Teo Batan’s Story So Far
Some of this is adapted from other essays, some is brand new. Enjoy!
Teo is perfectly happy as a Contract Manager for Red King Consolidated, when her best friend Caleb drags her into an apocalyptic plot that ends with Teo almost becoming a human sacrifice. Oops. They co-found a non-profit to fix the world, Caleb continues to exasperate Teo with his antics, and she ends up being the catalyst to saving the day time and time again.
As we approach the publication of Dead Hand Rule, let’s take a look at Teo’s story so far.
Teo before the series
Teotihual Batan, to use her full name, was born to wealth. Her family appears to have been noble back in the day, escaped the God Wars brutality by keeping their heads down, and rebuilt their fortune as slumlords. Her dad was a key player in the quashing of the Skittersill Rising in Last First Snow - in fact, we get a brief cameo from a child that is probably Teo in that book - but she rejected his money to make her own.
She mentions cousins but no siblings, and we hear more about her grandmother than her parents, which I take as meaning Teo felt closer to her than to them. With very few POV pages from Teo, this is more or less all we get about her childhood. Knowing her father, we can assume she was set up to socially climb and make friends in high places - I imagine that means good schools, fancy clubs, high expectations.
She appears to have met Caleb at university, and been friends since. A passing reference to her thinking she fancied men implies she realised she was queer after college, but I also think that was a younger Gladstone’s slightly clumsy way of introducing her queerness. It’s less clunky in later books.
Teo, like Caleb, got a job at Red King Consolidated, but earned more money than him - more focused on climbing the ladder, perhaps, or maybe she’s just in a more lucrative department. Caleb manages risk, while Teo manages contracts. Teo is extremely proud of buying her own apartment without her family’s money, and uses any money they do give her to collect art.
Two Serpents Rise
At the start of the book, Teo is, seemingly as usual, out at a bar with Caleb Altemoc. He’s being rather dour and boring, then gets a nightmare call from work - the water is poisoned and he needs to go and sort it out. Teo joins him for a jaunt to Bright Mirror Reservoir to see what the hells is going on.
Caleb catches Mal sneaking around, but redacts that from his later report. Teo gives him shit about it, but doesn’t report him. This is the first time in four years that he’s shown much interest in anything, and she wants to encourage whatever has given him back his spark. She gives him a two-week deadline to find Mal, and bets him a soul and a half that he won’t be able to.
We see only glimpses of Teo through Caleb’s POV until the end of the book, but this is a list of pretty much everything we see of or learn about Teo (and should have got via Teo POV if you ask me):
Teo takes her job incredibly seriously
She has a cat, Compton, “a treacherous calico”
Over the course of the book (several months) she gets into a relationship with tempestuous artist, Sam. Sam and Caleb don’t like each other, so we learn very little of substance about her.
She takes a lot of sugar in her coffee.
When Caleb ends up hospitalised due to his antics, she is extremely worried and expects him to call off both the bet and his secret hunt for Mal, and hand her to the authorities - but nope, he won’t back down.
She continues to call Caleb an idiot while he moons after Mal and bothers Teo at work.
She’s working on the merger between RKC and Heartstone, saying “this deal will kill me, or else I will kill every single person involved in it” - she’s working crazy hours.
“Teo had ventured into the Abyss herself during the negotiations, painted in henna and silver wards against the odd intelligences that lived there” WHY DIDN’T WE SEE THIS OH MY GOD
Besotted by Sam, she drags Caleb to her girlfriend’s art exhibition, with art that Caleb considers horrifying. She butters up donors, buyers, and benefactors, while Caleb stares horrified at the “only thing on the walls that qualified as a painting.” They debate art and the city over drinks.
Honestly, rereading this bit seems to imply Teo owns an art gallery? And uses the money / soul her parents press upon her to collect and sell art? I have read this book a dozen times and never noticed this fact.
