Red Seas Under Red Skies characters

Also known as Leocanto Kosta

Appears from the start

Two years out of Camorr, Locke is living in the free city of Tal Verrar as Leocanto Kosta, a gentleman of leisure with no visible occupation and a great deal of patience. He and Jean are the only survivors of the crew that raised them, and the loss has left its mark: he is thinner, harder to reach, and prone to silences Jean has learned to work around. The two of them are most of the way through a game years in the preparation, aimed at the largest single concentration of loose money in the city.

Also known as Jerome de Ferra

Appears from the start

Locke's partner and the only family either of them has left, playing the wealthy idler Jerome de Ferra. He carries the crew's practical burdens: the money, the planning, the weapons, and Locke himself, whom he dragged back out of the worst of the grief after Camorr more or less by force. Heavy, bespectacled and courteous in company, he is still one of the most dangerous close fighters in either city, and he still keeps the pair of hatchets he calls the Wicked Sisters.

Appears from the start

Master of the Sinspire, the towering gambling house that dominates Tal Verrar and lets players climb its floors only as they win. He is the most powerful private individual in the city, holding the debts and the secrets of most of its aristocracy, and he collects rare pieces from the old Therin Throne empire. He is known for punishing cheats without exception, without hurry and without leaving any doubt about what happened. His vault has never been touched, and it is the object of Locke and Jean's game.

Appears from the start

Requin's second and constant companion, who lost a hand, an eye and most of the skin on one side of her body to a fire meant for him. She wears a brass hand in place of the one she lost and moves through the Sinspire as its working authority: nobody reaches Requin without going through her first. She is entirely loyal to him and almost impossible to read.

First appears in chapter 2

One of a pair of wealthy Sinspire regulars who sit down against Locke and Jean at cards night after night as they work their way up the tower. She treats the table as a matter of standing rather than of money, and neither she nor her regular partner intends to lose to newcomers.

Also known as the Archon

First appears in chapter 5

The Archon of Tal Verrar, commander of its army and navy and in practice its military dictator. The office was created to meet an emergency and was never surrendered afterwards, and the city's merchant council has been working to dismantle it ever since. Stragos needs a danger large enough to make Tal Verrar grateful for its soldiers again, and he is entirely willing to spend other people's lives manufacturing one.

First appears in chapter 6

An old sailing master pressed into the Archon's service with the job of making Locke and Jean look, briefly, like men who have spent their lives at sea. Blunt, deeply superstitious and unimpressed by his pupils, he drills Locke in enough vocabulary and stagecraft to give orders convincingly, and insists on every custom a ship must observe, including the cats no crew will sail without.

First appears in chapter 7

An experienced hand who signs on to the crew Locke and Jean are given, knowing a great deal more about the sea than the men issuing his orders do.

First appears in chapter 8

Captain of the Poison Orchid and one of the most respected pirates working out of the Ghostwind Isles, a Syrune woman who left a naval career behind and now raids under her own articles. She keeps her two small children aboard her ship, runs the crew by vote and custom rather than by fear, and takes a careful, unsentimental view of strangers who turn up with implausible stories.

First appears in chapter 8

First mate of the Poison Orchid: small, quick and formidably competent, who left a comfortable family behind for the sea and has no intention of going back. She sets the terms on which newcomers earn a place aboard and enforces them personally, and she and Jean recognise something in each other almost at once.

First appears in chapter 9

Zamira Drakasha's young son and daughter, who live aboard the Poison Orchid because their mother will not leave them anywhere she cannot defend. The crew treats their presence as ordinary.

First appears in chapter 9

The Poison Orchid's physiker, Collegium-trained, walking with a cane and openly contemptuous of nearly everyone she treats. She is nonetheless very good, which is why the crew tolerates her.

First appears in chapter 11

Captain of the Dread Sovereign and one of the senior figures among the free captains of the Ghostwind Isles. His standing rests on an old understanding that the pirates keep their raiding small and far from the cities capable of wiping them out, and he takes that understanding more seriously than anyone else at the table.