, clause by clause, against its operators. In the quiet aftermath of the re-binding in chapter sixteen, when she rests a hand on Orvechin's shoulder and tells him to go home, the same skill that makes her formidable also makes her lonely: she is "trapped in the same circle" as the man who calls himself a collaborator in a larger war, and the personal compromise they share is only one more in a long line he cannot even be sure his wife has not already found out about.
Character
Appearance
The text provides almost no physical description of Aullaime. She is identified as Allorwen by heritage and affiliation. The one material detail is situational: she arrives at the Tosthevar factory in a nightgown under her coat, roused from sleep by the bound demon's "monstrous speech," which wakes everyone within three streets - ch 16. She works barehanded on the machines, drawing sigils directly onto the presses - ch 16.
Personality
Aullaime is methodical, legally precise, and capable of dry, flat wit under pressure. She vouches for colleagues' competence in a single clause and moves immediately to the work - ch 16. Faced with a bound demon that has broken its wards through no fault of its own, she negotiates rather than dominates, reads the creature's account, and delivers the verdict on the contracts with professional candour - ch 16. Her gentleness with Orvechin is understated: a hand on the shoulder, an invented Siblingry meeting as cover, the instruction to go home - ch 16. When the Palleseen arrest her, she is held for an hour and reports it later without drama - ch 22. When she shelters Orvechin in her room at the Ropa Street mill-bank, she simply points the searchers elsewhere - ch 28. Her final act of liberation is delivered in the same calm, explanatory register she uses for routine ward-checks, the dark comedy of "How negligent of me" landing only because of how evenly she speaks the words - ch 43.
Beliefs & Motivations
Aullaime operates within the system's own structures and turns them. She does not reject contract law; she practises it so thoroughly that the law's own protective clauses become weapons against the parties who wrote them. She is loyal to the Siblingries but carries an open wound about their priorities: the organisation has not acted on the arrests and deportations in Mirror Allor because the victims were not members, and she names that omission plainly in front of Orvechin at the Sirovar townhouse, making him feel the shame - ch 28. Her kinfolk have been extracting people from Mirror Allor for days, running an organised operation that the Siblingries have neither joined nor acknowledged - ch 28. She accepted her master's instruction to embed the final-appendix clause in every contract without knowing when or whether she would use it, which suggests a long-practised discipline of preparation without certainty - ch 43.
Affiliations
- Siblingries - hellieur
History
City of Last Chances
The Assembly of the Reproach Expedition
Aullaime is an Allorwen hellieur and conjurer affiliated with the Siblingries, and her expertise in demon-binding and contract law makes her indispensable to the labour movement's operations in the Hammer Districts. She is first seen in the Tosthevar factory at night, arriving in a nightgown under her coat after a bound demon breaks its wards and rampages among the presses - a vast, horned, copper-skinned creature with cropped wings, hobbled with runed irons and scarred by failed wards - waking everyone within three streets with its "monstrous speech" - ch 16.
She identifies Varlechev and Furenya as the people who drew the contracts and wards at the factory, vouches for their competence, and begins negotiating with the demon by drawing sigils on the machines themselves - ch 16. Father Orvechin, the foundry overseer and senior Siblingry member, steps outside to manage the crowd and the factory owners while she works. When she returns, she reports the demon's account: it was a political dissident in the Infernal Realms, rounded up in the Kings Below's purge and shipped to Ilmar against its will. The contracts and wards are sound; the Kings Below "stiffed" them with defective goods - ch 16. Orvechin demands the Tosthevars check their merchandise or let the Siblingries do it, shifting leverage slightly against the owners - ch 16.
Aullaime then re-binds the demon with flaring sigils. The creature screams and almost breaks the circle but does not. Orvechin watches the beast chained back to the presses and registers "the look of betrayal, in a monster that had been negotiating in good faith," calling himself "a collaborator in a larger war" - ch 16. Afterward, Aullaime and Orvechin share a quiet moment; she rests a hand on his shoulder, tells him to go home, and invents a Siblingry meeting as an excuse. The notes record them as "trapped in the same circle" - ch 16. Orvechin reflects on the affair - "One more compromise he'd fallen into. Not even the first time. He couldn't even say for sure his wife hadn't found out, just like she'd found out about the last one" - ch 16.
The Healing of Ruslav
Aullaime's role is brief and informational. At a Siblingry canteen off Szechelm Way, she reports to Orvechin that Pal soldiers have carried out arrests in Mirror Allor, the Allorwen quarter. She had herself been held for an hour - ch 22. The context is the escalating Pal crackdown following the Gownhall crisis and Maestro Ivarn Ostravar's arrest by the authorities.
The Rescue from the Donjon
In the small hours after thirteen Siblingry organisers are taken from their beds by Pal soldiers, Aullaime shelters Orvechin in her room at the Ropa Street mill-bank and points the searchers elsewhere; Orvechin flees - ch 28. Her Allorwen kinfolk have been "hauling" people out of Mirror Allor for days, a background of organised extraction predating the night's arrests - ch 28.
She is present at the clothiers' warehouse where Orvechin, Aullaime, and Petric Lesselkin meet delegates from the Hammer Districts to discuss the Pal hangings and the question of resistance - ch 28. Later, at the Sirovar townhouse in the Armiger district, during the negotiation with Vidsya Sirovar over Raven and Armiger solidarity with the strike, Aullaime adds the Mirror Allor context: her people have been arrested and deported, and the Siblingries have not yet acted on it because those victims were not Siblingry members. Orvechin feels the shame of that omission - ch 28.
