Drathel

Drathel is a Fellow-Archivist and Decanter of Correct Erudition in the Palleseen Sway, a practitioner of the occult discipline concerned with drawing magical substance out of objects and converting it into usable tablethi. Introduced as a prisoner in the House of Hard Angles-imprisoned for what she cheerfully calls "a misunderstanding"-she is extracted by Gil Angilly at the behest of Alkhand Oparan and remains under some form of Palleseen custody for the remainder of the novel. Her imprisonment is the direct consequence of an attempt to trade for tablethi at the Halberandi place, a religious site whose keepers proved impervious to commercial argument, and which set a dozen assassins on her trail. The shape of her arc is that of a careerist who is extracted from one prison only to find herself embedded in a far larger and more dangerous political landscape, where her Decanter expertise makes her simultaneously indispensable and expendable.

Across the book, Drathel moves from captive to reluctant guest to operative to power-broker and finally to corpse. She accompanies Gil through the Day of Milk and Flowers, the treaty-renewal procession, and the brothers' war; she runs intelligence and extraction operations in occupied Alkhalend alongside Flint Postry; she feeds information to the Temporary Commission of Ends and Means; and she ultimately brokers the Sway's seizure of the Kakrops Jars by aligning with Sage-Broker Berkely against Gil's cautious counsel. Her final act is a solo infiltration of the House of Hard Angles to harvest the accumulated power of its necromantic engine, in which she kills Arkanith and his monks before being killed in turn by the reanimated Premath. Her death, confirmed in the aftermath of the Housebreaking, closes a trajectory in which every compromise made in service of the Sway's material interests converges on a single, fatal instance of overreach.

Drathel matters to the novel as the embodiment of what the narrator calls "Pragmatic Flexibility"-the Pal philosophical term for believing and disavowing things as the moment requires. She is the point at which Palleseen Outreach doctrine, Valuations hunger, and individual ambition fuse into an operational logic that is entirely self-aware, entirely rational, and ultimately indistinguishable from the plunder it professes to civilise. Her relationship with Gil-colleague, rival, betrayer, and the person she feels she "gave every damn chance"-gives the novel's second half its central moral fracture.

Character

Personality

Drathel is defined by a cheerful, unrepentant pragmatism that the narrator explicitly labels "Pragmatic Flexibility," a term drawn from Pal philosophy, and notes that scholars remain divided on whether it constitutes a virtue - ch 7. She is unrepentant in the face of Angilly's terse interrogation, answering questions about her crime with "A misunderstanding" and showing no inclination toward remorse - ch 6. Her default mode in every subsequent encounter is professional interest turned outward: she eyes the Reckoner with "professional interest" at the Fever Lodge, translates military jargon for Loret as a matter of course, and assesses magical hoards by their conversion value rather than their spiritual significance - ch 7, ch 12, ch 29.

She is gregarious where it serves her. She calls Loret "kid," links elbows with her in a public display of collegiality, teases her about fear of the road, and makes her a private offer at the Palleseen camp - ch 6, ch 9, ch 11, ch 12. She tells Dekamran a story about worm priests at a military dinner and shares a knowing look with Flint Postry over "the big con" - ch 21, ch 12. This social ease is strategic, not warm; when Gil confronts her about Loret's stabbing, Drathel's admission is evasive-"might have gone to poke Mantekor a bit"-and she is silenced only by being handed a written report that doubles as leverage - ch 11.

In the novel's final chapters, the pragmatic mask thins only briefly. Watching Berkely's ultimatum land on Dekamran, she reflects that "Drathel rather thought she heard hearts break, in the silence," and feels the weight of having overruled Gil: "I gave you every damn chance" - ch 39. This flicker of guilt does not arrest her. She proceeds to the House of Hard Angles, kills Arkanith with bureaucratic courtesy, and dies still thinking in terms of harvested tablethi and career placement - ch 44.