She gets a major bonus for her work on the Heartstone deal
She also trusted Caleb when he said he won the bet, despite not seeing proof, and gave him his winnings
When Caleb sees Mal at the merger, he points her out to Teo
“Caleb and Teo were sharing dinner in her apartment over a game of chess” I WANT TO SEE THEIR FRIENDSHIP PROPERLY
Every year, Teo steals several bottles of old wine from her family’s cellar and holds a private bacchanal. Once again, why is this mentioned but not shown??? I want to see Teo’s bacchanal!
When mini tzimet infect the water again, she spears them with a broom. They pop into tiny, inert puddles.
Teo and Caleb watch a sports game, and she wins a bet against him
Caleb and Mal have fallen out over religion, and Teo encourages him to apologise
Teo is a definite fan of sports, with tickets to the Eclipse Games. She and Sam seem to have a falling out over it, but she won’t share much with Caleb. They make up (and make out) in a bar.
And now we finally get to Teo playing more of a part in the action. And a major part she plays!
After the eclipse, the water runs black with tzimet once more. The city is in chaos. Teo threatens whoever is at her door (I have little water, less food, and a blast rod pointed at the door) but when she realises it’s Caleb, she lets him in. Sam was with her, but has gone off to protest.
Caleb reveals that Mal is actually a bad guy and behind the plot (and also stole Qet’s heart and therefore broke the water desalination facility on which DL depends). Teo is pretty furious that Caleb came to her door with all this, rather than any of the actually important and influential people in the city. He tells her the King in Red and all the board members are locked in a magical barrier that almost nothing can break through, and are probably so tied up with the city that they’re unconscious.
They argue over what to do. The Serpents will have woken with the eclipse; historically, they were put to sleep with sacrifices. Teo suggests they find a sacrifice, but Caleb shuts her down - absolutely not. This is foreshadowing for the fact that Teo becomes a sacrifice later. Bet she regrets her argument here…
They come to the conclusion that they need to break into the office, through protesters and the magical barrier, find the signature page of the contract merging RKC and Heartstone, and tear it up. While it won’t solve the whole issue or break the contract entirely, it might give the King in Red enough leeway to wake up and deal with the problem.
Before they can leave to get to the office, however, Caleb’s fugitive father appears at Teo’s door, searching for Caleb to tell him the city is in danger. He also tries to strangle Teo, which isn’t great.
Temoc, unlike Caleb, does want a sacrifice. He is against Caleb’s plan until Teo conveniently mentions a girlfriend. The best sacrifices, it seems, are people who have not had heterosexual sex. Temoc does not tell Teo and Caleb this, but is suspiciously quickly on board with their plan.
The three of them make their way to the pyramid, and get through the barrier using ‘mantles’ of small gods, stored in leather made of human skin. It’s not great. Caleb fights with Temoc about it, while Teo is more pragmatic - it’s pretty shit but they need to use it. However, carrying a god in this way nearly drives Teo mad, as she isn’t protected by Eagle Knight scars. Temoc knew this might happen, but Caleb didn’t. He uses his scars and casts the god out, leaving Teo relatively unscathed. We later learn that the god sort of stayed within her, and is fully cast out in Full Fathom Five.
It’s tricky to get to the top of the pyramid, but they manage. The King in Red is, indeed, unconscious, and appears to have had the same idea as Caleb and Teo, so the contract is handily ready for them to tear up.
Except…Temoc has other plans and at the last minute knocks out his son in order to use Teo as a sacrifice to the Serpents. Luckily for Teo, Quechal prayers are fairly lengthy. Caleb wakes up and fights his father before he finishes the ritual, but Teo is left with a nasty cut on her forearm. With Temoc distracted, she breaks free of her rope ties and tears up the contract, essentially saving the day by waking up the King in Red.
All the magic folks fight, and Teo collapses. She is about to bleed out and die, and the King in Red isn’t able to save her with the Craft. But Caleb can channel the Craft. He gets Kopil to heal him, and then he channels that to Teo, saving her life.
Caleb then manages to do the same channelling thing to the Serpents, sending them to sleep and defeating Mal. 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. Together they co-found the Two Serpents Group. It’s a big paycut for Teo, but she’s willing to do it.
