Crooked Kingdom characters

Also known as Dirtyhands

Appears from the start

The ruthless young mastermind of the Barrel underworld in Ketterdam, lieutenant of the Dregs, known as Dirtyhands for the schemes no one else will carry out. He walks with a cane, keeps his hands gloved, and plans crimes with cold precision. Cheated of an enormous fortune by the merchant Van Eck at the end of the Ice Court job, and with his spy Inej taken hostage, he begins this book bent on rescue, retribution, and reclaiming what he is owed.

Also known as the Wraith

Appears from the start

A Suli acrobat and spy called the Wraith for her uncanny ability to climb unseen and strike in silence, one of Kaz's crew. Taken from her family and forced into servitude before Kaz freed her into the Dregs, she is devout, watchful, and skilled with knives. Captured by the merchant Van Eck in his betrayal of the crew, she becomes the hostage the others must recover.

Appears from the start

A quick-witted Zemeni sharpshooter and member of Kaz's crew, deadly with his pistols and helplessly drawn to gambling and risk. Charming and impulsive, he carries private worries about debt and about a talent he has long tried to ignore, and he throws himself into the fight to save Inej and settle scores with Van Eck.

Appears from the start

A bold, warm-hearted Grisha Heartrender from Ravka, able to work on a living body from within. In the escape from the Ice Court she took the drug jurda parem to save the crew, and she suffers its grip in the aftermath. Devoted to her friends and bound up with the Fjerdan Matthias, she remains a fierce and vital part of Kaz's crew.

Appears from the start

A Fjerdan raised as a druskelle witch-hunter, hardened against Grisha yet turned from that path by his fraught bond with Nina and by his own conscience. Having thrown in with Kaz's crew, he is torn between the beliefs of his homeland and the loyalties he has found, and he hopes to see his country change its cruelty toward the Grisha.

Appears from the start

The gentle, cultured runaway son of the merchant Jan Van Eck, gifted with chemistry and explosives despite his mild manner. Estranged from and wronged by his father, and hiding a private difficulty with reading, he serves the crew as its demolitions expert and has a personal stake in the reckoning with the man who cast him out.

Appears from the start

The Shu teenager whose late father invented jurda parem, the drug that can turn Grisha into enslaved weapons. Extracted from the Ice Court by Kaz's crew, he is the prize every power wants, and his safety and the secret he carries remain at the center of the danger closing around them.

Appears from the start

A wealthy, respected, and pious Kerch merchant who hired Kaz's crew for the Ice Court heist and then betrayed them, refusing payment and seizing Inej as a hostage. Powerful within the Merchant Council and skilled at cloaking cruelty in respectability, he is the crew's chief adversary and Wylan's estranged father.

Appears from the start

The most powerful crime boss in the Barrel, master of gambling houses and gangs and a longstanding, personal enemy of Kaz Brekker. Brash and brutal, he controls much of Ketterdam's underworld, and the deep hatred between him and Kaz runs to old wounds that go far beyond ordinary rivalry.

First appears in chapter 3

Jesper's father, a plain-spoken, hardworking farmer from Novyi Zem who comes to Ketterdam out of concern for his son. Honest and warm where the city is corrupt, he loves Jesper deeply and worries over the trouble the young man has fallen into, becoming an unexpected presence in the dangerous world of the Barrel.