The Tyrant Philosophers/Widow

Widow, also known as Abellaime and, during her time embedded in the Palleseen army, as Mother Semprellaime, is an Allorwen conjurer and bawd who appears in House of Open Wounds and Pretenders to the Throne Of God. She runs a demon-brothel first from a high-sided wagon in the Palleseen siege camp and later from the Pandaemonium, a converted sea-temple in Eres Ffenegh, where she anchors contracts with demons and dispenses arcane services to clients ranging from officers and prisoners-of-war to the champions of besieged nations. She is the same person throughout both books: the disguise of an ugly old woman she maintains among Palleseen soldiers is dropped when she is known as the Widow in Eres Ffenegh, and the connection between the two identities becomes explicit in the second book's opening chapters.

Her significance to the series lies in her role as the sole sustained expert on Allorwen demon-contract theory and practice, a lens through which the reader understands the economics, ethics, and grammar of the supernatural. She is also the master and deliberate corruptor of Devil Jack, the former Maric priest who becomes her apprentice, and her arc across both books traces a woman who survived childhood cruelty in Allor, a forced ritual marriage to a grand demon, and the Palleseen conquest of her homeland, and who has since rebuilt herself as a figure of terrifying commercial and arcane authority. Her long-pent rage against the Palleseen is routed through Jack and through the machinations of the Pandaemonium; by the close of the second book she is proposed as Hell's first ambassador to the World Above, a role that only she could fill as the last heir of the Sable Manor, the conjurer-dynasty estate that exists between the living world and the Realms Below.

Her whole arc moves from a tolerated, disguised functionary at the margins of an occupying army to the sovereign operator of the one space in Eres Ffenegh where Palleseen divination cannot reach and the Helaseach cannot challenge her claim. Along the way she transforms from a healer's refuge and confidante into a puppeteer whose experiments on Jack and Kiffel ea Leachan are framed as both revenge and the only form of living available to a woman from whom everything was taken.

Character

Appearance

In the Palleseen camp she presents as an ugly old woman: a glue-on prosthetic nose, wax warts, a cast over one eye, a wig, and painted wrinkles, each described as a "masterwork of forgery." The disguise works because Palleseen soldiers will not look an ugly old woman in the face. Jack notices the age-lines are drawn with pen and the warts and nose are wax; she recoils when caught, and he understands why she hides her youth among soldiers. As the Widow in Eres Ffenegh she appears in Allorwen couture, and she is addressed as a woman of authority and ferocity rather than a haggard camp figure. She keeps a red-and-black kerchief on her person, which she offers as a blindfold. - House of Open Wounds, ch 7, 25; Pretenders to the Throne Of God, ch 18, 32

Personality

She is practical, sardonic, and capable of sudden "practical ferocity" when her establishment is endangered. She treats resentment and hatred directed at her as entertainment and as proof of being thought of: she feeds on Valkazar's loathing, wears his former role as tutor in his "patient loathing," and undercuts his grand announcements for amusement. She is candid to the point of cruelty-telling Jack "Sometimes you can't have things," telling Kiffel "A hero or nobody"-but her cruelty is bounded by a genuine, if grudging, care: she feels "a young woman's desperate worry" watching Jack run toward danger, she is "genuinely concerned" when Jack asks her help to reach Caeleen, and she kept his box safe through the chaos of the camp. She cycles memories of childhood abuse without sentimentality and explicitly rejects the moral halo of the victim: "Being wronged didn't make you a saint or even kind, most often quite the reverse." She holds "Rule By Fear" to be what she was fleeing rather than wielding freely, yet exercises it relentlessly. - House of Open Wounds, ch 25, 49; Pretenders to the Throne Of God, ch 5, 17, 34

Beliefs & Motivations

She adheres to the Allorwen contract philosophy that demons are simultaneously people and demons, that commerce with the Worlds Below is "one of the few ways out of the mire," and that conjuration is compulsion unless structured through a properly negotiated individual contract. Her aunt's teaching guides her: "Bargain hard, so that they respect you. Never cheat them, so that they resent you." She holds nine individual artisanal contracts, no mass consignments, and treats the contract itself as payment giving the demon "strength" and "essential thingness" usable as infernal currency. She swore not to like any man in uniform and cannot quite honour it with Jack. Her driving motivation is revenge against the Palleseen for the conquest of Allor and the destruction of her family's inherited position, routed through the one person she has left to torment. She possesses the Sable Manor's phantasmal rooms as an achieved conquest that "tastes of ashes without catharsis," and she is heir to the ancient contracts binding the estate to Hell. - House of Open Wounds, ch 25; Pretenders to the Throne Of God, ch 5, 17, 34

