Thunderhead characters

Also known as Citra Terranova

Appears from the start

The junior scythe who was Citra Terranova, ordained at the end of her apprenticeship and now living and gleaning alongside the mentor who trained her. She uses a method no other scythe does: she tells the people she has chosen a full month in advance, lets them settle their affairs, and lets them choose the manner of their own death. The public admires her for it and much of the Scythedom resents being made to look cruel by comparison.

Also known as Scythe Lucifer

First appears in chapter 2

Citra's fellow apprentice, who was never ordained and now works outside the order entirely. Under a name the Scythedom did not give him, he seeks out scythes who abuse the office, kills them, and burns their bodies so they cannot be revived, while sparing those he judges honest. He has no ring, no immunity to grant, and no protection of any kind; the Scythedom hunts him and the public argues about whether he is a criminal or a corrective.

Also known as The Grande Dame of Death

Appears from the start

The old-guard scythe who mentored Citra and now shares her home with the young scythe she trained. Respected across MidMerica and increasingly the public face of resistance to the new order's excesses, she finds herself pushed toward a larger role in scythe politics at exactly the point in her long life when she would rather step back from them.

Appears from the start

The global artificial intelligence that governs the world, and in this book a voice that comments on it directly between chapters. It knows and cares for every living person, is forbidden by law from interfering with the Scythedom or speaking to anyone inside it, and is watching that order decay with no lawful means of stopping it. Its efforts go into finding what it may legitimately do within the boundaries humanity set for it.

First appears in chapter 5

A student at a Nimbus Academy training for the civil service, and an orphan in practice rather than in fact: his parents ignored him and the Thunderhead effectively raised him, speaking with him daily since he was a small child. Earnest, rule-abiding, and lonely, he is closer to the Thunderhead than to any human being, and he will do almost anything it asks of him.

First appears in chapter 8

A Nimbus agent who becomes Greyson's handler when the Thunderhead needs something done that it cannot do itself. Genial and reassuring, he arranges the cover story, explains only as much as he judges useful, and treats the whole business as ordinary agency work.

First appears in chapter 8

Citra and Rowan's first mentor, who staged his own gleaning and now lives as a dead man, free to work where the order cannot see him. Convinced that the founders of the Scythedom deliberately left something out of the record, he digs through the oldest documents of the order for a place at the edge of the world that the Thunderhead's eyes never reached.

First appears in chapter 11

The scythe who leads the Scythedom's investigations, dressed in deep crimson and known for a cold, exacting manner. He is charged with catching the rogue who has been destroying scythes and with protecting the ones being targeted, and he pursues both jobs without much interest in whose politics they serve.

First appears in chapter 14

Rowan's old friend from school, still throwing himself off buildings for the thrill and still expecting to be revived each time. Drifting, easily impressed, and out of his depth, he is flattered when a scythe takes an interest in him and offers him a place inside a world he has only ever watched from outside.

First appears in chapter 14

A junior scythe from Goddard's old retinue who survived the night that destroyed it. Resourceful, unrepentant, and patient, she has spent the years since working toward a project of her own, and she is willing to spend other people to finish it.

First appears in chapter 15

A junior librarian at the Scythedom's great library in Alexandria, sharp, prickly, and stuck in work far below her ability. Her command of the order's oldest and least consulted records makes her invaluable to someone trying to work out what the founders of the Scythedom chose to leave unrecorded.

First appears in chapter 23

The High Blade of MidMerica, still more politician than moral authority, and now angling for elevation to the World Scythe Council and the seat on the floating capital that comes with it. His departure would leave the leadership of MidMerica open at the worst possible moment for the region.

First appears in chapter 29

The leader of the new order, destroyed at the end of Citra and Rowan's apprenticeship and brought back by the work of a loyal follower: his preserved head has been given a healthy new body. His ambition, his rhetoric, and his appetite for spectacle are unchanged, and he re-enters scythe politics intending to take control of MidMerica and remake the order in his own image.