Beliefs & Motivations

Drathel's governing principle is self-preservation dressed as institutional logic. The narrator states plainly that "Flint, blunt as he was, was just the sharp end of a wedge they'd be hammering on soon enough. When that hammer came down, Drathel wanted it to be tapping her securely into place, rather than just knocking her flat" - ch 29. Every operation she runs-Decanter inspections, intelligence gathering, the dossier on Gil, the Kakrops pitch-serves to position her favourably ahead of a political reckoning she expects but cannot control.

She views compromise as the natural condition of Outreach work: "She compromised. That was what you did, in Outreach. The thing you had to remember was that this outer you, this compromised you, it wasn't you. It was a suit of clothes you took off, when Valuations or the inquisition or the army moved in" - ch 39. This doctrine permits her to kill monks and plan to drain a preserved emperor's corpse into bandoliers of tablethi without moral conflict, since "once you'd got the power into a tableth, that did rather wash the death-stink off it" - ch 44. She frames even her worst acts as pedagogical: "You had to show people the error of their ways. It was practically Pal doctrine" - ch 44.

She refuses, within the logic she accepts, to be reckless without purpose. She mocks Arkanith's plan to raise a Necromancer-Emperor not from horror but from professional contempt: "nobody wants an empire of necromancers back. Probably not even actual necromancers, honestly. Not the ones I've met. I've read up on it. It sounds like a terrible idea" - ch 44. What she will not do is act on sympathy when it conflicts with her career; she decides not to visit Gil in her cell, having concluded that Gil was in her way - ch 44.

Affiliations

- Correct Erudition - fellow-archivist and decanter - Decanters - decanter

History

Days of Shattered Faith

The Attack on the House of Hard Angles (ch 6-8)

Drathel is a Fellow-Archivist and Decanter of Correct Erudition, held in the House of Hard Angles for what she calls "A misunderstanding" - a transgression Angilly's aide Loret's predecessor described as "a particularly Pal sort of transgression" involving decanting - and the source of her imprisonment is a visit to the Halberandi place, where she attempted to trade for tablethi stored in old tombs but found that "it's religion. You can't argue with religion" - ch 7. Angilly suspects Drathel hails from "that side of the border," the Peor or Palinet sphere, and questions her in terse shorthand about her background and whether her offence was "necromancy or decanting" - ch 6. Drathel is unrepentant - ch 6.

When Angilly arrives with a writ from Alkhand Oparan to extract her, a dozen hooded, masked assassins advance with knives drawn; the chief assassin declares Drathel a "tomb-robber" who "has earned a death" - ch 6. Angilly presses a baton and a knife into Drathel's hands and orders both women back into the cell - ch 6. Drathel fires the baton, but instead of a killing bolt it releases a forked web of power that crackles into the walls, briefly revealing hundreds of trapped ghosts screaming in every alcove; the assassins scatter, unprepared - ch 6. During the fighting, Drathel calls the masked figure that appears "the Warden," but Angilly states flatly, "That's not the Warden" - ch 6.

After the assault, Gil finds Drathel standing useless beside the wounded Loret while the Under-warden of the House of Hard Angles arrives to apply a sparking device to the girl's side - ch 7. Gil orders Drathel to remain under her custody, threatening that otherwise "you are not only cutting yourself off from any assistance from the Residence, you are putting yourself outside the Palleseen Sway, and I'll write to Palinet in Peor to make sure she knows to have you shot on sight as a deserter" - ch 7. Drathel accompanies Gil and Loret to the Fever Lodge, where she stands as a shoulder while Kilbery and Tally operate on Loret - ch 7. Outside, Drathel confesses the origin of the attack: she went to the Halberandi place seeking tablethi, and the keepers' religion made negotiation impossible; she offers peace - ch 7. The narrator describes Drathel's quality of believing and disavowing things in the moment as "Pragmatic Flexibility," "the term from Pal philosophy," and notes that "the scholars were still out on whether it was a good thing or not" - ch 7. Drathel eyes the Reckoner with professional interest when she arrives at the Lodge, but Gil pokes her awake and refuses to let her linger on the figure - ch 7.

