Caleb Altemoc’s Story So Far
Some of this is adapted from other essays, some is brand new. Enjoy!
Caleb is the only character we’ve seen grow from childhood, appearing as a 7 year old in Last First Snow and grown up in Two Serpents Rise. Torn between worlds, Caleb was dedicated against his will to bloodthirsty Quechal gods, and after some wilderness years has chosen to use the gods’ power to try and rebuild damaged parts of the world. As a general-purpose saint with a slight gambling addiction and propensity to throw himself in the line of fire, Caleb will undoubtedly play a major role in the rest of the series.
As we approach the publication of Dead Hand Rule, let’s take a look at Caleb’s story so far.
Last First Snow
As Caleb is so young in his first book appearance, we’re going to jump straight into the books.
The only child of an academic (Mina) and a former revolutionary turned pacifist priest (Temoc), Caleb’s early childhood in Dresediel Lex was fairly idyllic. He grew up multilingual, one of the few people of this era to grow up a native speaker of High Quechal, the old language of the priests. Temoc later mentions that the language had been a “use-tongue” in their home, and that “Caleb joked in High Speech. He shit-talked while losing at Apophitan Rat Screw. He made awful puns.”
We meet him as a cheeky kid already proficient in cards, able to count cards. His family play together, paint the ceiling together, cook together. He knows his dad is a priest, but has little interest in religion. Temoc remembers when Caleb did attend services, recalls that he was bored by much of it and scared by the rest. And while Temoc doesn’t understand this part of his son, he does accept him.
Caleb is present at the accord signing that goes wrong, but kept safe. For several days things at home are tense, but Caleb’s little family is together. Mina and Temoc discuss returning to the Square, yet they know it won’t be safe for Caleb at his young age. Then, one night, one of the protestors arrives at their door, with a hellhound on her trail. Caleb fetches a first aid kit to help his parents, and told to look away while Temoc channels the gods to heal Chel. We don’t get Caleb’s POV here, but one can imagine it was terrifying for a sheltered and beloved young boy. He later asks his father why Temoc didn’t leave with Chel to help her. Caleb, in his innocence, tells Temoc that he doesn’t have to worry about his family, that Caleb and Mina are strong and can take care of themselves.
This, to Temoc, is the sign from the gods that he must indeed leave them and return to the Square. And that he must give his son whatever protection he can - the scars of the gods.
“Mom can take care of herself. She’s strong, too.”
“You’re right.”
“And so am I.”
And there it was. The vow issued, the singing of the choir. His son would be strong. Strong enough to stand without Temoc. Strong enough to make his own way.
We will protect him, the gods sang. We will watch him. We care for our people, and their children.
Only pave the way for us.
Only give us what is ours. Promised by yoiur bloodline, father and son throughout history.
Give the boy the strength he needs. When you were his age, you knelt before the altar. When you were his age, you carved us into her skin. When you were his age, you dedicated yourself to the war that has found you now.
The boy wants to help. Let him.”
Caleb and Temoc are from a long line of priests, Eagle Knights who could channel the power of the gods through sacred scars. Temoc drugs Caleb, and cuts the scars into his son’s skin. The ritual works, but leads Caleb unconscious and losing blood. Mina finds them, Temoc shadowed and looming over their son with a bloody knife.
Caleb probably doesn’t remember their desperate flight, but Mina tries to take him to hospital when they are set upon by golem assassins. Luckily, she changes course at exactly the right time, bringing Caleb to Elayne Kevarian’s door. Yet, it would still be too late for them had Caleb not woken up and instinctively used the newfound power in his scars to deflect the assassins’ magic.
Caleb spends the rest of the book in hospital with Mina at his side. Temoc appears at the end of the book but is sent away.
And Caleb’s entire life has changed. Not only has his loving family been broken up, but he now has terrifying powers connected to gods he doesn’t worship. His home is razed to the ground, and his father is a fugitive.
Caleb’s life between books
Caleb and Mina move house, and Caleb later reflects on how he still views his early childhood home as his real home - the little courtyard where he’d learned to shuffle and deal, the hallway closet Temoc made a temple. They are incredibly close. After school, Caleb went to her office at the downtown university campus, and in the summers he joined her wherever she happened to be.
“In summers, Dr Mina Almotil focused on her research. Sometimes that meant digs in the desert—which was fine, Caleb could scratch together a few thaums working and more beating the students at cards. But always, eventually, his life wound back up the road to the glittering white walls of Tlaloc Observatory.
Here, while Mom worked, he walked the labyrinth. The rules were clear. Touch nothing without permission, not even the safety glass. But otherwise he was free to roam.
