Jade City characters

Also known as Kaul Lan

First appears in chapter 3

The eldest of the three Kaul grandchildren and the Pillar, or head, of the No Peak clan, one of the two great jade-wearing families of Janloon. He inherited the position young, when his grandfather stepped back, and governs by patience and persuasion rather than force, weighing every decision against what the clan can afford to lose. He is widely respected and privately unsure of himself, permanently measured against a legendary predecessor, and he carries the quiet humiliation of a marriage that ended when his wife left him. A highly capable Green Bone, he would rather settle a problem with a negotiation than a blade.

Also known as Kaul Hilo, the Horn

Appears from the start

The middle Kaul sibling and the Horn of No Peak, the clan's military leader, responsible for its Fists and Fingers and for answering any insult to the family. Charming, quick-tempered and physically formidable, he is adored by the young warriors under his command and feared by everyone else in Janloon. He is fiercely loyal to his brother Lan even when he disagrees with him, and settles problems with immediate action where Lan would deliberate. He is involved with Maik Wen, the sister of his two closest lieutenants, a relationship his family does not approve of.

Also known as Kaul Shae

First appears in chapter 6

The youngest Kaul sibling, returning to Janloon after two years in Espenia, where she studied business and lived with a foreign boyfriend. She left Kekon after quarrelling with her grandfather and gave up her jade before going, an act the clan treats as close to desertion. Trained at the same academy as her brothers and gifted at both jade abilities and analysis, she wants an ordinary professional life outside the family business and resists every attempt to draw her back into it.

Also known as Kaul Sen, the Torch of Kekon

First appears in chapter 4

The Kaul grandfather, founder of the No Peak clan and a national hero of the war that drove the Shotarian occupation off Kekon, which he led alongside his old comrade Ayt Yugontin. Age and illness have worn him down; he no longer runs the clan but still expects to be obeyed, and his interference repeatedly undercuts his grandson Lan. He is devoted to his oldest adviser and openly disappointed in his granddaughter.

Also known as Doru

First appears in chapter 4

The Weather Man of No Peak, in charge of the clan's businesses and finances, and Kaul Sen's closest adviser for decades. Elderly, softly spoken and habitually secretive, he keeps his own counsel and his own arrangements, and treats the younger Kauls as children who have not earned their positions. Lan and Hilo both distrust him, and his sympathies toward Kekon's former occupiers are an old source of suspicion, but he is protected by the grandfather's loyalty.

Also known as Anden

First appears in chapter 7

A cousin taken into the Kaul household as a boy after his mother's death, now in his final year at Kaul Dushuron Academy, the clan's training school for Green Bones. He is half Espenian, which shows in his face and marks him as an outsider in Janloon, and he is unusually gifted with jade, enough that his teachers expect great things of him. He is also frightened of it: his mother was a Green Bone who lost her mind and her life to jade overexposure, and he does not know whether the same is waiting for him. He is devoted to Lan and Hilo, who raised him, and privately unsure he wants the life the clan has planned for him.

Also known as Wen

First appears in chapter 5

Hilo's girlfriend and the sister of the Maik brothers who serve as his lieutenants. She is a stone-eye, born unable to perceive or bear jade at all, a condition Kekonese custom treats as unlucky and shameful; because of it she can never be a Green Bone and is considered an unsuitable match for the Horn of a clan. Practical, composed and quietly ambitious for the family, she manages the household and its social obligations and understands Janloon's politics better than most of the men who make it.

First appears in chapter 2

The elder Maik brother and Hilo's chief Fist, a broad, unhurried man with exceptional Perception. The Maiks' father disgraced the family name, and Hilo took the brothers in when no other clan would have them, so their loyalty to him is absolute. Kehn handles the daily discipline and deployment of the Horn's men.

First appears in chapter 2

The younger Maik brother, wiry and volatile, who does the work the clan does not discuss: killings arranged quietly and without ceremony. He is devoted to Hilo without reservation and takes more pleasure in violence than his brother does.

Also known as Ayt Mada

First appears in chapter 10

The Pillar of the Mountain clan, No Peak's rival for control of Janloon, and the adopted daughter of the clan's founder Ayt Yugontin. She took the leadership after her father's death in a succession fight with her adoptive brother, and few in either clan believe she came by it cleanly. Disciplined, patient and entirely unsentimental, she is the only woman to lead a great clan and she intends to bring all of Kekon's jade under a single authority, her own.

First appears in chapter 10

The Horn of the Mountain and Ayt Mada's military commander: a heavy, powerful Green Bone known for winning fights by absorbing punishment no one else could survive. He believes in his Pillar's vision of one clan over Kekon and holds the Kaul brothers in open contempt.

Appears from the start

A jadeless young man from one of Janloon's poor districts, the son of a Green Bone who died before he was born, convinced that jade is owed to him and that one lucky theft would change his life. He opens the book robbing a Green Bone of his jade outside a restaurant under clan protection, and he returns to the same ambition however badly it goes for him.

Also known as Woon Papi

First appears in chapter 3

Lan's Pillarman, the aide who manages the Pillar's schedule, security and messages and one of the few people the Pillar speaks to candidly. Steady, discreet and conscientious, he studied alongside the Kauls at the academy and has served Lan since he took the seat.

First appears in chapter 12

Lan's former wife, who left him and the world of the clans behind. Her departure is a private wound he has never worked through, and she wants nothing further to do with jade, Green Bones or the Kaul family.

Also known as the White Rat

First appears in chapter 42

A Royal Council politician backed by No Peak in the contest for the chancellorship of Kekon. Genial, heavy-set and thoroughly transactional, he understands that a chancellor holds the office at the pleasure of whichever clan put him in it.