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

Three days after the stabbing, Gil orders full Palleseen uniform for herself, Drathel, and Loret for the Day of Milk and Flowers festival, shutting down Drathel's attempt to skip out and threatening Inquirer-wide descriptions if she flees - ch 9. Gil refers to Drathel as "the tomb-robber" and explains the constraints on her liberty: "You're a Decanter. Go wandering all you like, you need to come back to the machinery of the Sway to offload what you scrounge up. So yes, you will, because otherwise this will become a hard country for you to do business in" - ch 9.

At the pools beside the House of Tranquillity, Drathel explains to Loret that the three skull-shaped clay jars being lowered into a child-sized grave are surrogate demon-vessels from the Moeribandi conquest of the Janni Despotate - ch 9. She then retreats with Gil and Loret to a quieter set of pools, where Gil explains the festival's nature - ch 9. Loret resents that Drathel, as a Fellow, is technically her superior, and refuses to call her "magister"; Drathel leans past Gil to talk to Loret and links elbows with her - ch 9. The following morning, Gil returns to Slate House's dining room to find Drathel there, boots nearly on the table, smiling amiably at Gil while Dekamran is still exiting through the side door - ch 10. Whether Drathel's smile constitutes greeting or leverage is not made clear - ch 10.

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

Gil, Loret, and Drathel ride in the fourth of five howdahs atop ogrodons, two days out from Alkhalend, accompanying the Alkhand's treaty-renewal procession - ch 11. Drathel teases Loret about her terror of the journey; Gil warns Drathel off poaching her aide - ch 11. Gil confronts Drathel about Loret's stabbing, naming the Halberandi monks and their use of the cord; Drathel admits she "might have gone to poke Mantekor a bit" for decanting purposes - ch 11. Gil assigns her a written report on Mantekor, offering to omit whatever she actually stole - ch 11. The narrator describes Drathel as having been chased from Mantekor for poking around for magic, stealing trinkets from the Alkhand's servants, and using the Halberandi monks' own "not shedding blood" cord doctrine - ch 11. At night, the three Pals are given a mean cell with straw mattresses while the Alkhand's servants enjoy better rooms; Gil tells Drathel about the Tesemer's combat record against a rebel Emorandi clan four years ago, led by Gorbudan, and Drathel is suitably silenced - ch 11. Gil confirms they will cross into Peor the next day and she will hand Drathel to her commanding officer to discuss "rogue Decanters stirring up trouble on my patch" - ch 11.

At the Palleseen military camp in Peor, Drathel goes to fetch the camp commander, Fellow-Monitor 'Flint' Postry - ch 12. She calls Flint "The boss. Mine, anyway," and the two share a knowing look about "the big con" when Gil asks about the demons - ch 12. Drathel translates military jargon for Loret, glossing Flint's term "Seraphi" as "Foreign forces sworn to provide military service" - ch 12. That night, Drathel privately makes an unspecified offer to Loret, who "nodded, smiled, committed to nothing" - ch 12. The next day, Flint sends them off with a full honour guard of demons to the border - ch 12.

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

Drathel is not physically present during the coup at the Waygrove itself, but Gil, on the road between a border post and Peor, asks Loret what Drathel offered her; Loret deflects, claiming she was "thinking about snails" - ch 16. The narration establishes that Drathel is at Gil's level or above, since Gil asks her as a peer about the offer - ch 16. What Drathel offered Loret, and why Loret watches Gil, remain unresolved at this point - ch 16.

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

Gil, Dekamran, Loret, and Drathel march into Flint's camp over the Peost border, where Flint has arranged a formal reception with Seraphi and Pals lined up, batons shouldered, officers in braid - ch 21. During the meal, Drathel tells a story about worm priests; Dekamran laughs, and Gil watches the strain behind his smile - ch 21. When Dekamran inspects the demon camp and his one question is not "how dare you" but "How do you get the Peosts to bear it?", Drathel explains: half the Seraphi rationalise demons as penance, working out their crimes first into baton-fire; the other half simply note that "demons scare people around here shitless" and that the terror reverses when the monsters are on your side - ch 21. This resolves the question of how Peor, with its Moerend traditions, tolerates demon soldiers - implied, ch 21.