…
Whenever they travelled together together, to a conference or a dig, she’d find an artist to ketch the pair of them. His favourite was the second from the top, from a pyramid in the Fangs: her hand in his hair, him point out something out of frame.”
Their life is happy, but Temoc’s choices hover over them. We know that as an adult, Caleb is questioned by Wardens every time Temoc does anything, but not when that started. I imagine that Mina has experienced similar questioning.
We know that Elayne Kevarian keeps her promise to check in, and Caleb calls her Auntie Elayne. He views her as his partner in cards and his mom’s great friend, not as the scary Craftswoman the rest of the world sees her as. I need someone to write Elayne and Caleb throughout the years, btw.
Caleb went off to college, where he befriended Teo. He dated someone called Leah, but we know nothing about her other than her name. He played cards and gambled like his life depended on it. And he built a life that was opposite to what his father would want. He becomes a Risk Manager at Red King Consolidated, quite literally working for his father’s enemy.
And he becomes, well, boring. At least to me, a certified 2Sr!Caleb hater.
So let’s get onto that book.
Two Serpents Rise
I’m going to be honest, as Caleb is pretty much the sole main character and POV for this book, most of this section comes from the Two Serpents Rise Story So Far. If you’ve read that recently, you may prefer skipping ahead to a later section.
Caleb is now about 28 years old, working for the King in Red. He plays poker by night, risking soul and sanity, but by day he is a risk manager working in a grey cubicle. He’s floating through life and doesn’t know what he wants to do with his life - except to not follow in his father’s footsteps. Temoc, still on the run, is blamed for any and all attacks in Dresediel Lex, and Caleb has to deal with questioning each and every time. He sees his father when Temoc breaks into his house occasionally, but they have no real relationship. It appears he is still close with his mother, but Mina doesn’t show up in this book so we don’t see it directly.
When the water of Dresediel Lex is poisoned, Caleb is called by nightmare to solve the problem. He meets a mysterious cliff runner, Male Kekapania, and quickly falls in lust with her. He doesn’t include her in his report of the incident - much to Teo’s disgust. She’s innocent, he’s sure of it, and he’s thinking with his dick rather than his head.
RKC is about to merge with Heartstone, led by Kal Alaxic, an old enemy of the King in Red; Heartstone is naturally concerned about the demons in the water. Caleb is sent to assuage Alaxic’s concerns, and learns that the merger will bring The Twin Serpents under the King in Red’s control. The Serpents are ancient, giant creatures that were part of the old Quechal religion - not quite gods, but given the hearts of sacrifice victims to keep them sated and asleep. They slumber beneath the ground in uneasy sleep.
Alaxic requires a new condition to the merger: RKC will keep the Serpents asleep above all other priorities, even Kopil’s own life. RKC agrees.
Meanwhile, Caleb is chasing Mal. He uses the sacred scars his father carved into him as a child to take hold of the Craft that now runs Dresediel Lex and fly as he literally chases her. It’s a thing, let’s move on. More attacks happen across Dresediel Lex; Temoc claims he isn’t to blame but Caleb doesn’t know whether or not to believe him.
At the Heartstone-RKC merger Caleb learns that Mal is a Craftswoman working for Alaxic’s company. He once again chases after her, and they start dating, for a given value of dating.
Seven Leaf Lake, a reservoir that was brought over to RKC through the merger is attacked, and Mal is sent to fix it along with some Wardens and Caleb. They battle against Mal’s old friend and colleague Allie, ultimately killing her and rebuilding the broken station at the reservoir together. That evening, Caleb finds Mal bloodletting as a sacrifice and they argue before they part.
Caleb, of course, goes back to Mal before long. They don’t agree, but they can live with their disagreement on the fundamental matter of religious sacrifice.
As an eclipse approaches, across the city madness takes flight. Nightmares infest the city, dreams of the Serpents, snakes of flame, the end of the world. On the day of the eclipse itself, Caleb decides to show Mal an RKC secret about how the city functions: the corpse of the old Quechal god Qet Sea-Lord, his heart desalinating sea water in a Craft bastardisation of his old godly powers to bring the rains. Caleb may disagree with Mal’s bloodletting, he says, but he understands sacrifice. Everyone in the city is part of this sacrifice to keep the modern world turning.
In a totally unforeseeable turn of events, Mal betrays Caleb’s trust in the middle of the night, steals Qet’s heart and breaks the city. Meanwhile, Alaxic tries to kill Temoc in a murder-suicide but Temoc escapes. The water runs black with tzimet. Dresediel Lex is in chaos. Protestors descend on RKC, which is now locked behind a Craft barrier.
