The Bands of Mourning characters

Also known as Wax, Lord Waxillium Ladrian

Appears from the start

Months after he shot the governor of Elendel in front of the city, Waxillium Ladrian is a divisive figure at home and no longer on speaking terms with his god. He is Twinborn, a Coinshot who Pushes on metal and a Skimmer who can change his own weight, and he is finally about to marry Steris Harms. He is also carrying the knowledge that the woman he loved in the Roughs was never who he thought she was, and that Harmony arranged it, which has left him with a great deal of anger and nowhere useful to put it.

Appears from the start

Wax's partner, a Twinborn Slider and Bloodmaker whose bendalloy bubble accelerates time around him and whose stored gold heals injuries that should be fatal. He fights with a duelling cane, refuses to carry a gun, collects hats, and can become almost anyone with an accent and the right coat. He is involved with the kandra MeLaan, which suits them both and alarms most people who hear about it.

Appears from the start

A constable with a growing reputation, and the member of the group most likely to have read something relevant. She has stopped waiting to be given permission to lead, and she is far more interested in the historical and scholarly side of this case than anyone expects a police officer to be.

Appears from the start

Wax's betrothed, whose wedding preparations are as thorough as her contingency plans. She is socially awkward and entirely aware of it, and she packs for eventualities other people would consider absurd, which is repeatedly why the group survives them.

Appears from the start

A kandra, one of the Faceless Immortals who serve Harmony, and by now a fixture of Wax's circle. She can reshape her borrowed body at will, enjoys the physical world far more than her elders think proper, and treats a dangerous assignment as a holiday.

Also known as Sazed

Appears from the start

The god of this world, once a Terris scholar named Sazed. Wax is not speaking to him at the start of this book, having learned how far Harmony's arrangement of his life went. Harmony still runs the kandra, still knows more than he says, and is more constrained than the people who pray to him have ever been told.

First appears in chapter 2

A kandra scholar, fussy and academic where MeLaan is neither, who acts as the kandra's liaison to Wax. He brings the case that starts the book and is considerably more interested in evidence, provenance and correct citation than in the danger attached to any of it.

First appears in chapter 2

A kandra sent south to investigate rumors, who has come back missing one of his spikes. Kandra hold their minds in their spikes, so without it he is confused and barely coherent, but he returned carrying an image of a metal bracer that may be the thing generations of scholars have been looking for.

First appears in chapter 4

A gunsmith from the Roughs who outfits Wax and his people for a long trip south. Precise, private, and entirely done with pretending Wayne's attentions are charming.

First appears in chapter 8

A noblewoman of New Seran whose estate is the social center of that city and whose interests are aligned with the Set. The party she hosts is the group's way into what the organization has been doing in the south.

First appears in chapter 14

A young sky-sailor from the Malwish, a nation on the southern continent that the Basin had assumed was uninhabited ice. His people wear masks in public and build machines the Basin cannot: flying ships, and medallions, unkeyed metalminds that let anyone at all draw on Feruchemical attributes without being born to the art. He speaks the Basin's language with enormous enthusiasm and very poor accuracy. His expedition was destroyed and he was left behind alone.

Also known as Mr. Suit

First appears in chapter 18

Wax's uncle, alive despite a reported death, and a senior figure in the Set, where he is known as Suit. He is calm, precise and genuinely convinced that the organization's work is necessary, and he treats his nephew as a problem of management rather than as family.

First appears in chapter 22

Wax's older sister, believed killed years ago alongside their uncle, and in fact alive and in the Set's hands. Sharp-tongued and unsentimental, she is close to a stranger to Wax now, and getting her out is the thing he wants most from this expedition.

Also known as Kelsier, the Survivor

First appears in chapter 31

The figure the Malwish credit with founding their nation and giving them their technology, buried in the temple at the heart of this book. The evidence in the tomb identifies him as Kelsier, the Survivor of the Final Empire's fall, who did not stay dead when he was killed three centuries ago and who crossed to the southern continent after the world was remade.