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

Drathel is present at the allied war council in the hills north and east of Alkhalend, alongside Flint and Dekamran - ch 23. She asks whether Gorbudan will simply talk; Dekamran replies that he won't, but that neither can the allied forces afford to burn the city - ch 23. Dekamran issues a flat command: no looting, temples and monasteries untroubled - ch 23. Gil recalls the original negotiations, "Flint's demands, Drathel's demands, the Palleseen trade opening," and her own concealment of how easily Dekamran agreed - ch 23. Drathel raises the problem of siege emplacements at the Sand Gate, and mentions Helsa Broda; Flint tells the story of his midnight attack there, holding a gate against everything until reinforcements arrived, and turns to Dekamran: "Tell me more about this Sand Gate of yours, Your Tranquillity" - ch 23. When the Ibaleth defect en masse at dusk, Flint's enthusiasm shifts to using ogrodons against the cliff positions, though he still wants a foothold in the lower city - ch 23.

City in Mourning (ch 27-28)

Drathel is mentioned only obliquely in this arc. Gil, writing her constrained dispatch to Professor-Invigilator Flockersly, notes Drathel's rank as Fellow-Archivist and her capacity as a Decanter who could convert confiscated magical stock into tablethi - ch 28.

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

Drathel's operations in the post-war city are the subject of a full point-of-view chapter in which she conducts Decanter inspections, trades intelligence, and bargains with the Under-warden. She has finished inspecting a monastery's cellar in the good part of town: ranks of wax-sealed jars containing centuries of accumulated magical prayer, whose sigils the monks are frantically trying to preserve through improvised ritual - ch 29. A writ bearing the new Alkhand's seal protects her inspection; the lead monk can only tell her to leave - ch 29. Drathel mocks the monks, offers to buy the jars knowing they will refuse, and departs satisfied; the hoard would be worth a Sage's badge and a new conquest's war chest - ch 29. She notes that Flint is elsewhere, shaking down Gorbudan's former supporters for mere gold - ch 29.

At a chosen tavern, Drathel meets her informant: a woman marked after arriving in Alkhalend carrying something unnatural, formerly Gil's aide, now coerced into feeding Drathel intelligence on Gil's movements - ch 29. The informant reveals that Gil granted a private audience to a Sage-Inquirer of Correct Speech who arrived unannounced, then departed for the Waygrove with two fugitives; Drathel files this as leverage and warns the informant to keep digging - ch 29. She composes yet another report to the Temporary Commission of Ends and Means, documenting her own work and others' failings ahead of a threatened renegotiation of Palleseen-Usmai relations - ch 29.

She marches her escort to the House of Hard Angles and enters alone, demanding to see the Under-warden - ch 29. She finds him at the edge of the central necromantic chasm, several levels down, and probes his desire to go home; he confirms, "We want to go home. We've been trying for... long" - ch 29. The Warden arrives - a segmented, serpent-like creature from another world, compound eyes and crooked fangs, bound by the wards - and the Under-warden reaches toward it with frustrated need - ch 29. Drathel offers the Under-warden a bag of Palleseen artificer materials (copper wire, crystals, brass cogs) to aid his secret device-building, in exchange for access to the House's deepest secrets; he accepts - ch 29. He shows her the crypt: a single sarcophagus at the building's heart, surrounded by a thousand trapped ghosts that have been passively charging the entire structure like a building-sized tableth over centuries - ch 29. Drathel assesses it as proof-of-concept that the old Empire could make ghosts work, and as something of "utterly surpassing dodginess" happening under the Alkhand's nose - ch 29. The narrator notes that "Flint, blunt as he was, was just the sharp end of a wedge they'd be hammering on soon enough. When that hammer came down, Drathel wanted it to be tapping her securely into place, rather than just knocking her flat" - ch 29.

In a subsequent scene, Flint explains the venal model of Ventures and notes that Drathel can fuel the Archipelago for a decade from local temples - ch 30.