Affiliations

• Pandaemonium - owner

History

House of Open Wounds

The Whipping at the Alder

After Maric Jack is flogged with the Alder on Chief Accessory Ollery's orders, Ollery tells him he must learn the army's hierarchies and takes him to Mother Semprellaime for a couple of hours' recuperation - ch 6. They arrive at her high-sided wagon in the Gutter Districts wagon area; Ollery hands Jack a coin for tea and leaves him with a veiled reference to the whipping - ch 7.

Mother Semprellaime is an Allorwen bawd running a circle house - a demon-brothel - in the Palleseen camp, with laundry hung between wagons as daytime cover - ch 7. Inside the wagon, Jack spots cleaned chalk-circle remnants on the floorboards and a ritual sigil bowl now used to boil a kettle; he promises not to report her conjuring, and she reveals her trade openly - ch 7. She and Jack discover they are both from Ilmar; the Allorwen-Maric tension creates a brief frost, which she breaks by correcting his use of "district" to "department" - ch 7. When Jack breaks down weeping at the accumulated weight of the Alder, exile, his mentor's hanging, and the unknown future, she puts a hand on his shoulder and says, "Welcome to the army life. You'll get over it. Or most do. It's not the life any of us would have chosen" - ch 7.

Jack tells her his full story: he was a priest of God in Ilmar, left God's service trying to save lives, could then see all the abandoned gods littering the city, ran a shrine, and smuggled gods out ahead of the new Perfector's Ratcatchers - ch 7. During this conversation, three gods materialise on Jack's box - God, the Life Of Dead Trees, and the Fisher King - and join them for tea, God forbidding the brothel and the "foreign filth" tea - ch 7. Semprellaime's disguise slips: Jack notices the age-lines are drawn with pen, the warts and nose are wax; she recoils, and he understands why she hides her youth among Palleseen soldiers. He promises not to tell; she says Ollery already knows - ch 7. Her homeland, Allor, was conquered by the Palleseen Sway; she could have been "a grand votaress" there - ch 7. She invites him to return anytime - ch 7.

As Jack leaves, a squad of soldiers is waiting outside; the Statlos confirms his identity from Banders's card and announces the man Jack healed has died - ch 7. Jack is taken away, leaving the box and the gods behind - "no place fit for gods" - ch 7.

When Thurrel later questions Jack in a workshop hut, he hints that he knows about something Jack did not bring with him; Jack thinks of the box in Mother Semprellaime's wagon and clamps down on the thought - ch 9. The question of what Thurrel knows about the box's contents remains unresolved at this point - ch 9.

The Gallete Island

Eight days after the Loruthi battle, the department reunites at the field hospital camp: Lochiver, Masty, Banders, Jack, Mother Semprellaime (still in disguise), Cosserby, and Ollery - ch 16. She is among those present when Banders, Masty, and Jack return from saying farewell to two soldiers at the camp's edge, Jack visibly distressed - ch 16.

On the flying Gallete island transporting the Forthright Battalion, she is referenced by Banders as "Mother Semp," from whom Jack never bought services - ch 17.

Leave in Magnelei

During a night of general celebration and rummell rations in the conjoined Forthright/Landwards camp, Mother Semprellaime is doing "a fine trade," observed by Masty walking alone through the camp - ch 23.

She is the point-of-view character for a morning scene in her wagon near Magnelei, after The Butcher had dumped Jack on her and provosts removed him - ch 25. She performs her morning ritual of constructing the old-woman disguise: glue-on nose, warts, cast over one eye, wig, and painted wrinkles, each a "masterwork of forgery." She reflects on why the disguise works (Pals won't look an ugly old woman in the face) and on her aunt, who taught her conjuration and was taken when the Palleseen conquered Allor - ch 25. She reviews her records: nine demon contracts, each an individual artisanal agreement, no mass consignments from the Kings Below - ch 25. The narrator records her thought: "She was a queen of votaries, she thought, looking in the mirror at the haggard face she'd constructed. I am a bawd" - ch 25.