Somehow still not seeing that Mal has betrayed him, Caleb finds her at a bar they visited once. She reveals she stole Qet’s heart as part of a plan to bring down RKC and the King in Red - and that this was the plan the whole time. She and Alaxic worked with Allesandre Olim before and after the Heartstone-RKC merger to tie Kopil to the Twin Serpents and ultimately kill him.
Finally coming to his senses, Caleb fights Mal and steals back Qet’s heart. He escapes to Teo’s house and is surprisingly joined by Temoc - who is, to Caleb’s shock, NOT behind the attack. The three of them go to RKC and, using Temoc’s gods, manage to get through the Craft barrier and fight their way up to where the King in Red lies unconscious in his offices. Meanwhile, Mal awakens the Twin Serpents. Caleb and Teo are planning to rip up the Heartstone contract to wake Kopil, but Temoc has other plans and at the last minute knocks out his son in order to use Teo as a sacrifice to the Serpents. He comes close to succeeding before Caleb and Teo manage to foil his plans and awaken the King in Red.
Wardens attempt to fight Mal from the air as she sails through the city with the Serpents, sending waves of fiery destruction across the city. Caleb has a new idea - to use his scarred glyphs to channel soulstuff as a faux-sacrifice to send the Serpents back to sleep.
“Give me souls. All the souls you can spare.”
“In exchange for what?”
“For nothing. I need you to give them freely. No string attached, no contract, no consideration.”
“The Craft doesn’t work that way. I can’t give you something without taking.”
“Look.” He removed his jacket and rolled up his sleeves. The scars on his arms glowed. “This is how I helped Teo. I don’t have any Craft of my own, but I can use others’ powers, and pay the price myself. The old priests bore the gods’ power with these scars, worked miracles with them. My father still does. Maybe I can do the same: give the Serpents power without taking anything in return.”
“You’ll kill yourself.”
“Maybe.”
“I’m no god.”
“And I’m no priest. But we’re the closest we have.”
Kopil provides the souls. He funnels the souls to the Serpents, Mal’s control breaks and she burns out, and Caleb falls unconscious.
Several weeks later, semi-recovered, Caleb pitches a new venture to the King in Red and Teo: a new organisation, a sort of non-profit, to fix God Wars damage and act as a conduit between the Craft and religion, using Caleb’s scars. They co-found the Two Serpents Group. And Caleb says goodbye to Mal, though he suspects she is still alive.
Caleb between books part 2
We get to see Caleb briefly in Four Roads Cross. He’s thrown himself into the sharp edge danger and is currently holding together a mountain that houses an ancient goddess. As Tara Abernathy really needs to negotiate with him, Shale takes his place so Tara and Caleb can escape and make a deal.
We don’t see Caleb after this but know the following:
-he (and the Two Serpents Group) take over the spirecliffs damage site caused by the bad guy of Full Fathom Five, bringing him into contact with Kai Pohala.
-he has an adventure in the Shining Empire, in a book Gladstone says he hopes to write one day. Please. I need it.
Wicked Problems
Caleb is one of the first characters we see in Wicked Problems, waking up at a Two Serpents Group site outside Ajaiatez in Southern Kath. Through his eyes we see the Craftwork damage to the coastline known as the spirecliffs. He’s awaiting billionaire Eberhardt Jax and a horde of journalists; Jax is here to see the cause of the damage, a shard of metal with an unbloomed rose in its centre. There are considerable wards and protections, but everything goes wrong when Dawn, disguised as a journalist, reaches for the shard and Caleb leaps in to save her.
Tara Abernathy shows up at the site, and is let in because a) Craftswoman, b) there’s no way they could keep Tara out if she wanted in, and c) she’s on his emergency contact list. Love this for them. She attempts to free Caleb from where he is literally holding together the entire spirecliffs, and manages with a soul loan from Kai Pohala.
Caleb is still trapped a nightmare of gods and Serpents. His scars burn through his clothes, and the gods call out for him. The twin Serpents, in human form, claim him. There is pain, there is sacrifice; it’s all very dramatic and a bit BDSM-y, as Tara Abernathy points out when she breaks into the dream. They banter. Their dynamic is quite wonderful.
The pair of them escape the dream through a fiery throne, and wake up in a generic conference room both aflame. Caleb’s shirt is reduced to shreds and ash - not the last time that will happen in this book.
They’re on Jax’s yacht with Abelard (new acquaintance for Caleb), and Kai (who doesn’t like Caleb, and the feeling is quite clearly mutual). Tara ties Caleb to a chair (classic Tara) to go through his memories and see what the hell happened. In the memories they see Dawn - and they see Mal Kekapania, Caleb’s ex who was assumed dead after the climax of Two Serpents Rise.
Tara convenes a council of war and everyone gets up to speed with Dawn, the skazzerai, and Mal. They decide to split up: Tara and Kai will go to meet Kai’s client, while Abelard and Caleb chase Dawn. Jax will do billionaire stuff behind the scenes.