Drathel sends Flint a letter by dawn-rider warning of imminent political reshuffling ("a lot of chairs moved around") and urging him to return to the city; Flint reads it as her usual combination of scheme and self-interest, but recognises the officers' cant: she is saving him a seat - ch 33. Flint's people loot the Tesemer compound, including bug fetishes for Drathel to extract magic from - ch 33.

The Fever Lodge Takes In Loret (ch 32-34)

Drathel is not physically present at the Fever Lodge in this arc, but she attends a dinner at Slate House where she presses Gil to put a request to the Alkhand regarding a "treasure of singular value" sitting unused in the Usrani monastery - ch 34. Gil refuses, citing instability after the Night - ch 34. Drathel argues that creating riots would force the Alkhand to lean harder on the Palleseen, calling it "the Outreach playbook"; Gil denies this, though internally she acknowledges Drathel is right about what the Sway should demand - ch 34. Drathel offers to file a proposal through Loret; Gil reveals Loret is gone, and Drathel asks carefully, "Posthumously?" - ch 34.

The Arrival of the Salient (ch 35-37)

Drathel visits Sage-Broker Berkely at a donated merchant's hall on the waterfront and pitches the harvesting of godflesh from the Usrani's jarred remains of Kakrops the frog, estimating a "conservative" yield of over a hundred thousand tablethi - ch 37. She declares: "I could refill every tableth on the Successor Coast with what's in those jars, magister. I could give you such a harvest of the good stuff that they'd be singing all our praises back home" - ch 37. Berkely notes that Gil has already flagged the opportunity but advised against seizing it now to avoid destabilising the region - ch 37. Drathel asks to speak off the record, without a word entering Berkely's book: "I am not, magister, because I wasn't born yesterday and I know what happens to mouthy Fellows who start pointing fingers up the ladder. But I would like to speak now, without a word going in your book, and I would ask you to do me the credit of hearing me" - ch 37. Berkely agrees, and Drathel presents a dossier of Gil's alleged misconduct: killing Tarcomir in an illegal duel, the missing aide Loret, receiving two fugitive scholars without apprehending them, and a romantic entanglement that compromises her professional judgment - ch 37. Berkely is privately revolted - not by the act itself but by whose interests Gil served - and reinterprets her cautious advice through this lens - ch 37. He weighs the leverage: one hundred thousand tablethi is worth destabilising the region - ch 37.

Wattery's Contracts and the Occupation of the Palace (ch 38-40)

Drathel serves as Berkely's translator and local advisor during the audience with Alkhand Dekamran in the House of Tranquillity - ch 39. She reflects on the nature of Outreach work: "She compromised. That was what you did, in Outreach," and "The thing you had to remember was that this outer you, this compromised you, it wasn't you. It was a suit of clothes you took off, when Valuations or the inquisition or the army moved in" - ch 39. She provides Berkely a three-layer assessment of the Moerends: civic religion, useful bureaucracy, and a hidden necromantic inner cult, calling the latter "Bloody maniacs, magister" - ch 39. When Berkely demands the Kakrops Jars and places Dekamran under "protective custody," Drathel watches his face and feels his betrayal: "Drathel rather thought she heard hearts break, in the silence" - ch 39. She observes Gil being publicly overruled and undermined, and feels guilt: "I gave you every damn chance" - ch 39. The narrator describes Berkely as "A translucent sheet of sincerity stretched over a chasm of greed" - ch 39. Drathel's plan to "render down the Kakrops Jars" is the object of Gil's direct warning to Berkely in the following weeks: "If you proceed with Drathel's idiot plan to render down the Kakrops Jars, you might as well set the whole country on fire. We killed their god, and I'd just about managed to keep our balance, after that" - ch 41.

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

Drathel enters the House of Hard Angles for what she suspects is her final visit, sneaking past Moerends on the upper levels - ch 44. She observes the Under-warden in his chamber, where he has built a machine from her stolen Decanter equipment, wired in copper to the House's own sigil-system, with a chalkboard covered in alien-notation calculations of stress, tolerance, and power flow - ch 44. She deduces his plan: to breach the House's spiritual walls and free the Warden's cursed centipede monster, powered by her stolen gear; she has already ordered a squad of soldiers to descend and destroy it - ch 44. She reflects on her career and her decision to have screwed over Gil, who "was in her way," and decides not to visit her in her cell - ch 44.

