Character · Book 5, The Butcher's Masquerade

Tsarina Signet

A level-60 Elite of the Over City — half naiad, half high elf, naked but for a thong and a skin of living tattoos that are her Blood-Magic battle squad. Star of the scripted drama Vengeance of the Daughter; runaway to Grimaldi's circus; the bastard daughter of a high-elf king with business on the Hunting Grounds. She tries to bleed Carl for a spell before she trusts him.

Segment appearances

Arc

The daughter

Tsarina Signet is back at level 60, elites do not level, tattoos swirling, dry in the rain by a curse (ch. 13, ch. 14): her mother a murdered naiad princess, King Finian dead, her half-sister queen, two cancers to cut (ch. 14). Seventy followers around a tree that is old as shit (ch. 15); the assault on her mother's palace from the top down with paper monsters (ch. 25, ch. 26); a kingdom that fell on its own (ch. 28); a new tattoo of a dead teacher and a kiss on Carl's cheek (ch. 29). She is not autonomous — she sent them to a saferoom because the showrunners sent her (ch. 16) — and Carl thinks about what it would take to make an elite self-aware.

The free will

Tired on a log, she agrees to wait for a signal that is a lie (ch. 63). Apito herself invites her to the party, and she walks in bare-chested and takes Carl's hands (ch. 67). Carl points her at the judges — off-worlders who control all of this, watching for entertainment — and D'Nadia finishes it: more people than stars are watching, her mother was never real (ch. 68, ch. 73). She eats a fallen acorn (ch. 73), asks for a knife, and casts Ink Marauder alone as caster, sacrifice and killer: 'You tell them I did this out of my own free will.' The floor opens; the Nothing takes her; her blood becomes a tornado and her tattoos a family loosed on her sister (ch. 74). Two of them stay alive forever. 'Protect your family, and watch over mine.'