Jack arrives not as a client but to consult her "as a scholar" about demons. He asks whether demons are merely reflections of the conjurer, "another Maserley in a funny hat." She says no: they exist Below in their own right - ch 25. She explains the Allorwen contract system: "But conjuration is compulsion," and "Demons feed on misery. Not just that, and that doesn't mean they're obsessed with inflicting pain or the rest. All those things you've heard. But misery, Jack. Unless it's through a properly negotiated contract, have nothing to do with them. Hell doesn't respect an amateur" - ch 25. Jack protests: "It's their choice. It's by will, what they do. They're people. Individuals." She affirms both: "No. They're demons. And yes. They're also people." She notes the Allorwen vocabulary for these distinctions does not translate into Pel - ch 25. She recalls her aunt's teaching: "Bargain hard, so that they respect you. Never cheat them, so that they resent you" - ch 25.

She holds nine individual artisanal contracts with demons; the Worlds Below are "harsh" and commerce with "those Above" is "one of the few ways out of the mire" - ch 25. The contract itself is payment, giving the demon "strength" and "essential thingness" usable as infernal currency - ch 25. She has sworn "do not like any of them. No feelings in her for a man in uniform" but cannot quite honour it with Jack, whom she finds "mild and pleasant and helpful, if a bit wet" and "slightly endearing" - ch 25. She kept his box safe after the Butcher dumped him there - ch 25. When Banders shouts from outside that they are leaving for Magnelei on the leave rota, Jack bolts, bangs his head, and runs; she watches him go, recognising the look of a man about to "do something stupid," and sits in the dark of her wagon feeling "a young woman's desperate worry" - ch 25.

The Magnelei Standoff

She is the point-of-view character in a logistics tent where she navigates the Palleseen camp, stopped repeatedly by statloi who harass her; the army is fragmented after a defeat, and the Loruthi sit within sight of Magnelei - ch 37. The profession and legal fiction by which those purveying "mortal or infernal flesh" register as seamstresses and laundresses in the Pal census governs her presence in the camp - ch 37.

Prassel commissions her to sew warding sigils - especially against ghosts - into a bolt of lemon-yellow cloth, to be worn as outer lining: "Make me one. Every warding sigil you can dredge from your memory. Special reference to protection against ghosts" - ch 37. They negotiate payment: Prassel insists on coin; Semprellaime insists on the Allorwen custom of a favour alongside coin: "And yet you have come to an Allorwen conjurer for her services, and that has its own exchange. I will take coin, but I will take a favour" - ch 37. Prassel concedes - ch 37.

During the work, she overhears a sealed notice from Correct Speech's Higher Orders expressing concern about sedition in the hospital department, unexplained deaths among soldiers, and Maric's prior caution - ch 37. After finishing the garment, she reveals to Prassel that she saw the notice. Prassel calls it "out of the question" and warns: "Well, Mother, you have me over a barrel, and you should only understand how unpleasant your stay with us might become if you ask unwisely" - ch 37. Semprellaime offers her continued services in future in exchange; Prassel says she will consider how to square this with military duties - ch 37. She tells Prassel: Magister, you have the aspect of a woman sailing into dark waters - ch 37.

In the aftermath of Cosserby's breakdown during an interrogation, Prassel tells him to carry messages to Sherm and to Mother Semprellaime, reporting "Obligation discharged" - ch 38. The obligation in question is the favour owed from the warding-garment commission - ch 38.

The Draining of the Gods

The following day after the prisoner exchange in Magnelei, Jack visits Mother Semprellaime's wagon to find Caeleen sitting at the table; his heart wounds at the sight of her - ch 40. She gasps when Jack appears at her wagon door and silently gathers broken cups during his confrontation with Caeleen - ch 40. She seems to have received word, possibly from Caeleen, that Jack is alive - ch 40.

During the Loruthi offensive east of Magnelei, she is referenced as having stitched warding symbols into Prassel's uniform - ch 41.