She descends to the crypt, wearing warding shirt and a charged tableth, sneaking past chanting monks to observe Arkanith's ritual over Premath's preserved corpse - ch 44. She contemplates the House's true function as a ghost-power-harvesting engine and muses on ghost-mills as a new Decanter direction - ch 44. Arkanith detects her; she steps out and confronts him, mocking his plan to raise Premath as a new Necromancer-Emperor who will open the Necropolis - ch 44. She tells him: "I'm sorry to be the one that breaks this to you, but nobody wants an empire of necromancers back. Probably not even actual necromancers, honestly. Not the ones I've met. I've read up on it. It sounds like a terrible idea" - ch 44. Arkanith lunges; she shoots him with a baton modified with insulation to work inside the House where standard batons fail, hitting him under the collarbone - ch 44. The three monks rush her; she empties one rod's tablethi killing two, then kills the third with a second rod - ch 44. She plans to harvest the accumulated power from Premath's corpse into her three bandoliers of uncharged tablethi, noting that "once you'd got the power into a tableth, that did rather wash the death-stink off it" - ch 44. She shows the dying Arkanith the bandoliers so he understands where all the sacredness is going: "You had to show people the error of their ways. It was practically Pal doctrine" - ch 44.

The Housebreaking unfolds around her. A squad of Pal soldiers enters the bowels wearing wards Drathel gave them, marked with sigils matching the House's walls - ch 45. Drathel's assessment of the Under-warden's methodology is "The man's a sledgehammer in a crystal cave" - ch 45. The Reckoner strips the soldiers' wards; the centipede creature kills every soldier - ch 45. In the crypt, Drathel's tablethi turn from lead to gold, charging and discharging in a feedback loop until they spark, rattle, and burn her; the House's stored power cascades through all occult channels - ch 45. The ghosts of the House are consumed, flee, dissipate; the night sky goes green-white with ten thousand twisted faces; the House's wards go out "like candles in a storm" - ch 45. Drathel survives, her wards burned out. She finds her tablethi half-melted to the stone, gilded with Pal perfection, still charged. She pries at them. Premath sits up. His dead eyes see "only sacrilege and spoliation." He catches her throat with stone-hard fingers and crushes it. "There is nothing left living in his grip" - ch 45.

The Battle for Alkhalend (ch 48-49)

Drathel is dead. In the day after the Housebreaking, as Flint leads the removal of the Kakrops Jars from the Usrani monastery, the narration confirms her fate: she is "a corpse deep under the shell that was once the House of Hard Angles" - ch 48. Flint expects a cut of the jar-value from Drathel; he does not yet know she is dead - ch 48.

Relationships

- Gil Angilly - Extracts Drathel from the House of Hard Angles under writ, then holds her in a state of guarded custody, threatening expulsion from the Palleseen Sway and death on sight in Peor if she absconds - ch 7. Over the following weeks Gil escorts her, assigns her reports, shields her from scrutiny, and refers to her as "the tomb-robber" while acknowledging her professional rank - ch 9, ch 11. Drathel later compiles a dossier of Gil's alleged misconduct and delivers it to Berkely as leverage - ch 37. She watches Gil being publicly overruled at the House of Tranquillity and feels the guilt of a friend: "I gave you every damn chance" - ch 39. In the end she decides not to visit Gil in her cell, having judged her "in her way" - ch 44.

- Loret - A Fellow-Archivist technically senior to Loret, who resents the title "magister" but accepts the bond; Drathel leans past Gil to speak to her directly and links elbows in a gesture of inclusion - ch 9. Drathel calls her "kid," teases her about the road, and makes her a private, unspecified offer at the Palleseen camp in Peor, which Loret receives with a nod and a smile but commits to nothing - ch 11, ch 12. Drathel stands as a shoulder while Loret is operated on at the Fever Lodge - ch 7.

