Last Argument of Kings characters

Also known as The Bloody-Nine, Ninefingers

Appears from the start

Returned from the failed journey to the edge of the World, Logen turns back toward the one place he never wanted to see again: the North, and the war against King Bethod, the man he once served and now means to see thrown down. Older, wearier, and no more able than before to keep the Bloody-Nine chained when blood is spilled, he takes up again with the Dogman and his old crew. He wants, as ever, to be a better man and to leave the killing behind - but the North knows exactly what he is, and the fighting is far from finished.

Also known as Superior Glokta

Appears from the start

Back in Adua and still in the grip of pain and his hidden masters, Glokta is handed the most dangerous work of his life as the Union's crisis deepens. With the old King failing, war pressing from every side, and the succession wide open, the crippled Inquisitor must manoeuvre among the great powers of the realm - the Arch Lector, the Closed Council, and shadowy financiers who own more of the Union than anyone admits. Every move risks his life, and his savage humour is by now nearly the last thing holding him upright.

Appears from the start

Home from the hardships of the road a changed man, Jezal returns to Adua humbler and more thoughtful than the preening boy who left, pained by his separation from Ferro and by unfinished feeling for Ardee West. He wants little more than a quiet, decent life - but the Union is sliding into crisis, and men more powerful than he understands have their own uses for the young officer who once believed the world revolved around him.

Appears from the start

The quest that was meant to arm her vengeance having failed, Ferro returns east still hungry for revenge on the Gurkish, and still marked by the strange power in her blood that Bayaz has never fully explained. As the Gurkish Empire moves openly against the Union, her private war and the great one converge, and she must decide how far she will let the wizard use her hatred as a tool - and what she is willing to become to feed it.

Also known as The First of the Magi

Appears from the start

The First of the Magi returns to Adua with his grand design unfulfilled and the Union facing ruin, and sets about securing it - and himself - by other means. Patient, ruthless, and centuries deep in his schemes, Bayaz reveals steadily more of his true power and his true ends, and of the long, bitter feud with the Gurkish prophet Khalul that drives him. Those who travelled with him have learned to fear what he is willing to spend, and to sacrifice, to get his way; in the crisis now breaking over the Union, that willingness will be tested to its limit.

Also known as Lord Marshal West

Appears from the start

Hardened by catastrophe in the North and haunted by what survival there cost him, West returns south with a heavy reputation and a new, uneasy standing. As the Union fights for its life on two fronts, the common-born officer is pushed into positions of real command and real consequence, carrying burdens that would break most men, and struggling still with the temper and the guilt he can never quite set down.

First appears in chapter 3

Still in Adua, still too sharp and too fond of a drink for polite society's comfort, Ardee waits out the Union's mounting crisis with her characteristic bleak wit. Her tangled feelings for Jezal remain unfinished, and her brother's long absence at the wars has left her more alone and more exposed than she lets on. As the powerful men of the city play their games, she finds she cannot keep as far from their orbit as she would like.

Also known as Arch Lector

Appears from the start

The cold head of the Inquisition remains one of the most powerful and dangerous men in the Union, and with the realm in crisis both his ambitions and his fears sharpen. Sult drives Glokta at his enemies without mercy and manoeuvres to bend the coming succession to his will, certain that only his hand can hold the state together. But there are powers moving in Adua - the old wizard Bayaz among them - that even the Arch Lector may not be able to master.

First appears in chapter 4

One of the hard survivors of Logen's old crew, Black Dow is a scarred, black-hearted Northman with a gift for cruelty and a nose for which way the wind is blowing. Brave, treacherous, and entirely without scruple, he fights alongside Logen and the Dogman in the war against Bethod, useful and dangerous in equal measure - the kind of man who follows a chief only so long as it suits him, and who watches his leaders with an eye always to the main chance.