The Purge of the Hospital

After the battle collapses and Jack is chained in a small tent listening to artillery, he hopes Mother Semprellaime is clear of the fires spreading through the camp - ch 43. No further scene from her perspective occurs during the purge itself.

The Coronation of Feder IV

She is the point-of-view character for a night scene in her wagon in the Palleseen army camp near Bracinta, as a delegation for a royal reception for the new king of Bracinta is being planned - ch 49. She finishes the night's work as a demon-procurer for Palleseen officers (all Companion rank or above), then dismisses her conjured demons, granting each a final lingering connection so she can find them again rather than netting "enslaved dross from the Kings" - ch 49. A quiet knock comes; she senses it is Jack and lets him in before he is spotted - ch 49.

Jack, wanted and disguised in a borrowed uniform Banders smuggled him in, needs to consult her about how Caeleen's contract works - ch 49. She tells him Caeleen can live without the contract, but only Below, in the Kings' hands, where she would be sold again - ch 49. Jack asks, "hypothetically," what happens if Maserley dies; she says the result is the same as no contract - Caeleen goes back to the Kings - and Maserley would not include a clause to assign her elsewhere, because she is his property, not a military asset - ch 49. She tells him Caeleen's contract is on Maserley's person, not in the strongbox, and begs him not to go after it - ch 49.

Jack explains he swore an oath, God no longer needs him, and he has the right to throw his life away: "I swore an oath, and what am I for, exactly? Even God doesn't need me any more. I actually have the right to throw my life away if you want. First time ever. Nobody depending on me any more" - ch 49. She removes her disguise and tells him to go: "Fine. You go, Jack. Go throw it away. Just..." - ch 49. He asks for a "good luck"; she nearly throws a cup at him - ch 49. She tells him: "Sometimes you can't have things" - ch 49.

Pretenders to the Throne Of God

The Infiltration of the Varinaen

The Widow Abellaime, 'the Widow' is first referenced at the prisoner exchange at Godsgift Square, where Devil Jack arrives to collect Hamriddy oa Galeaff's overdue personal debts on her behalf. His visit distinguishes between the personal financial account and the services the Widow has rendered to the city's defence through the Pandaemonium, which she operates as "that other establishment" across the square, now with an "enhanced range of services" - ch 3. Niev ea Galeaff assures Devil Jack that Hamriddy "has never failed to settle a debt" and will bring a full accounting, then identifies the apprentice to Arduin oa Galeaff - "That was the Widow's apprentice, you absolute turd" - ch 3.

The Arrival of the Dead Companies

The chapter titled "The Widow" is narrated from Abellaime's close third-person perspective, establishing her as an Allorwen conjurer and bawd who runs the Pandaemonium from the morning before opening hours - ch 5. The narrative recounts how she broke a four-hundred-year ward on the building, formerly a sealed temple to the dead crab god Ffen, and took it after the last priest bound it with spite - ch 5. Her demon majordomo Valkazar brings tea and fish-honey while wearing her dead husband's robe as a petty jab; she has him bind her hair in ritually potent patterns, feeding on his resentment, which she treats as entertainment - ch 5. When a rogue demon goes loose in the Upper Parlour after Vestry botches a summoning meant to send a demon against the Lighthouse, Abellaime watches from the balcony and refuses to intervene until Jack arrives - ch 5. She addresses the staff with practical ferocity: "I don't want some Families heir getting his dick bitten off because you didn't close the wards properly" - ch 5. She expels Vestry for endangering the Pandaemonium's neutrality: "Not for the shoddy craft, though that would be enough, but because you would have me and the Pope at each other's throats, had your misbegotten thing got as far as his door" - ch 5. She orders Jack to escort Vestry back to the Lighthouse, citing a familiar in the congregation there - ch 5. At the chapter's close, Valkazar announces "a special guest, requiring special services," and Abellaime greets Kiffel ea Leachan, described as "until recently the grand and sainted champion of Eres Ffenegh" - ch 5.