- Flint Postry - Fellow Palleseen officers who run operations in tandem: Flint as the blunt extraction arm, Drathel as the finesse and intelligence layer - ch 29. She calls him "The boss. Mine, anyway," and they share a knowing look over the demons' deployment - ch 12. They are long-running collaborators operating outside supervision, and she sends him a dawn-rider warning about political reshuffling to save him a seat at the table - ch 33. He expects a cut of the Kakrops Jars from her; she is already dead - ch 48.

- Sage-Broker Berkely - Her commanding officer's function: Sage-Broker over Fellow-Archivist. She leverages the Kakrops Jars proposal to gain his ear, demands to speak off the record, and delivers a dossier on Gil as actionable intelligence - ch 37. He is her translator and local advisor during the confrontation with Dekamran, and she frames the Moerends in terms he can act on - ch 39. Their alliance is one of Valuations against Outreach, and she serves as the instrument of a policy she privately distrusts - ch 39, ch 41.

- Alkhand Dekamran - A figure she must navigate through formal channels; she translates for Berkely during the audience, provides a three-layer assessment of the Moerends, and watches Dekamran's face when the Kakrops Jars are demanded. She feels his betrayal viscerally-"Drathel rather thought she heard hearts break, in the silence"-and later infiltrates the House where his Grand Moerend, Arkanith, is performing his final rite - ch 39, ch 44.

- Arkanith - Hostile. She sneaks into the House of Hard Angles, confronts him over Premath's preserved corpse, mocks his necromantic project, shoots him with a modified baton, and kills the monks defending him before he dies - ch 44.

- Premath - The preserved corpse whose accumulated power Drathel intends to harvest into her bandoliers. He sits up, sees "only sacrilege and spoliation," and crushes her throat. Her death is the direct consequence of treating his sacred stasis as a resource to be tapped - ch 45.

- the Under-warden of the House of Hard Angles - Initially cooperative: she provides him Palleseen artificer materials in exchange for access to the House's deepest secrets, and he shows her the crypt and its ghost-charged structure - ch 29. By ch 44 she regards his machine as "property of Decanting" she wants back, orders soldiers to destroy it, and dismisses his methodology as "The man's a sledgehammer in a crystal cave" - ch 44, ch 45.

- Palinet - The institution to which Gil threatens to write if Drathel absconds, branding her a deserter to be shot on sight. Angilly suspects Drathel hails from "that side of the border," the Peor or Palinet sphere - ch 6, ch 7.

Notable Quotes

"it's religion. You can't argue with religion" - Drathel, Days of Shattered Faith, ch 7

"The boss. Mine, anyway" - Drathel, on Flint Postry, Days of Shattered Faith, ch 12

"I could refill every tableth on the Successor Coast with what's in those jars, magister. I could give you such a harvest of the good stuff that they'd be singing all our praises back home" - Drathel, to Berkely, Days of Shattered Faith, ch 37

"I am not, magister, because I wasn't born yesterday and I know what happens to mouthy Fellows who start pointing fingers up the ladder. But I would like to speak now, without a word going in your book, and I would ask you to do me the credit of hearing me" - Drathel, to Berkely, Days of Shattered Faith, ch 37

"I'm sorry to be the one that breaks this to you, but nobody wants an empire of necromancers back. Probably not even actual necromancers, honestly. Not the ones I've met. I've read up on it. It sounds like a terrible idea" - Drathel, to Arkanith, Days of Shattered Faith, ch 44

"You had to show people the error of their ways. It was practically Pal doctrine" - Drathel, Days of Shattered Faith, ch 44

"The man's a sledgehammer in a crystal cave" - Drathel, on the Under-warden, Days of Shattered Faith, ch 45

"If you proceed with Drathel's idiot plan to render down the Kakrops Jars, you might as well set the whole country on fire. We killed their god, and I'd just about managed to keep our balance, after that" - Gil Angilly, Days of Shattered Faith, ch 41

Tags

1. decanter · #fellow-archivist · #magic-extraction · #palleseen · #decanting