Character · Book 7, This Inevitable Ruin

York

Author of the Cookbook's 10th edition: pages of rambling philosophical essays by someone hive-born and alone, of which the one passage that stays with Carl calls the book a hive of those who will never cross paths except in its pages.

Segment appearances

Arc

Dante watched him on an ice-castle floor (ch. 5); Ikicha wrote that he came from a hive and always felt alone (ch. 12). The epilogue is his: alone aboard the Homecoming Queen, its ghost, writing bad verse; a tenodera bred long ago to feel nothing while cracking enemy hives, numb since his own ninth floor; he vaporised the orc yacht of children, the new orc king aboard, with a point-defence gun — a side mission Rosetta asked him point-blank if he had the fortitude for, though everyone assumed the orcs were caught in the crossfire — wanted to feel something afterwards, and did not. The ship is secretly the best-armed in orbit. Boomer's call, Porthus's broadcast, breaching suits and lasers — and he feels something, finally. Advocate, top level 71, deal at the end of the tenth, Poetry guild, tenth edition; captain in the Open Intellect Action Network (epilogue).