The Osseach Meeting at the Pandaemonium

When Kiffel arrives at the Pandaemonium seeking help with the empty sword of Conn Leachan, the Widow mocks her: "Such an honour to host the very Claw of Ffen, O Champion" - ch 7. She examines the blade with a monocle and assesses the Palleseen decanting with professional grudging respect: "You can drink the honey from a comb and leave it whole, or you can just go in and rake everything out. Brutally efficient. My compliments to the Palleseen" - ch 7. When Kiff has nothing to offer as payment, the Widow shields her from the sight of the arriving Osseach of Defiance and has Devil Jack escort her to a private room - ch 7. In a later audience, the Widow explains the terms: she can anchor a demon in the hollowed-out blade, but the price is Kiffel's entire inheritance - the legend and line of Conn Leachan - fed to the demon, making her the last Champion. She tells Kiffel: "A hero or nobody, Kiffel ea Leachan" - ch 9. She describes the view from the Pandaemonium as "as close as any mortal can come to the Realms Below" and references her own loss of the Sable Manor - ch 9. She tells Kiffel: "Well, you are a drained bottle, Kiffel ea Leachan, but you come from a good cellar and maybe there are some drops left" - ch 7. The Pandaemonium hosts the Osseach because it is Abellaime's domain and all Pal divination is warded against; the Helaseach's home-grown magic had been specifically warded against by the old temple priests, so only Abellaime could hold the building - ch 9. She greets the Pope of Tides as a rival player and notes the killing of Vestry as "one point" conceded to him - ch 9. She greets Aeriff ea Llannach as her true supernatural rival, giving "her warmest smile, her coldest thoughts" - ch 9. Watching Devil Jack looking "strung out," she resolves to put him "through his paces," her long-pent revenge against the Palleseen routed through the one person she has left to torment - ch 9.

The Day of the Three Walls

The chapter "Her Face" is narrated from Abellaime's perspective. She leads Jack to the Lower Parlour - the defiled sacristy of the Carcer faith, decorated with the phantasmal décor of the Sable Manor - to oversee his conjuration of a demon in the shape of his dead beloved - ch 10. She recalls his backstory: he came to her after the war, before the Palleseen turned from allies to occupiers, wanting to learn conjuration for a specific purpose - ch 10. She observes Jack's dual nature - "one foot in the holy and one foot in Hell" - and after the demon is bound, she repeats the wineglass metaphor: the demon is the wine, the contract is the glass; what you see is "a construct of the container you had made" - ch 10. She says: "It's not her," and when Jack confirms, "Of course it's not her," with a soft chuckle - ch 10. She tells him: You must have made heaven tremble, Jack, before you fell and became wicked - ch 10. She resolves in narration to keep sharpening him: "Keen enough for her purposes? Perhaps not yet, but getting there. If she twisted Jack just right she could cut open the world" - ch 10. During the assault itself, the Helaseach conjurers shout a message for Abellaime while the Angler's Eye fires, and Jack fears her lashing for his poor craft in the chaotic fighting - ch 12.

The Palleseen Ultimatum

After the assault, Kiffel wakes in the Pandaemonium to find the Crabshell being fitted to her by Usrach. Abellaime sweeps in, mocks the demon's gesture, and demands Kiff surrender the Leachan name so the Crabshell demon can "guide you in battle as the great man did" - the narration renders the single word "contract" as sounding "like keys in locks, doors slamming shut, oubliettes and the trap of a hangman's scaffold" - ch 13. Kiff agrees: We do. Take it - ch 13. The narrator describes the moment: "Walking out of the Pandaemonium's side gate she wasn't sure if she had just completed her family's ruin or severed the last of her chains" - ch 13. Jack, when asked about the conflict between his former faith and his present servitude, reflects: Not yet. One day, maybe, and we'll see whose fuckery is strongest right then, God or the Widow - ch 13. In a later chapter, Jack's backstory confirms that Abellaime took him as apprentice because his botched conjurations created novel problems she had never seen - ch 15. The two attackers who stab Jack reference her: the cultist declares he will reclaim the Lighthouse from Abellaime and make himself Pope - ch 15.