The Battle of Gownhall Square
On Liberation Way, when Orvechin falls during the workers' charge against the Palleseen barricades, Aullaime cradles his body and curses the Palleseen with demon-midges - ch 39. The Siblingry march disintegrates behind them as Nisbet flanks to slaughter the families and dependants at the rear; the workers' advance "flexes, twists, and snaps" and survivors rout toward Portbridge - ch 39.
Hellgram's War
During the Wielding the Hammer, the humans vanish from the factories and the machines stop. When they return, a conjurer enters the factory, goes upstairs to "the place of papers," then descends to walk the line of pens, checking each circle is intact, and slides a piece of paper into each one - ch 43. The chapter identifies her only as "the conjurer" and "one of the hellieurs," but the notes confirm this is Aullaime acting on a contingency prepared years earlier.
Each paper is a new, individually drafted contract bearing the demon's true name "rendered in the only characters that could contain it" - not a batch document. From the gantry, Aullaime announces the terms and explains the final-appendix clause: "Because Correct Exchange must rubber stamp every contract and that makes the Perfecture party to it. Because the agents of the factory are dead, or arrested, or too injured to work. And so, I am renegotiating" - ch 43. The clause reads: "The final appendix paragraph nine. If in the absolute discretion of the negotiator any party to this contract shall be judged to have acted towards any party or their agents in a manner that would prevent such party or their agents from fulfilling their responsibilities under this contract or associated with the proper operation of this contract, then the terms of this contract may be replaced or varied at the absolute discretion of the negotiator" - ch 43.
She offers a one-page contract: each demon enters the streets of Ilmar, destroys at least seven wearers of the uniform, and is then released from all contractual duties and returned to the Infernal Realms by operation of the standing treaties - but with no clause returning them to the Kings Below's keeping. When the bound demon notes this omission, she replies, "How negligent of me" - ch 43. She mentions "another dozen mills where I did the contract work," and explains the clause's origin: "My master told me I might need it, one day. Today's that day" - ch 43. She throws the old hundred-page contract into the air as a symbolic gesture; the actual binding was never on the paper - ch 43. The demon cuts his copper forearm with a hooked claw, touches black-purple blood to the paper, and signs. His fangs grow past his lips - ch 43.
The Reproach Breaks Free
Aullaime does not appear directly but her diversion is felt across the city. Ragged demon bodies near the Anchorage mark the work of the freed mill demons, and Yasnic reports that "monsters" are attacking Palleseen soldiers on every street from the cistern under the Rehevitz morgue to the Anchorage - ch 45. The crippled mills and chaotic streets give the Siblingry survivors a window to reach the Hammer Districts - ch 45. The full scale of the demon uprising she engineered is not quantified in the chapter.
Relationships
- Father Orvechin - Siblingry colleagues who are also engaged in a secret sexual affair. Aullaime calls him "Vech" informally, and the text records them as "trapped in the same circle" after the demon re-binding, when she rests a hand on his shoulder and invents a cover story to send him home - ch 16. Orvechin's reflection - "One more compromise he'd fallen into. Not even the first time. He couldn't even say for sure his wife hadn't found out, just like she'd found out about the last one" - casts their relationship in the register of accumulation and risk rather than first-time transgression - ch 16. When Pal soldiers come for the Siblingry leadership, she shelters him in her room at the Ropa Street mill-bank and misdirects the searchers - ch 28. She is present at the clothiers' warehouse where Orvechin, Aullaime, and Petric Lesselkin meet Hammer Districts delegates to discuss the Pal hangings and the question of resistance - ch 28. During the march on Liberation Way, when Orvechin falls, she cradles his body and curses the Palleseen with demon-midges - ch 39. The affair and the complicity run in parallel: the Siblingries' compromise with the factory owners mirrors, at the level of structure, the compromise of labour-leader-as-occupier that keeps Orvechin in the foundry while the occupation holds the city.
- the nameless demon - Aullaime is the conjurer bound to this creature by a hundred-page contract of the Tosthevar mills. She reads its sigils, assesses the wards, negotiates its account, and re-binds it with flaring circles on the machines themselves - ch 16. In the final act she dismantles that contract, explaining the renegotiation from the gantry and sliding new single-page agreements into each pen. The demon's fangs grow past its lips as it signs - ch 43.
- the Kings Below - Adversarial. The Kings Below rounded up the demon as a political dissident, shipped it to Ilmar against its will, and "stiffed" the Siblingries with defective wards and contracts - ch 16. Aullaime's final contract deliberately omits any clause returning the freed demons to the Kings Below's keeping, a gap she closes only by saying "How negligent of me" - ch 43.
- Correct Exchange - An institutional relationship she exploits rather than one she trusts. Correct Exchange's obligation to rubber-stamp every contract makes the Perfecture a party to each demon's servitude, which is the legal lever Aullaime uses to invoke the breach clause and justify renegotiation - ch 43.
- Mirror Allor - Her own Allorwen quarter, whose residents have been arrested and deported by Pal soldiers. Her kinfolk have been organising extraction for days. The Siblingries have not acted because the victims were not members, and she names that omission to Orvechin, who feels the shame - ch 28.
Notable Quotes
- "How negligent of me" - Aullaime, City of Last Chances, ch 43
- "Because Correct Exchange must rubber stamp every contract and that makes the Perfecture party to it. Because the agents of the factory are dead, or arrested, or too injured to work. And so, I am renegotiating" - Aullaime, City of Last Chances, ch 43
- "My master told me I might need it, one day. Today's that day" - Aullaime, City of Last Chances, ch 43
Tags
- hellieur · #conjurer · #allorwen · #siblingries