The Blood Mirror characters

Also known as Kip Guile, Lord Guile

Appears from the start

Driven off the Jaspers by his own grandfather, Kip arrives in the Blood Forest with a squad, a wife he barely knows, an ancient magic-stealing knife and no authority whatsoever. He is a polychrome with an unusual gift for reading people and for will-casting, and he is about to find out whether a boy who has never commanded anything can raise an army in a satrapy the rest of the world has written off.

Appears from the start

The man the satrapies believe died at Ru, in truth Dazen Guile, who took his brother's name after the False Prism's War. He is blind, without a single colour, and shut in the deepest of the coloured cells beneath the Chromeria: the prison he designed himself, for the brother he replaced. Nobody outside that room knows he is alive.

Also known as The White, Karris White Oak

Appears from the start

The White: head of the Chromeria's administration, decades younger than anyone who has held the office before her, mourning a husband she was married to for a matter of weeks and presiding over a war she is losing. She was raised to the post by her dying predecessor precisely because she is not one of the Spectrum's own, and every Color on that council knows it.

Appears from the start

Head of House Guile, the Spectrum's Red, and now the most powerful man in the Seven Satrapies by some distance. With the war going badly he is pressing for promachos, the emergency office that suspends normal government and puts one man in charge of everything, and there is nobody left with the standing to stop him.

Also known as Adrasteia

Appears from the start

A Blackguard and paryl drafter living as a member of the Order of the Broken Eye, the assassins' society she was sent to infiltrate. Her handler is the White, her cover requires her to do the Order's work, and the deeper she goes the fewer people there are who could confirm which side she is actually on. She hunts for the Order's hidden head, known only as the Old Man of the Desert.

Appears from the start

Kip's wife by a marriage arranged in a hurry for the alliances it bought. A Malargos of Ruthgar, trained from childhood in negotiation and court politics, she is the reason anyone in the Blood Forest will listen to Kip at all, and she is far more use to him as a diplomat than he initially understands. The marriage itself is unfinished business between them.

First appears in chapter 2

Kip's squad commander and conscience, a Blackguard by training and instinct who left the Jaspers rather than leave Kip. He wants the group to be something honourable, and he holds it to that standard whether or not the war allows it.

First appears in chapter 2

The squad's engineer, a multi-coloured drafter who would rather solve a problem with a mechanism than a sword, and who keeps producing devices that turn out to matter more than anyone expected.

First appears in chapter 2

The squad's archer: laconic, unsentimental about killing, and the best shot any of them have seen. He is not much interested in the moral arguments the others keep having.

Also known as The Color Prince

First appears in chapter 3

The leader of the rebellion that now holds Tyrea, Atash and much of the Blood Forest, a burned man seamed with every colour of luxin who no longer bothers with the title of prince. He preaches the end of the Chromeria and the Freeing, and he is deliberately growing the banes, the floating islands of luxin in which the old gods can be seeded.

First appears in chapter 4

The Prism-elect: charming in public, a murderer in private, and the son Karris bore and lost before the war. He is what the Chromeria has instead of a Prism, and he intends to be more than a figurehead.

First appears in chapter 5

Aliviana Danavis, once a Chromeria student, now something the Chromeria has no vocabulary for. She works at the banes, where the rebellion is growing the vessels the old gods were said to inhabit, and she has stopped thinking of herself as anyone's subordinate.

First appears in chapter 6

The former commander of the Blackguard, a Parian of immense reputation who has lost both the Prism he was sworn to and his faith in the institution that employed him. His own country has a claim on him that he has spent his whole career refusing.

First appears in chapter 10

The Order of the Broken Eye's most accomplished assassin and Teia's teacher, a paryl drafter who moves unseen, keeps his own rituals, and collects the teeth of the people he kills. He is fond of Teia, which is not a safe thing to be.