The Peace Talks at the Pandaemonium

The chapter "The Host of Hell" is narrated from Abellaime's perspective. She recalls childhood abuse at the hands of Uncle Ottovar, Aunt Llamienn, Cousin Gascoln, and a withholding teacher, and the moment she broke free and swore to claim the Sable Lodge - ch 17. She notes she already possesses it: the phantasmal rooms of the Sable Manor manifested around her in the Pandaemonium when the Pal invasion of Allor drove her family to flee, yet the satisfaction tastes of ashes without catharsis - ch 17. She reflects on her forced ritual marriage to a grand demon in the Courts Below, the reason she is called the Widow: "Well, for that last one, there were good reasons she was called the Widow" - ch 17. She recognises that "Rule By Fear" is what she was fleeing, not wielding freely - ch 17. She resists the idea that being wronged made her saintly: "Being wronged didn't make you a saint or even kind, most often quite the reverse" - ch 17. She cycles through memories of the whipping, the shaming, the killed cat, the denied outside world - ch 17. She orders the staff to break out the fine brandy and let everyone keep their tips, knowing both Pals and locals will be seeking drink after the peace talks - ch 17. When the Palleseen delegation arrives, she greets them in Allorwen couture, takes a deliberate jab at "the dictates of perfection," and shows them to the best room; Brandery bows a tenth more than regulations allow - ch 18. At the siege talks, she takes Varinecthes under her care at the bar, speaking to him as an old acquaintance, blocking Lovern from approaching the grieving wizard - ch 21.

The Assault on the Lighthouse

In the Widow's audience chamber, Niev ea Galeaff petitions for a debt extension for Hamriddy. The Widow enumerates his accumulated debts - charms, Hell-counsel, use of the Pandaemonium on credit - then orders Jack to open the curtains, revealing the impossible balcony and the sound of screaming, to demonstrate the city's precariousness. Niev leaves without relief - ch 24. Kiffel ea Leachan arrives seeking the desecrated sword; the Widow has Usrach bear it, the blade now housing a new, eager resident. She gives Kiff the choice; Kiff takes the sword and feels the thing within it seize her. The Widow tells her she will be "a mortal terror" - ch 24. In private, Jack reports that Caeleen came to him in a dream, drawn by his blood. The Widow and Jack discuss love as a destructive fungus; she warns him not to draw circles in his dreams - ch 24. She sends Jack to the Varinaen to retrieve pledged books and three conjuring candlesticks, noting that Varinecthes gave permission when he visited the Pandaemonium during the Pals' stay - ch 24. She tells Jack: "I'd tell you, Never love, Jack, if it wasn't too late. It undermines everything you are" - ch 24. Jack refers to the replacement sword as "what she sold you" - ch 26. When Hamriddy oa Galeaff visits the Lighthouse to negotiate for relics to be "desecrated" on behalf of the Widow, the Pope of Tides surmises she has called in a debt; Hamriddy is described as "in hock to the Widow" - ch 27.

The Culling Lists

When Kiffel nearly kills Jack with the demon-sword and later comes to his bedside at the Hospitallers tent, she asks Jack to get Abellaime to help her with what a demon found in her during a possession that was not Conn Leachan; Jack agrees, recognising the parallel to his own experience - ch 30. In a later scene, Jack stands on the balcony of the Pandaemonium (the Sable Manor), which overlooks Hell, trying to find a way to physically enter it. The Widow appears, having inspected items Jack brought from Varinecthes, and dismisses Varney's claim that one can visit Hell as senility - ch 32. She explains the key principle: "Your eyes. You can't go to Hell with open eyes. It's your own perception that keeps the reality of it at arm's length. Only the eyes, strangely enough" - ch 32. She offers to blindfold him with her red-and-black kerchief. She asks if he regrets his choices; he does not. She tells him: "There are two reasons that reckless apprentices are told they can't visit Hell. Firstly, that they can't, not like they think. Secondly, that they can, but really, really shouldn't" - ch 32. When Jack tears off the blindfold and finds himself still astride the balcony rail, never having left, the Widow watches, amused; he trips off the rail and the three gashes on his knee are real - ch 32. In a later chapter, a cautionary voice notes: "What Abellaime would tell you is that a desire to demonstrate your cleverness is a terrible reason to play with demons. The demons will tell you exactly how clever you are right up to the point you make a mistake" - ch 33.

