The Blade Itself characters

Also known as The Bloody-Nine, Ninefingers

Appears from the start

A hardened warrior from the far North, missing a finger, who has outlived most of the men he ever fought beside and carries the weight of it. Feared across the North for a savagery that surfaces when the fighting turns desperate, he would rather find a way to be a better man; his weary refrain is that you have to be realistic about these things. As the book opens he is alone in the mountains, hunted by the inhuman Shanka, believing his old crew dead. He can speak with the spirits of the land, a rare and fading gift, and it is a summons from a wizard that draws him out of his hard, familiar world and south into events far larger than any single feud.

Also known as Inquisitor Glokta

First appears in chapter 2

Once the most dashing and arrogant swordsman in the Union, Glokta was captured in the Gurkish wars and spent two years being tortured, emerging a wreck: half his teeth gone, a ruined leg, constant pain, and a lurching walk. Now he works the other side of the table as an Inquisitor for His Majesty's Inquisition, extracting confessions from suspected traitors. His body is broken but his mind is razor-sharp, and his sardonic inner voice, forever asking why he bothers to go on at all, is one of the book's darkest pleasures. Set to investigate corruption among the merchant guilds, he keeps tugging threads that lead somewhere far more dangerous than a few smuggling charges.

First appears in chapter 3

A young, handsome, and thoroughly self-absorbed nobleman holding an officer's commission he has never had to earn. Jezal cares chiefly for cards, drink, and his own reflection, and is being drilled hard by his fencing master and by his friend Major West for the Contest, the Union's celebrated duelling tournament, which he sees mostly as a shortcut to glory and admiration. Lazy but not untalented, he resents the discipline even as it begins to sharpen him. His comfortable, shallow world starts to complicate when he finds himself drawn to a sharp-tongued young woman well below his station.

Also known as Major West

First appears in chapter 4

A rare thing among the Union officer class: a man of common birth who rose on merit and courage in the Gurkish wars rather than on a family name. Steady, competent, and well-liked, West coaches young Jezal for the Contest and moves uneasily between the drawing rooms of his highborn friends and his own humbler origins. Beneath the calm, though, runs a temper he works hard to master, and a fierce protectiveness toward his younger sister, Ardee, that will be tested.

First appears in chapter 7

Major West's younger sister, newly come to the capital. Clever, well-read, and blisteringly quick with her tongue, she has little patience for the polite fictions of high society and even less for being told how to behave. She drinks more than is thought proper and enjoys unsettling the men who underestimate her. Her sparring flirtation with the vain young officer Jezal dan Luthar is one of the few honest-seeming things in the city, though it sits badly with her protective brother.

Also known as The First of the Magi

First appears in chapter 16

A bald, stocky old man with a short temper and a scholar's manner who arrives in the capital claiming to be Bayaz, First of the Magi, a legendary figure most educated people assume is a myth. He demands the seat on the ruling Closed Council that ancient law reserves for his order, to the fury of the men who actually run the Union. Whether he is truly the centuries-old wizard of the histories or a very convincing fraud is an open question, but power of some kind plainly moves around him, and he begins quietly gathering an unlikely handful of people for a purpose he keeps to himself.

First appears in chapter 14

An escaped slave out of the southern empire of Gurkhul, consumed by a single hard purpose: revenge on the people who enslaved and used her. Fierce, mistrustful, and quick to violence, she works alone and expects betrayal from everyone. When the wandering magus Yulwei takes an interest in her, it is because there is something unnatural about her; she has been touched by a power she does not understand and cannot be tracked by those hunting her in the ordinary way. He steers her, reluctant and snarling, north toward the schemes of his old master.

First appears in chapter 9

A Northman scout with a sharp nose and a wry, watchful nature, one of the small band of hard men who once ran with Logen Ninefingers and survived the wars that scattered them. Believing their old chief dead, the Dogman and his companions - the level-headed Rudd Threetrees, the giant Tul Duru, the near-silent bowman Grim, and the vicious Black Dow - pick their way through a North falling under the iron rule of the self-made King Bethod, looking for a way to keep breathing and, perhaps, for the friend they lost.

Also known as Arch Lector

First appears in chapter 6

The cold, elegant head of His Majesty's Inquisition and one of the most powerful men in the Union. Sult presides on the Closed Council with an eye always on his rivals, and he uses Glokta as a tool, pointing him at enemies and expecting results without much caring how they are got. Ruthless and patient, he regards the state as his to defend and to steer, and treats the arrival of a meddling old man claiming ancient authority as an intolerable threat.