Helena Sedanka
The chronicler who becomes an independent legal and moral actor.
Sir Konrad Vonvalt
A Justice whose struggle against tyranny risks reproducing its methods.
Dubine Bressinger
Vonvalt’s taskman, killed in the previous book; his absence shadows Helena for the whole of this one.
Bartholomew Claver
The architect of the religious and supernatural challenge to imperial rule.
Allied rulers and rebels
People whose demands reveal that defeating Claver will not restore political consensus.
The dead and the unseen powers
Forces that make the trilogy’s legal crisis inseparable from its metaphysics.