Teo between books, part 1
Over several years, Teo and Caleb build the Two Serpents Group. Teo seems to manage the donors and contracts, while Caleb does the frontline work. By the time we next see the Group, they have a variety of projects around the world and a fairly significant non-profit operation. We can extrapolate that she works very closely with the King in Red, judging by the difference between Teo’s reaction to him in Two Serpents Rise (jumping to her feet when he enters the room) and Wicked Problems (“The boss never did know when to pull his dick out of a finger trap”).
Teo has a blink and you’ll miss it cameo in Four Roads Cross. When Tara and Shale go to the mountain to rescue Caleb, we can assume an unnamed Quechal woman is Teo, particularly because in the final scene Tara mentions “Ms Batan”.
We also know that Teo works with the Alt Coulumb gang on a project to regain some of Seril’s strength, becoming involved in the plan to break into Kavekana’ai in Full Fathom Five.
Full Fathom Five
Once again, Teo has no POV pages here, so we must build up her part from Kai’s perspective and the exposition we get towards the end. While Cat Elle sneaks onto the island and ends up hiding with Izza Jalai, Teo approaches the Sacerdotal Order as a potential pilgrim. She is assigned to Kai Pohala, a priestess recently reassigned from idol building to sales, and extremely unhappy about it.
Teo’s plan involves getting up the mountain itself, but pilgrims aren’t allowed up there without a contract. Teo is sceptical of the Order’s work, and wants to see it up close; Kai shuts her down quickly, but Teo keeps coming back. This seems weird until we learn why she’s really there. The plan isn’t revealed until later, but let’s look at what that reason actually is now:
“Is it stealing when you’re working for a goddess?”
“Yes.”
“Fair enough,” Teo said. “Stealing it is.
“I thought you worked for Deathless Kings,” Kai said. “You and the Two Serpents Group. Heal the world one crisis at a time.”
“That’s the idea. Most of what I told you was true. But our sponsors, all those Deathless Kings, they made their names with deicide. Understandably hard to convince Old World gods that we come in peace. So I went to Alt Coulumb, where gods and Craftsmen get along okay.”
“Seril,” Kai said. “The moon goddess.”
“Right. The one who died and got better. One of our main sponsors killed her, back in the God Wars. We figured if she signed on with us, that would get a lot of attention. I made the pitch, and I’m good at my job, current circumstances notwithstanding. The idea intrigued her. But she made a counter-offer.”
“You’re here for the goddess-shard.”
“Basically.”
Later on, Kai needs to get back up the mountain, but her access has been revoked. Easy solution: use Teo. With a client, she’s able to go up the mountain. Kai finds example idols based on Teo’s interests and the kind of idol she might like, and secretly begins an investigation Teo knows nothing about (discovering the existence of the Blue Lady). Kai asks the goddess who She is, when everything goes wrong. Teo drops a bracelet into the pool. The sky turns red. The volcano shudders.
Kai and Teo are arrested and locked inside Penitents. Izza breaks Kai out of hers, and they turn to Teo - when Teo smashes out of it herself - remember the attempted sacrifice in Two Serpents Rise? It’s left her with a few fun powers akin to Caleb’s.
Kai, Teo, and Izza run. Teo leads them out into the sea, to a warded boat - where Cat waits. They were part of a scheme together all along. Cat was sent here by Seril to retrieve a moon shard that had been locked in the pool; Teo dropped in a bracelet as a sort of homing beacon. Together, they break in, retrieve the shard, rescue the Blue Lady, and bring down Jace by calling Elayne Kevarian in - the best deus ex machina one could hope for.
Teo between books part 2
Teo continues her work with the Two Serpents Group, and has a fantastic adventure that Gladstone has hinted might become a standalone book one day. Here’s the section from when Caleb recounts it, because we all deserve more Teo.