Caleb and Abelard’s quest turns into quite the bromance (with, if you believe my friend’s reading of the book, some actually romantic undertones). They’re on Dawn’s trail at the Arsenal, and bond. It’s cute. Caleb finds a death marker for Ixzayotl, clearly made by Mal, and tracks the gang through that link. They follow the trail to the Shining Empire - specifically Guang’an airport. They meet a friend-slash-spy-contact of Caleb’s called Ran, who has a cool appearance changing magic. Ran is from an as-yet-unwritten Craft Sequence standalone, and I desperately need Gladstone to write it after this series is done.
The three of them walk through the airport, looking different every time Abelard catches them in the reflection. Ran is part of the political apparatus in the Shining Empire, and chooses to stay and try to help deal with the whole god-mountain-prison-break thing rather than leave with Caleb and Abelard. They do provide magical CCTV to show Dawn, Mal and Temoc at the prison. Time for Caleb and Abelard to go to DL.
Caleb and Abelard are flying towards Dresediel Lex, and discuss their respective histories with gods. Abelard translates Caleb’s power to channel the Craft and Applied Theology as him being something of a general-purpose saint, which plays on Caleb’s mind through the rest of the book. He spends the rest of the flight gambling and playing cards. It’s a genuinely great insight into his mind, and I kinda want a rewrite of Two Serpents Rise with more of this.
Their dragonflight is interrupted as they enter DL airspace, with the site of Tlaloc on fire. Caleb knows Tlaloc well from visits with his mother. The pair leap from the dragon-aeroplane using Caleb’s magical scars to somewhat control their descent, smashing into a pyramid. They do, in fact, find Mina trying to save research. All looks lost - then, everyone’s favourite deus ex machina Elayne Kevarian shows up. She briefly moves the Observatory into space to put out the fire (iconic). Caleb is thrilled to see his Auntie Elayne rock up.
They have some Big Discussions at Mina’s house, catching each other up on how they all know each other, and The Dawn Situation. Elayne has been brought in by the priesthood of Ajaia. She sees a war on the horizon. Caleb realises why Elayne is actually there, and speaks to his mother on her behalf - she was how Temoc got into Tlaloc. He appeared at her door after decades of silence, and she gave him the guard schedule. Wardens arrive but not for Mina - for Caleb and Abelard.
Abelard is thrilled by the couatl ride over Dresediel Lex, asking the Wardens lots of questions. He gets a bit quieter when he realises they are going to the King in Red’s office, and Caleb takes over the snark. It’s funny. Kopil puts them under 24 hour arrest to keep them out of the picture while he goes to stop Temoc et al. Locked in an obsidian prison, Caleb is at a loss for how to escape. Luckily Abelard has the power of being a saint of Kos, and begins a prison escape prayer.
“Can I help?”
“I thought you weren’t the religious type.”
“I’ve worked with gods.”
“But you don’t seem to believe in Them.”
“My problem is they seem to believe in me.”
“I don’t follow.”
“The gods have a plan—for me specifically. They know what my scars mean. They want a Knight to do their work in the world. The problem is the kind of work they want me to do. They want things the old way. Sacrifice and dominion. Kings and priests and priest-kings.”
…
“Perhaps it’s a question of finding the right God.”
After quite some time (Kos’ rituals cannot be rushed) Caleb and Abelard blast out of their prison, and make their way to Teo’s apartment smelling of fire. Caleb wants to borrow her car, and she insists on coming with them to whatever the hells they’re doing. They reach the Heartstone facility in the hills. Abelard burns through the security glyphed fence, much to Caleb and Teo’s horror - it’s a drought! They stamp out the flames.
We enter the chamber of the Serpents. The King in Red has already shown up, blowing the roof off the place and fighting Temoc and Mal. Caleb joins the fight, coming face-to-face with his father and his ex for the first time in years. There is some typical Gladstone banter during a typically great Gladstone fight scene (his writing is so cinematic).
During the fight, Caleb prays to Kos, thinking about Abelard’s earlier comment about him being a general-purpose saint, and Kos being a decent kind of deity. Kos gives him wings of fire, and a sword of shifting flames. Temoc is proud to see him take up a god’s mantle, even if it is a foreign god.
Take it as read that everyone is fighting, getting injured, bantering, doing cool Craft things. If I summarised each one this would be as long as the actual book. Ultimately, Dawn gets the powers of a god and escapes the cavern with Temoc and the other Arsenals - but not Mal, who is trapped by the King in Red.
Outside, fire rages. Abelard is able to suppress the flames.
And thus, we end the book and Caleb’s story so far.
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