Character · Book 6, The Eye of the Bedlam Bride

Mordecai

The tutorial guide assigned to Carl and Donut: a former crawler, born skyfowl, who chose Changeling and reached the eleventh floor of his own season, now serving out an indentureship as a shapeshifting NPC in a guild room with his mother's ashes and a photograph of his brother. He is bound by rules about what he may say, and he says as much as he can.

Segment appearances

• Prologue — Prologue
• Chapter 1 — The Ghosts of Earth
• Chapter 2 — Hills Cyclops
• Chapter 3 — The Scavenger's Daughter
• Chapter 4 — Old Havana
• Chapter 5 — Sister Ines
• Chapter 6 — Monk seals
• Chapter 7 — Duendes
• Chapter 8 — The Bedlam Bride
• Chapter 10 — Pueblo de los Olvidados
• Chapter 11 — Asojano
• Chapter 12 — Shadow Boxer
• Chapter 14 — The gauntlet run
• Chapter 15 — The Thorn Room
• Chapter 17 — Two goddesses
• Chapter 18 — Club Vanquisher
• Chapter 19 — What's in the box
• Chapter 20 — Ruby
• Chapter 21 — The warlords' table
• Chapter 22 — Uzi Jesus
• Chapter 24 — Raul
• Chapter 25 — The crab trap
• Chapter 26 — MaeMae
• Chapter 28 — Rude-Dolph
• Chapter 29 — Der Schachmeister
• Chapter 30 — Four drugs
• Chapter 31 — The corridor behind the shops
• Chapter 33 — Vorpals
• Chapter 34 — Family business
• Chapter 35 — Emergency action items
• Chapter 37 — The eye of the Bedlam Bride
• Chapter 38 — Monroe County
• Chapter 40 — The Book of Voodoo
• Chapter 41 — Jola the Yule Cat
• Chapter 46 — The Reminiscence Hydra
• Chapter 48 — Mass Layoffs
• Chapter 50 — Homestead
• Chapter 52 — Two of five
• Chapter 53 — Flee rules
• Chapter 54 — Demon Eviction
• Chapter 57 — Samantha's secret
• Chapter 59 — Velma
• Chapter 60 — The last rampart
• Chapter 61 — Three out of four
• Chapter 62 — Where the Sidewalk Ends
• Chapter 63 — The doggie door
• Chapter 64 — Spunky Jefferson
• Chapter 65 — Graupel
• Chapter 71 — The Eye of the Bedlam Bride
• Chapter 72 — Falling Up

Arc

The crafting room

Mordecai spends the floor at an alchemy table bought with Carl's two upgrade coupons, brewing Liquid Therapy for the guild and cures for Katia's four drugs (ch. 25, ch. 30), and coming out with a pink bow on his head: he has hired Ruby and the compression-sick changelings into six attendant slots at a thousand gold a day, and hidden it (ch. 20). A cyclops cannot see his own reflection. Titan licenses the story as a vid (ch. 21).

The briefings

He explains what the floor throws up — retainers and the Ascendency and the bookies (ch. 19), the Eye in the Sky (ch. 53), vorpals (ch. 33), Demon Eviction and its rules (ch. 54), Sheol's queen and four princes (ch. 61), sapient weapons (ch. 64) — and, of Huanxin Jinx: 'Do whatever she tells you to do' and 'She can go fuck herself', because 'the last time someone didn't do what she wanted, my brother died' (ch. 18, ch. 19). He will say no more. Odette says the rest for him (ch. 37).

'Some breaks aren't clean'

He says the thing to Carl that he cannot say to Donut: helping Katia is right, and the safe thing is to let her self-destruct, and it is her or Donut (ch. 30). He tells Carl to save himself before Imani (ch. 57), turns the survivor count off and, at the end, back on (ch. 61, ch. 72). 'And we're only on the eighth floor' (ch. 48). 'Be careful, kid' (ch. 50).