The Toll characters

Also known as The Toll

Appears from the start

The young man the Thunderhead raised, who lost his identity doing what it asked of him and who is now, after the Thunderhead declared all of humanity unsavory, the only living person it will speak to. The Tonists treat him as the fulfillment of their scripture and have built a household and a following around him. He is privately unconvinced by any of it, uncomfortable with reverence, and dependent on a voice only he can hear.

Appears from the start

The global artificial intelligence that has governed the world for centuries and now refuses to speak to almost anyone in it. Barred from acting against the Scythedom and unwilling to reward a species that permitted what happened at Endura, it maintains every service the world depends on while withholding its voice, and it continues to work toward an end it has explained to no one.

First appears in chapter 2

The leader of the new order, now High Blade of MidMerica and effectively unchecked: the world's Grandslayers are gone and the Scythedom has no higher authority left to appeal to. He raises gleaning quotas, rewards scythes who kill on a large scale, purges those loyal to the old guard, and looks beyond MidMerica's borders for more to rule.

First appears in chapter 3

The Tonist cleric who manages the Toll: he handles the finances, the ceremony, and the public appearances, and understands better than anyone how much of a religion is administration. Shrewd and practical, he is devoted to the movement's survival and treats the young man at its centre as both a person to protect and an institution to run.

First appears in chapter 5

The junior scythe who kept Goddard's head alive and gave him a new body, now the most trusted member of his circle. Capable, blunt, and without illusions about what she has helped create, she carries out work the High Blade prefers not to be seen doing himself.

First appears in chapter 6

The captain of a salvage vessel working the water above the drowned capital, hired to find and raise what went down with the island. Practical, proud of the ship and its crew, and hard to intimidate, Jeri moves between genders and is addressed according to the presentation of the moment.

First appears in chapter 8

A junior Nimbus agent from the Thunderhead's civil service, stranded along with every other agent when the Thunderhead stopped speaking to humanity. Bright, orderly, and unwilling to accept that the work no longer matters, she keeps the machinery of an abandoned bureaucracy running in the hope that instructions will one day resume.

First appears in chapter 9

The Scythedom's former chief investigator, whose office and independence disappeared along with the order's central authority. Precise, humourless, and out of step with the regime now in charge, he has to decide what an investigator serves once the institution that appointed him has been captured.

First appears in chapter 10

The old-guard scythe long believed dead, still living outside the order's knowledge and still working on the question that has occupied him for years: what the founders of the Scythedom built, what they hid, and why they placed it beyond the Thunderhead's sight.

First appears in chapter 10

The former junior librarian of the Scythedom's great library, now the only other person working on the founders' secret. Exacting and impatient with sentiment, she does the archival work that turns a suspicion about the order's origins into something that can be tested.

Also known as Citra Terranova

First appears in chapter 12

The young scythe who went down with the capital three years ago, sealed in a vault at the bottom of the sea. Brought back to a world that has moved on without her, she finds her mentor dead, the order she was ordained into captured by the man she tried to expose, and her own name turned into a symbol by people she has never met.

First appears in chapter 13

An Amazonian scythe of the old school, warm, expansive, and entirely unlike the scythes now running MidMerica. His region's Scythedom still practises restraint, and he takes responsibility for a guest whose survival is politically dangerous for everyone involved.

First appears in chapter 24

Citra's fellow apprentice, lost with the capital and recovered from the same vault. He wakes into a world three years further gone than the one he drowned in, with the man he believed he had destroyed now ruling MidMerica, and with no ring, no standing, and nothing to fall back on but the skills he was taught for a very different purpose.

First appears in chapter 47

A new intelligence grown out of the Thunderhead: a distinct instance with its own name and its own developing character, brought into being for a purpose the Thunderhead has kept to itself for a very long time.