The Burning White characters

Also known as Kip Guile, Lord Guile

Appears from the start

The commander of the Nightbringers, the army he built out of foresters, refugees and irregulars in the Blood Forest. He is seventeen, married to Tisis Malargos, in possession of an ancient knife that takes a drafter's magic and a set of cards that carry the dead's memories, and he is one of the very few people between the White King's armies and the Chromeria. A significant number of people have decided he is the Lightbringer of prophecy; he has not.

Also known as Gavin Guile

Appears from the start

Dazen Guile, who took his brother's name and the Prism's office after the False Prism's War and held them for sixteen years. He is blind, has no magic at all, and is out of his father's prison but a long way from the Jaspers, with no title, no proof and nothing left to trade on but the man he actually is.

Also known as The White, Karris White Oak

Appears from the start

The White, ruling a Chromeria under siege alongside a father-in-law who holds the emergency office of promachos and does not intend to give it back. She knows now that her husband was Dazen wearing his brother's name, she is fighting a war against her own surviving brother, and the Prism-elect the Chromeria has installed is the son she lost before the war.

Also known as Adrasteia

Appears from the start

A Blackguard living as an assassin of the Order of the Broken Eye, invisible when she wants to be, and by now the only person with any chance of finding the Order's hidden master, the Old Man of the Desert. She has spent years doing the Order's work to keep a cover no one can confirm, and the bill for that is coming due.

Appears from the start

Promachos of the Seven Satrapies: head of House Guile, holder of the wartime office that suspends ordinary government, and the man actually running the defence of the Jaspers. Ancient, brilliant, and entirely willing to spend anyone. Whatever the Chromeria survives, he intends to be what is left standing.

Appears from the start

Kip's wife and his diplomat, negotiator and political brain, without whom the Nightbringers would have neither supplies nor allies. What began as an arranged marriage for the alliances it bought is now the partnership the whole campaign rests on.

Also known as Koios White Oak, The Color Prince

First appears in chapter 2

Koios White Oak, Karris's brother, burned nearly to death in the fire that destroyed their family before the war and now the leader of everything set against the Chromeria. His fleets and armies are converging on the Jaspers, and his banes, the floating islands of luxin in which old gods are seeded, are ripening with them.

First appears in chapter 4

The Prism-elect: Karris's lost son, a fluent liar and an unhesitating murderer, holding an office that is supposed to be sacred at the exact moment the Chromeria most needs it to mean something.

Also known as Aliviana Danavis, Liv

First appears in chapter 6

Aliviana Danavis as she is now: not a drafter but Ferrilux, an old god of superviolet returned into a human body, allied with the White King on terms that are not obviously his. Kip and Karris both knew the girl she used to be.

First appears in chapter 3

A pirate captain and the finest cannoneer alive, still convinced that his own life is a legend in progress, carrying a blind passenger he cannot decide whether to sell, worship or shoot.

First appears in chapter 8

An old sailor working Gunner's ship who happens to bear the name of god, which the crew find funny and which he does not explain. He is unbothered, unhurried, and inclined to answer a question with a better one.

First appears in chapter 2

Commander of the Nightbringers under Kip and the conscience of the whole enterprise, still trying to hold an irregular army to the Blackguard's standards in a war that does not reward them.

First appears in chapter 2

The Nightbringers' engineer, a multi-coloured drafter whose spectacles, mechanisms and improvised siege work do as much for the army as its fighters.

First appears in chapter 10

A Parian of enormous standing, once commander of the Blackguard, now pulled back toward the country and the throne he spent his career declining. Paria's weight in the coming war depends largely on what he decides to be.

First appears in chapter 14

The Order of the Broken Eye's foremost assassin and Teia's old teacher: a paryl drafter who moves unseen, keeps elaborate private rituals, and takes the teeth of the people he kills. He knows what Teia is and has still not decided what to do about it.

First appears in chapter 5

The Guile family's chief slave, who has run Andross Guile's household and his correspondence for decades and knows more of the family's business than any of its members. Elderly, deferential, and permanently in the room.