The Republic of Thieves characters

Appears from the start

Weeks out of Tal Verrar and dying of the poison the Archon put in him, Locke has outlasted every physiker Jean could find and pay for. He has stopped cooperating with the attempt to save him: everyone he was raised with is dead except Jean, the trade he was built for needs a crew he no longer has, and he has largely stopped arguing with the outcome. What is left of him is still the best confidence artist either of them has ever met, when he can be persuaded to want anything.

Appears from the start

Locke's partner, and the reason he is still breathing. Since Tal Verrar, Jean has spent every coin they had on doctors, alchemists and quacks, and has been carrying a grief of his own that he does not discuss. Heavy, bespectacled, formidably dangerous at close quarters, and now entirely out of options.

Appears from the start

A Bondsmage of Karthain and one of the most senior figures in the guild, who arrives with a cure Locke needs and a contract attached to it. She is calm, extremely difficult to lie to, and forthcoming only about the things she has decided to be forthcoming about. She makes it plain from the beginning that she wants something more from Locke than the work she is hiring him to do.

Also known as The Eyeless Priest

Appears from the start

The fraudulent blind priest who bought Locke out of a thieves' orphanage in Camorr and raised him, Jean, Sabetha and the Sanza twins beneath his temple, training them in languages, etiquette and the confidence trade. He has been dead for years by the time of this book, and appears throughout its chapters of memory, where the crew are still children and adolescents in his charge.

Appears from the start

The Sanza twins, Gentlemen Bastards raised alongside Locke, Jean and Sabetha, who were killed in Camorr. They appear only in the chapters that look back at the crew's youth, where they are the pair of quick, irreverent forgers and sleight-of-hand men the crew depended on.

First appears in chapter 2

The fifth Gentleman Bastard, raised with Locke, Jean and the Sanzas under Father Chains and, by common consent within the crew, the most talented of them. Locke has been in love with her since childhood and has never once handled it well. She left years ago and has been working alone since, and she is now on the other side of the job Locke has just been hired for.

First appears in chapter 2

The Bondsmage who served the Grey King in Camorr, and whom Locke and Jean mutilated so that he could never work sorcery again. He has been kept alive in Karthain since, insensible, in the state they left him. He is also Archedama Patience's son, which is a fact she does not raise as a threat and does not pretend away either.

First appears in chapter 5

A Karthaini insurance broker and the Deep Roots party's chief organiser, who hands Locke and Jean the machinery of the campaign on their arrival. He is eager, well-connected, socially indispensable and rather less steady than the people relying on him assume.

First appears in chapter 5

Proprietor of the large Karthaini inn that serves as the Deep Roots party's headquarters, and therefore as Locke and Jean's base of operations. He is a practical host who has seen several of these election seasons and prices accordingly.

First appears in chapter 7

Actor-manager of a failing theatre company in the Therin city of Espara, into which Father Chains places his apprentices. He is talented, bitter, deeply in debt and frequently drunk, and his company cannot perform without him or survive much more of him.

First appears in chapter 7

The Moncraine company's elderly leading man, who has been playing the same handful of parts for decades and is rarely entirely sober. He is nonetheless the only person in Espara who can carry the roles the company needs carried.

First appears in chapter 7

The Moncraine company's costumer and, in practice, the person keeping the whole enterprise from dissolving. She knows exactly how bad the company's position is, handles what money there is, and is the first of the Esparans to take the newcomers seriously.

First appears in chapter 8

A young Esparan baron who becomes the theatre company's patron, paying its debts and lending it his name because he enjoys the company of actors. He is generous, vain, used to getting what he asks for, and openly taken with Sabetha.