The Challenge to the Lich Queen

The chapter "Mosaic: Lower Powers" gives Abellaime a POV section. Kiffel demands the Widow take the sword back; the Widow refuses, explaining through Valkazar that the demon IS what Kiff asked for - Conn Leachan's shape - but without the lies: "You have exactly what you always had, child, save in one thing. You have in that blade a thing of the precise same shape and power as before the Pals emptied it, save only that it will not lie to you about what a hero's work is. It's all blood and butchery and taking joy from the horror of it" - ch 34. Kiff cannot surrender the sword and bolts from the room. Jack confronts the Widow over Kiff; she reveals Kiff is her experiment, that the Pals cheated her of everything, and that she amuses herself because she can have nothing else - ch 34. Jack asks her help to reach Caeleen in Hell; the Widow, genuinely concerned, promises to consult her books and closes herself away for the day - ch 34. A King Below appears at the Widow's balcony, offering restoration of her family's Hell-treasuries and power in exchange for Jack's death. She refuses: "You are no King here. You are a petitioner. And this audience is over" - ch 34. She tells the King: "Go back to Hell and barricade your gates, and I shall open the doors between Jack and you if it's the last thing I do" - ch 34. The narrator marks her as the last heir of the Sable Manor, heir to the ancient contracts binding the estate to Hell - ch 34. In a later scene past midnight, the Widow stoops over Devil Jack and whispers something that sends him bolting from the Upper Parlour in agitation - ch 36.

The Final Assault at the Gaelensreach

Abellaime has whispered "just a handful of words" to Jack that struck him like a revelation - the obvious thing about himself he could never see from inside his own skull - ch 39. The narration notes: "There were whole tomes of lore in Abellaime's library on the subject, as it pertained to demons. The power a conjurer could hold over them by knowing their name; the way a demon was shaped by naming it; the absolute and indivisible link between the label and the thing it described. Not one of those books considered that the connection extended both ways; that a demon could know a conjurer just as intimately" - ch 39. The chapter describes the effect of her words but not their content. On the final day, in the deepest room, Abellaime waits at her balcony, refusing to turn and see whether Jack has returned from Hell, failed, or been killed. She has set her long-planned weapon in motion - ch 41. The seven binding stones on the face of the Pandaemonium, inscribed with her wards and anchoring her conquest of the ancient sea temple, are destroyed by artillery directed through Aspel's mathematics - ch 41. Valkazar storms her room to take his revenge; Jack steps down from the balcony, triumphant, offering his hand to Hell - ch 41. The Sable Manor's binding to the Pandaemonium is half-snapped - ch 41. In the aftermath, Caeleen addresses the Osseach and proposes Abellaime as Hell's first ambassador. Aeriff ea Llannach objects: "You're not one of us!" but Abellaime rhetorically overwhelms her by asking how many demons she has contracted with since the Kings fell. Caeleen accepts Abellaime's consent; Aeriff is alone in her refusal - ch 42. In the Sable Manor, Abellaime receives Dantell, who seeks employment as a servant after Valkazar's departure. Abellaime hires her, foreseeing the entertainment of inevitable betrayal - ch 42. The text implies "long-laid plans, infernal schemes" between Abellaime and Caeleen - ch 42. - implied, ch 42.

Relationships

• Maric Jack / Devil Jack - In House of Open Wounds she is a refuge and confidante to the newly flogged Maric Jack, discovering a shared Ilmar background; she finds him "mild and pleasant and helpful, if a bit wet" and "slightly endearing" despite her sworn rule against feeling anything for a man in uniform. By Pretenders to the Throne Of God she is his mistress, master, and deliberate corruptor, teaching conjuration "drop by drop to see how much she can break," calling him "child" while he calls her "Auntie." She took him as apprentice because his botched conjurations created novel problems she had never seen. She resolves to keep sharpening him: If she twisted Jack just right she could cut open the world. - House of Open Wounds, ch 7, 25, 49; Pretenders to the Throne Of God, ch 5, 10, 15, 39

• Chief Accessory Ollery - "We go back some years"; they do mutual favours, share reagents, and he trusts her wagon as a place outside the hospital's prying. He sends Jack to her for recuperation after the Alder. - House of Open Wounds, ch 6, 7

