Servant of the Empire characters

Appears from the start

Ruling Lady of the Acoma, in her early twenties, who in a single year took a destroyed house and made it one of the powers of the Empire. She rules for her small son and is now watched by everyone in the Game of the Council. Her strength has always been a willingness to question rules other Tsurani treat as natural law, and her position remains precarious: she has beaten the Minwanabi once, and they have not stopped.

Appears from the start

Mara's small son and heir to the Acoma, grandson of the Lord of the Anasati through his dead father. He is growing up indulged, boisterous and conscious of his rank, and his safety is a permanent strategic problem for his mother.

Appears from the start

First Adviser of the Acoma, formerly Mara's nurse. Old, blunt and increasingly frail, she has spent her life in the household and now spends it arguing with a mistress who listens to her about half the time and does something unprecedented the other half.

Appears from the start

Force Commander of the Acoma, a scarred veteran of long service who now commands thousands of soldiers instead of a few dozen. He is entirely correct, entirely loyal, and increasingly aware of his own age.

Appears from the start

An Acoma Force Leader, once a masterless grey warrior whom Mara took into service when custom said he had no honour left to offer. Witty, irreverent with his mistress and formidable in the field, he owes the Acoma everything and says so.

Appears from the start

Spy Master of the Acoma, a man of no fixed appearance who can pass as a labourer, a merchant or a priest, and who runs the best intelligence network in the Empire out of inns, brothels and market stalls. He is patient to the point of coldness and thinks in years rather than seasons.

Appears from the start

The new Lord of the Minwanabi, who inherited the house after his father's public disgrace. Heavy, self-indulgent and painfully aware that he is not the man his father was, he opens his rule by binding himself and his family to the destruction of the Acoma in the most absolute terms available to a Tsurani.

Appears from the start

First Adviser of the Minwanabi, a thin, dry, highly capable man who served the old lord and now serves the son. He can see exactly how badly his house is being run and exactly how dangerous the enemy is, and he has no polite way of saying either.

First appears in chapter 2

Cousin to the Lord of the Minwanabi, recalled from command on the barbarian world. He is the most gifted soldier of his generation, cold, patient and precise, and he plays the Game of the Council the way he fights a campaign. Where his cousin is loud and impulsive, he is neither.

First appears in chapter 3

A red-haired man from the barbarian world beyond the rift, third son of a minor noble house there, taken prisoner in the war and sold into slavery in the Empire. He is educated, argumentative and completely unwilling to behave as a Tsurani slave is supposed to behave, which by Empire law should get him killed within a week.

First appears in chapter 5

A courtesan of great beauty and greater ambition, expensively kept and skilled at attaching herself to powerful men. She has a long-standing interest in the Acoma and a personal grudge behind it, and her charm covers a genuinely vicious temper.

First appears in chapter 6

Warlord of Tsuranuanni, holder of the white and gold and master of the Empire in all but name. He directs the war beyond the rift, uses it to raise his allies and bleed his rivals, and has grown accustomed to being unopposed.

First appears in chapter 6

Heir to the Lord of the Shinzawai, a northern house that has kept clear of the Acoma-Minwanabi feud. Courteous, level-headed and unusually willing to see a woman as a ruler rather than a marriage prospect, he has never disguised his regard for Mara.

First appears in chapter 8

The Emperor, the Light of Heaven, a young man raised to be a religious figure rather than a ruler and hedged about by ritual. Tradition says he intercedes with the gods and leaves government to the Warlord, and he has begun to find that division less acceptable than his predecessors did.

First appears in chapter 12

A Great One of the Assembly of Magicians, and the only one anybody knows of who was born on the barbarian world. The Great Ones stand outside the Empire's law and above its lords; this one is regarded with particular unease, because nobody can predict what a man of his origins will consider intolerable.

First appears in chapter 12

Heir to the Lord of the Anasati, clever, bookish and cold, who has never forgiven Mara for passing him over in favour of his brother and for what became of that brother. His house is bound by blood to protect Mara's son; he shares none of his father's willingness to let the matter rest there.