Character · Book 5, The Butcher's Masquerade

Carl

The narrator. Twenty-seven, ex–Coast Guard, a marine technician in Seattle, six foot three; on the night the world's buildings vanish he is outside in boxer shorts, a leather jacket and his ex-girlfriend's pink Crocs, coaxing her cat out of a tree, which is why he enters the dungeon without pants and soon without shoes. Crawler #4,122. He fights bare-fisted and barefoot, discovers a gift for improvised explosives, and gets angrier at the people running the show than at anything in it.

Segment appearances

Arc

The lawyer's client

Book 5 opens with Carl summoned to a Syndicate liaison's office over the item in his inventory and answering with four words he does not expect to work: 'I want a lawyer' (ch. 1). What follows is a different kind of crawl. A Null attorney in a hula-girl tie negotiates four rock-monster mercenaries and two spells as collateral for the Gate (ch. 3), calls a pending suit over private messages at fifty-fifty (it wins), gets an injunction against the hunters' outside help (ch. 8, ch. 21), bluffs a secondary program into a licence (ch. 13) and, by the end, has turned a fan club into a corporation that owns a Faction Wars spot (ch. 56, ch. 63, ch. 77). Carl specialises as an Agent Provocateur in a booth with ten minutes on the clock (ch. 1) and spends the floor being, in Herot's Cookbook phrase, the pebble on the path (ch. 56).

The hunt

He does not arrive with the others. Paralysed by an invisible weasel and carried in over a burning shoulder (ch. 2), he goes to the hunters' city before they are released, marks a drunk as bait, kills Vrah's sister with rockets and bleeds out at the border (ch. 5); thirty-four Hunter-Killer Boxes open in a row (ch. 8). He builds the biggest bomb he has ever made on purpose, for Bomo to roll into Zockau, and asks the crawlers to knock down every bridge but one (ch. 9), arms an Ursine town's guards (ch. 11), turns a sex doll's head into a guided missile (ch. 22), teleports a boss to himself and launches it into the sky (ch. 27). The ring from the third floor is on his finger again — 'Not anymore', he says when Signet calls him still soft (ch. 13) — and by the party it pays five points a kill (ch. 61). He kills a frightened orc for two stat points and throws a head into a river (ch. 25); he kills a man he had started to like with his foot (ch. 53); he kills a merchant in a bathroom and hides the body with a towel (ch. 58). 'Congratulations, Murderer' (ch. 23).

The river

The book names something Carl has always heard: a stream at the back of his mind, louder in heat, muted only by rest (ch. 8). It roars in a Point Mongo sandwich pub — 'The water is running' — and something breaks: his mother's hand at the edge of the Grand Canyon, his father waiting in the car, and a promise made to Donut on the spot, no matter what (ch. 12). He sees Earth from orbit and hears that Bea is alive (ch. 17); he says goodbye to her hologram (ch. 19). The river tells him to jump into the rapids and embrace the chaos (ch. 34); a drugged war council tells him the same, and he goes back to Alucarda with no protections and makes chaos to hide in (ch. 35). 'The sink is running' (ch. 36). It roars at the name Ferdinand (ch. 51) and screams when Gideon's team dies because he asked them to stay (ch. 73).

The party

The plan for the masquerade is committed to the Cookbook in case it is a record of his death (ch. 64). He lies to Signet to hold her in reserve and feels it (ch. 63); he tells her the truth about the people who control her world and then uses the truth as a tool (ch. 68). Sealed in with a queen who has him on her dance card, he decides to kill Eva and go into the Nothing so the others have a chance (ch. 73) — and is offered a better idea by an elite he had taught to see the strings. He hands her the knife that was once meant for Donut (ch. 74). His arm snaps as the queen reels him in (ch. 75); in the pit he takes two arrows, head-butts a mantis to death, casts a trap spell that halves the last hunter, and watches Donut strip a god from the woman driving it (ch. 76). Level 63. He finds the Popovs under the gore, tells Donut about the mask she is wearing, addresses the universe with photographs until the feed is muted (ch. 77), and buys a Book of Lore for the Bahamas that Donut does not pick (epilogue).