“(Teo used sports metaphors more than she used to. In one of the tempestuous interludes in her relationship with Sam—the time they’d broken up after Kavekana—Teo had dated, well, had a fling with, well, it was complicated but she had been, briefly, with Zolin*, THAT Zolin, the ullamal player. They’d met in one of those thrown-together-by-fortune-on-the-run-from-the-Zurish-mob things, was how Teo explained it, though Caleb did not think that situation was common enough to be ‘one of those things.’)”
v*note that the book says Tollan, which is an author error (trust me, I asked him).
Wicked Problems
As usual, Teo doesn’t get a huge amount of page time in Wicked Problems. HOWEVER, this is the best book for Teo because we finally get Teo POV! Justice for Teo.
Before we get into details: she’s back with Sam after the Zolin adventure, and planning to propose.
Teo has been trying to clean up the disaster of the spirecliffs while Caleb is off on his saving the world quest. She’s finally free from the nightmare telegraph and trying to get some sleep when Caleb and Abelard rock up on her doorstep, burned and singed, having blasted out of the King in Red’s prison and needing a vehicle. Caleb intends to borrow Teo’s, but she insists on coming with them to whatever the hells they’re doing. She also recognises Abelard, showing that she did spend more time with the AC gang than was previously mentioned.
Teo neglects to dress before driving to the Heartstone facility, and goes off wearing her bathrobe. Remember that’s what she’s wearing during the big fight. They reach the Serpents’ cavern after the King in Red has joined the fight.
Caleb joins him, while Teo and Abelard try to protect Dawn, who is in a trance. Teo drags the two of them to safety using the sash of her bathrobe, and her mini version of Eagle Knight scars to gauntlet her hand and hold onto the two of them dangling from a platform.
In honour of finally getting Teo POV, have a decently long quote from her about it:
“Teo should have been asleep by now. She just HAD to answer the door. She couldn’t simply give Caleb the keys to her car, either. Had to come along. Join the fun.
…
The boss seemed to be enjoying himself. Never did know when to pull his dick out of a finger trap.
Meanwhile, Temoc and Caleb and Mal were fighting the spider-things, which might be good for the long-term survival of the species, but did not improve Teo’s personal odds, as a woman who could not fly even a little, suspended above a magma pit by a few decidedly meltable steel cables, with only two comatose god-botherers for company.
…
With a mutter that was very much not a prayer, she clicked Abelard’s climbing rig onto the cable. That took care of Abelard. Now for her and the girl. Good thing she was still in her bathrobe. The sash tied her to Abelard, but it wasn’t long enough for Dawn. Ugh. Engineer-priest, right? He must have a coil of rope stashed in those pockets. “Sorry, buddy,” she muttered as she searched.
…
She was fumbling knots when the lava plume hit. Two of the platform’s four cables snapped at once, and the floor swung away beneath her. Dawn slipped. Fell.
Teo caught Dawn’s wrist and the scars on her own arm flared.
She had almost been a human sacrifice once. It was a long story she preferred not to revisit outside of trying to impress someone. (It rarely worked then, either. People always went all ‘sympathetic’ about her ‘trauma’ and how ‘hard it must have been,’ rather than ‘wow, Teo, how badass, take me now.’) She’d ended up with a scar from a Knight’s blade, which, it turned out, had certain implications.
So when she caught the girl, the scar on her wrist flared with green light, and shadow gauntled her arm. Her own arm didn’t yank out of its socket, and she didn’t immediately die from wizard cancer or whatever the girl’s problem was. She was still, however, dangling by a bathrobe sash from a borderline unconscious priest, holding some kid over an unfathomable drop.
The sash began to slip. The cable overhead was fraying. Then it all began to hurt.”
Everyone is fighting, getting injured, bantering, doing cool Craft things. Dawn gets the powers of a god and rises in the cavern, escaping with most of her followers. Outside, fire rages. Teo doesn’t have the power to do much, but what she DOES do is pretty consequential. Abelard is unconscious, and Teo slaps him awake. As Abelard is the one to actually manage to put out the flames, Teo played a pretty important role to be honest.
And that is Teo’s story so far.
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