The Alloy of Law characters

Also known as Wax, Lord Waxillium Ladrian

Appears from the start

For twenty years he kept order in the Roughs, the lawless country beyond the settled Elendel Basin, working under the name Wax. He is Twinborn: a Coinshot, who burns steel to Push metal away from himself, and a Skimmer, who stores his own weight in an iron metalmind so that he can be light enough to ride a Pushed coin through the air or heavy enough to break a floor. A death he holds himself responsible for ended that life, and family obligation brought him back to Elendel as head of House Ladrian, a great house left insolvent by the sudden death of the uncle who ran it. He is trying, without much success, to be a nobleman: to attend dinners, court an heiress whose money the house needs, and leave his guns in a drawer.

Appears from the start

Wax's partner from the Roughs, who has followed him to the city and refuses to accept that either of them has retired. He is a Twinborn Slider and Bloodmaker: burning bendalloy raises a bubble around him in which time runs faster than outside it, and a gold metalmind lets him store health and then heal injuries that should kill him. He will not carry a gun, favors a duelling cane, collects hats, and slides in and out of accents and borrowed identities so easily that people rarely notice him taking anything. He does not consider himself a thief, because he always swaps: whatever he takes, he leaves something of his own behind in its place.

Appears from the start

Wax's partner and the woman he loved during his last years in the Roughs, unsentimental about the work and unimpressed by his moods. Her death during the confrontation that opens the book is what drove him off the frontier and back to Elendel, and it sits underneath everything he does afterwards.

Appears from the start

The god of this world, once a Terris scholar named Sazed, who took up two opposed divine powers three centuries ago and used them together to make a dying planet habitable again. He is worshipped alongside the Survivor and the Ascendant Warrior, and he left behind the Words of Founding, the record of the old world and the instructions for the new one. Unlike most gods, he is known to answer: he writes to people he takes an interest in, and occasionally speaks to them.

First appears in chapter 3

The daughter of Lord Harms and the heiress whose fortune House Ladrian needs. She approaches her engagement to Wax as a contract to be drafted, arriving with written terms, schedules and contingency plans, and is generally thought dull and awkward for it. The precision is genuine, and so is the nerve underneath it, which shows better under pressure than in a drawing room.

First appears in chapter 3

A university student of law and criminal statistics, introduced as Steris's cousin and attached to Lord Harms's household. She has followed Wax's career in the Roughs closely enough to embarrass him with it, and would far rather examine a crime scene than attend a party. Earnest, quietly stubborn, and consistently better prepared than the people around her assume.

First appears in chapter 3

Steris's father, a heavy, status-conscious nobleman keen to see his daughter married into House Ladrian's title. He is more concerned with his family's standing than with Wax's opinions, and he is the one who formally puts Wax on the case once the robberies reach his own household.

First appears in chapter 7

The senior constable of the octant where the robberies occur, protective of his jurisdiction and unimpressed by a nobleman playing lawman inside his city. He gives Wax as little cooperation as he can manage without provoking a scandal.

First appears in chapter 8

A gunsmith and an old associate from the Roughs, now working in Elendel, who builds custom weapons and Allomantic equipment for the few people she considers worth the trouble. She tolerates Wax, has no patience whatsoever for Wayne, and is entirely willing to shoot at either of them to make a point.

Also known as Miles Hundredlives

First appears in chapter 13

Once the most celebrated lawman in the Roughs, credited with surviving wounds that should have killed him many times over. He is a Compounder: burning Allomantic gold fuelled by his own gold Feruchemy regenerates him almost instantly, so ordinary weapons barely inconvenience him. He now leads the Vanishers, and he makes his argument openly rather than hiding behind it, holding that Elendel's laws exist to protect the wealthy and that the frontier he spent his life defending was abandoned by the city he is now robbing.

Also known as Mr. Suit

First appears in chapter 23

Wax's uncle, who ran House Ladrian and whose reported death is what forced Wax home to an insolvent estate. He is alive, and he belongs to a secretive, extremely well-funded organization called the Set, whose interests run underneath the crimes Wax has spent the book unravelling and whose plans are measured in generations rather than years.