Harrow the Ninth characters

Also known as Harrow, Harrowhark the First

Appears from the start

The Reverend Daughter of the Ninth House, now one of the Emperor's Lyctors and no longer entirely well. She has been taken from the First House to be trained as an immortal saint, and something about her ascension has gone badly wrong: she cannot do the things a Lyctor is supposed to do, she is sick almost constantly, and she cannot reliably trust what she sees or what she remembers. She is certain that at least one person around her intends to kill her, and she is preparing accordingly.

Appears from the start

The Ninth House's cavalier in the previous book, an indentured swordswoman who died at Canaan House so that Harrowhark could become a Lyctor. A Lyctor's cavalier is consumed at the moment of ascension and continues afterwards as the necromancer's power source, which is what Harrowhark carried away from the First House.

Also known as Ianthe Tridentarius

Appears from the start

The Third House's surviving twin, who murdered her own cavalier at Canaan House to become a Lyctor and has had no visible difficulty with the consequences. She ascended cleanly where Harrowhark did not, and she attaches herself to Harrowhark as tutor, tormentor and only real company, offering help that always costs something.

Also known as John Gaius, the Necrolord Prime, God

Appears from the start

The Emperor of the Nine Houses, ten thousand years old, who raised the Houses after the death of the old world and has been worshipped as God ever since. In person he is mild, informal and disarmingly ordinary, apologetic about the ceremony that surrounds him and openly fond of the two new Lyctors. He takes on Harrowhark's instruction himself.

Appears from the start

A woman's corpse, perfectly preserved and unchanged, whom Harrowhark sees and speaks with constantly and whom nobody else perceives. Harrowhark has known her since she broke into the Ninth House's sealed tomb as a child, and she loves her without reservation. The tomb the Ninth exists to guard is the tomb she lies in, and she is the reason Harrowhark does most of what she does.

Also known as the Saint of Joy

First appears in chapter 2

One of the Emperor's original Lyctors, a specialist in the living body who can unmake a person from the inside out. She is furious more or less continuously, treats the existence of new Lyctors as an insult, and makes no secret of wanting Harrowhark gone. She has served the Emperor since the Resurrection and does not appear to have enjoyed any of it.

Also known as the Saint of Patience

First appears in chapter 2

Another of the Emperor's original Lyctors, urbane, amused and by far the most sociable of the ancients. He handles Harrowhark's arrival with courtesy where Mercymorn handles it with contempt, and he is candid about the fact that ten thousand years of service have left the survivors strange.

First appears in chapter 2

The third of the Emperor's surviving original Lyctors, silent to the point of seeming absent, who explains himself to nobody. He spends most of his time elsewhere on the station and answers questions with as few words as he can manage.

First appears in chapter 3

The Ninth House cavalier who left rather than accompany Harrowhark to the First House. In the account of Canaan House that runs alongside the present-day chapters of this book, he did not leave: he is Harrowhark's cavalier primary throughout, a mournful, unathletic man still reciting his unfinished epic poem, and Gideon Nav is not there at all.

Also known as the Resurrection Beast

First appears in chapter 11

A Resurrection Beast: the accumulated ghost of a world that died when the old system did, grown over ten thousand years into something enormous, and one of a small number of them that hunt the Emperor across space. Number Seven is on its way to the Lyctors' station, and killing it is the reason the new Lyctors are being trained at all.

First appears in chapter 11

Necromancer heir of the Fifth House, a historian whose art is speaking with ghosts and with the distant past. She appears in this book's account of the events at Canaan House, where she is the candidate most interested in what the First House was before it was abandoned, and the one most willing to organize the others.

First appears in chapter 22

A figure lying in a sealed coffin in the depths of Canaan House in this book's account of it, dressed in clothing from nowhere in the Nine Houses and carrying a weapon nobody there recognises. She is not dead. As the account proceeds she begins to wake, and what she is interested in is Harrowhark.