Dark Age characters

Also known as The Reaper

Appears from the start

The Red-born hero of the Rising, now the Republic's most celebrated and most distrusted soldier. His unsanctioned campaign against the last Gold holdouts ended in disaster and disgrace at home, and it has left him on Mercury at the head of the Free Legions with the enemy in the sky above him and no fleet coming. Older, harder, and increasingly certain that only he can finish the war, he begins the book cut off from his wife, his son, and the government he helped create, carrying the weight of what his choices have already cost.

Also known as Goblin

Appears from the start

Darrow's oldest friend and the savage heart of the Howlers, now a husband and father who has followed Darrow into another war that cannot be won by ordinary means. Loyal past reason, he is on Mercury at Darrow's side while his own daughter is missing somewhere far behind them, and the strain of that shows in everything he does.

Appears from the start

The grandson of the legendary swordsman Lorn au Arcos, a young Gold who joined the Rising and became one of Darrow's Howlers. Proud, gifted with a blade, and painfully conscious of his family's name, he is the youngest of Darrow's inner circle and the one most eager to prove that he has earned his place among them.

Appears from the start

A daughter of the Telemanus house, one of the Republic's great Gold families, and a commander in Darrow's legions. Enormous, blunt, and fearless to a fault, she is among the last of Darrow's senior officers still standing on Mercury and one of the few who will tell him plainly when he is wrong.

Appears from the start

The exiled swordsman who spent a decade hiding Lysander from the world before the moon lords of the Rim took them both. Once Darrow's friend, then his enemy, then neither, he begins this book a prisoner in Rim hands, far from anyone who might come for him, one of the loose threads the previous book left hanging.

First appears in chapter 2

The grandson of the Sovereign the Rising overthrew, raised in exile and now held by the Raa family in their fortress on Io after the fighting at Ilium. Educated, self-controlled, and genuinely convinced that the old order's hierarchy was the only thing keeping humanity from ruin, he begins the book a valuable hostage with no army and no title, weighing what he owes the name he was born to.

Also known as The Storm Knight

First appears in chapter 2

Son of Romulus and Dido au Raa and one of the Rim's Olympic Knights. Rigidly honorable, formidable with a blade, and dutiful to the codes of the moon lords of Jupiter, he serves as Lysander's warden on Io and takes both the obligation and its awkwardness seriously.

First appears in chapter 2

Widow of Romulus au Raa and ruler of the Rim after his death, leading the moon lords of Jupiter and Saturn. Grieving, vengeful, and far less interested in restraint than her late husband was, she has committed the Rim to war and treats her house's captive Lune heir as both a prize and a problem.

First appears in chapter 4

Son of Aja au Grimmus, the Protean Knight who served the old Sovereign, and nephew to Atalantia. A brutally capable young Gold raised inside what remains of the Core's power, he arrives in Lysander's life as a peer, a rival, and a reminder that the Society's survivors have their own plans for the Lune name.

First appears in chapter 8

Daughter of the Ash Lord and commander of the Gold armada that has taken the sky over Mercury. Clever, theatrical, and without scruple, she treats the war as a contest of appetite and will and is prepared to burn a planet to take Darrow's army off it. She leads the Society's remnant, and she knows exactly how useful a living Lune heir could be to her.

Also known as Mustang

First appears in chapter 18

Sovereign of the Solar Republic, holding together a government that is coming apart under her. Her son has been abducted and is still missing, her husband's last campaign disgraced the state she built, the Senate is deadlocked, and the populist Vox Populi movement is turning Luna against her. She governs by law and persuasion in a city where both are running out, and she is the only person still trying to keep the Republic recognizably a republic.

First appears in chapter 21

The Gray thief who was paid to take Pax and Electra and who handed them over. He has spent the time since drinking through the money and avoiding the thought of what he did, but the Luna underworld does not release people, and the Syndicate that commissioned the job still has uses for him. Bitter and self-loathing, he is a man looking for a way to stop being the person who did that.

First appears in chapter 21

An enormous young Obsidian woman born inside the Republic rather than on the ice, who works with Ephraim and is the closest thing he has to family. Gentle by nature and ashamed of her part in the abduction, she wants to be good in a city that has no room for it, and she keeps faith with Ephraim long after he has stopped keeping faith with himself.

First appears in chapter 23

The ruler of Luna's criminal Syndicate, an unseen power whose organization commissioned the abduction of the two children and whose reach runs through the capital's police, gangs and government alike. She trades in obligation and fear, and she holds the leash of nearly everyone in Ephraim's life.

Also known as Lyria of Lagalos

First appears in chapter 36

The Red woman who lost her family in the resettlement camps on Mars and was swept into the Republic's high politics as a servant in the Sovereign's household. Blamed for the abduction of the children she was meant to help watch, she has been held and questioned by the Republic's investigators, caught between a state that needs a culprit and the people who arranged for her to be one.

First appears in chapter 41

Sister of Ragnar Volarus and queen of the Obsidians freed by the Rising. She led her people out of the ice and into a Republic that promised them a place and delivered camps, dependency and contempt, and her patience with that arrangement has run out. Silent, devout and immensely dangerous, she commands the loyalty of the only army inside Luna that answers to nobody else.

Also known as The Fear Knight

First appears in chapter 57

Brother to the late Romulus au Raa and the most feared interrogator of the old Society. A patient, meticulous student of terror who holds that breaking a people's spirit is cheaper and more permanent than breaking their armies, he has spent his career far from the Rim's courts and its codes, and both sides of this war would rather he were somebody else's problem.