• Kiffel ea Leachan - Kiff petitions the Widow to re-conjure the empty sword of Conn Leachan; the Widow demands Kiffel's entire inheritance-the legend and line of Conn Leachan-as payment, making her the last Champion. The Widow treats Kiff as an experiment, confessing she amuses herself because she can have nothing else. Kiff cannot surrender the sword and bolts. - Pretenders to the Throne Of God, ch 7, 9, 13, 24, 34

• Valkazar - Bound demon majordomo and former tutor; he wears her dead husband's robe as a petty jab, she feeds on his resentment. At the close of the second book he storms her room to take his revenge after she frees him from service. She later hires Dantell as a replacement, foreseeing the entertainment of inevitable betrayal. - Pretenders to the Throne Of God, ch 5, 17, 21, 41, 42

• The Butcher - He placed Jack in her care and then had provosts remove him; she names him among the few people she can "be even half herself with." - House of Open Wounds, ch 25

• Maserley - "A man who she had no cause to love"; she goes "very still" at his mention. She explains Caeleen's contract mechanics to Jack, knowing Maserley would not include a clause to assign her elsewhere because she is his property. - House of Open Wounds, ch 25, 49

• Prassel - Conjurer and client; Semprellaime sews warding sigils for Prassel in exchange for coin and a favour. Prassel warns her: "you should only understand how unpleasant your stay with us might become if you ask unwisely." The obligation is discharged after the prisoner exchange. - House of Open Wounds, ch 37, 38

• Hamriddy oa Galeaff - Long-term debtor to the Widow, running a large personal tab for charms, Hell-counsel, and use of the Pandaemonium. Devil Jack distinguishes his personal account from the services the Widow has rendered to the city's defence. - Pretenders to the Throne Of God, ch 3, 9, 24, 27

• Varinecthes - "Old acquaintances"; the Widow's usual armour is set aside with him. She hosted him at the Pandaemonium and he pledged books and accoutrements. Their "one more pleasure" is among those lost to time. - Pretenders to the Throne Of God, ch 21, 41

• Caeleen - The Widow knows the contract mechanics binding Caeleen intimately. In the aftermath of the final battle, Caeleen proposes Abellaime as Hell's first ambassador; the text implies "long-laid plans, infernal schemes" between them. - House of Open Wounds, ch 49; Pretenders to the Throne Of God, ch 42

• Aeriff ea Llannach - Her true supernatural rival; the Helaseach are the most vocal opponents of the Pandaemonium. Abellaime gives "her warmest smile, her coldest thoughts." Aeriff is the sole dissenter against Abellaime's ambassadorship. - Pretenders to the Throne Of God, ch 9, 42

• Uncle Ottovar, Aunt Llamienn, Cousin Gascoln - Family members who abused her as a child: Ottovar controlled assets and favoured obsequious nieces; Llamienn caned her for independence; Gascoln was once her favourite and was revealed as a brute. She broke free and swore to claim the Sable Lodge. - Pretenders to the Throne Of God, ch 17

• Dantell - Hired as servant after Valkazar's departure; Abellaime foresees the entertainment of inevitable betrayal. - Pretenders to the Throne Of God, ch 42

Notable Quotes

"Welcome to the army life. You'll get over it. Or most do. It's not the life any of us would have chosen" - Mother Semprellaime to Maric Jack, House of Open Wounds, ch 7

"She was a queen of votaries, she thought, looking in the mirror at the haggard face she'd constructed. I am a bawd" - House of Open Wounds, ch 25

"Bargain hard, so that they respect you. Never cheat them, so that they resent you" - Mother Semprellaime, quoting her aunt, House of Open Wounds, ch 25

"Being wronged didn't make you a saint or even kind, most often quite the reverse" - Abellaime, Pretenders to the Throne Of God, ch 17

"You are no King here. You are a petitioner. And this audience is over" - Abellaime to a King Below, Pretenders to the Throne Of God, ch 34

"Go back to Hell and barricade your gates, and I shall open the doors between Jack and you if it's the last thing I do" - Abellaime to a King Below, Pretenders to the Throne Of God, ch 34

"I'd tell you, Never love, Jack, if it wasn't too late. It undermines everything you are" - Abellaime to Devil Jack, Pretenders to the Throne Of God, ch 24

Tags

1. conjurer · #bawd · #allorwen · #demon-contracts · #noble