Edith Winters

Sketch of Edith drawn by Josiah Bancroft

**Edith Winters** is a protagonist in Josiah Bancroft's Books of Babel series.

## Background

Edith worked on her father’s farmland before going to the Tower of Babel. Her brothers had no interested or skill in running the farm, and although she had all the experience necessary, with her father even calling her the Generaless of the Garden, she was pressured into a marriage with a family friend and vineyard owner, Franklin Winters.

Winters expected Edith to give him children and stop running the farm. However, she was barren due to a riding accident, unknown to Winters. He used Edith’s allergies as an excuse to pull her from the farm. She tried to divorce him, but he refused. So she left him and traveled to the Tower of Babel.

## Appearances

### Senlin Ascends

Edith has been in the Parlor for two months before she meets Thomas Senlin. The two must face a drunken actor who murders another actor in the scene they're in. Edith and Senlin overpower the actor and escape through the door that Senlin had entered through. They are escorted backstage and put in a cage hanging over the Tower while a registrar decides their fate.

Anen Ceph, an assistant registrar, announces that Senlin will be sent to the Baths, while Edith, who did not keep the fires stoked, will be branded and sent to the Basement. She loses consciousness when branded.

Edith gets gangrene due to her wounded arm and is near death when Captain Billy Lee finds her and takes her to the Sphinx. The Sphinx gives her a mechanic arm as a delirious Edith signs a contract promising to be one of her Wakeman. It's in the Sphinx's lair where she meets Byron, a deer headed servant, who Edith had gotten drunk so that she and Billy Lee could sneak off together.

She is a first mate aboard his ship, *The Stone Cloud.* She's reunited with Senlin when the ship goes to New Babel. Senlin reveals his plan to steal *The Stone Cloud*, pretending to offer her captain payment to smuggle the painting out of New Babel, tipping off Rodion and as he and his men are seizing the ship, Senlin will tip off Goll, which will create a skirmish that will act as a diversion for Senlin and crew to escape on the Stone Cloud.

Senlin is accosted by Billy Lee upon his return, saying that Rodion’s prostitute told him about how Senlin’s wanted by the Commissioner. Billy Lee is interrupted by Rodion, who shoots him starting a fight between *The Stone Cloud* crew and Rodion’s men. Edith and Rodion duel, but Rodion cuts a cable to the ship, causing Edith to fall off.

Edith survives and returns after *The Ararat* attacks the port to fight the Red Hand. Edith holds the Red Hand by the neck over the port. He warns her that killing him would displease the Sphinx, but she drops him anyway. Senlin, Edith, Iren, Adam, and Voleta escape on *The Stone Cloud.*

### Arm of the Sphinx

Edith finds out about and confronts Senlin about his hallucinations via the ship log, which Senlin has turned into a diary of sorts. Senlin, Edith, and Iren rob a tourist and his daughter of their books.

When *The Ararat* attacks *The Stone Cloud*, Edith's quarters and vials for her arm are destroyed. *The Stone Cloud* is left in desperate need of repair and food when they enter the Silk Gardens. Edith and Senlin go to meet with Luc Marat at the Golden Zoo. Edith and Senlin are chased by spiders and then are led to Marat by a hod. Marat is revealed to be a zealot who makes his followers black out books, with his ultimate plan being a hod revolution. He also reveals that there is no passage to Pelphia without taking the black trail and becoming a hod. Senlin and Edith are taken to an open cell where it’s implied that they cannot escape.

Voleta shaves her head and infiltrates the Golden Zoo. She then sets up explosives for Senlin and Edith to escape while she steals food for the crew, Edith's mechanical arm dies. The three escape but are chased into the woods by hods and attacked by spider eaters and hods, but the crew is able to escape. Senlin decides that they need to see the Sphinx for help. Edith fears that the Sphinx will force them all into a dangerous contract, especially Adam.

The crew avoid gunfire of the higher ringdoms by playing dead then head straight on into the Tower where Billy Lee, who worked for the Sphinx, said the Tower will open up for them. They enter the Sphinx’s lair and led to the Sphinx by a deer-headed butler named Byron and his companion Ferdinand. The Sphinx chastises Edith’s treatment of the ship and her arm that were given to her.

The Sphinx reveals to Senlin and the crew that his hallucinations are brought about by the crumb infused painting that he has of his wife. He then sends Senlin into a bottomless library to find a book and in that time curb his addiction. The rest of the crew spend time in one of the Sphinx’s apartments. Edith takes Adam to get him out of the lair so that he isn’t tempted by the Sphinx’s offers. Adam suggests that they go to the top since that is where the captain of the diary visited. He is then taken by a group of “sparking men” with lightning rods who recognize Adam. Edith is allowed to leave but instructed to never return.

The Sphinx reveals to Edith that she took Voleta under her wing, that she has revived the Red Hand, and that she needs Edith’s help to take down this plot to destroy the tower. Edith is given a new arm and assigned Captain of *The State of the Art*. Senlin is reunited with what’s left of his crew and he and Edith kiss.

### The Hod King

Edith is called to see the Sphinx with Iren. Reddleman appears and Iren throws a cart at him, which he catches. The Sphinx says that he will be their pilot. Edith doesn’t trust him, but the Sphinx says that he will need them to change his batteries, so it’s in his best interest to remain loyal. Edith, Iren and Reddleman try to figure out the controls on the bridge. Three pirates board the ship, Iren takes out two of them but one gets into the bridge. He shoots Reddleman, who is unphased. Iren kicks him. They then leave him at the Windsock to have him warn anyone from boarding the State of the Art and spread word of the Sphinx.

Edith interrupts the Sphinx’s speech. The Sphinx takes her through the attic, which has her dead machines. She takes Edith to a reservoir in which she stores lightning produced by the Tower. The Tower is producing an excess of lightning and she’s running out of room to contain it. If it cannot be contained, an explosion will level the Tower. Byron stops Edith to give her Senlin’s moth. Senlin says that his wife rejected him and that he’s looking forward to seeing her again and be a man deserving of her affection. She listens to it multiple times but is interrupted by Voleta and Byron. Byron reveals that Senlin has not sent a moth in days and is concerned.

Edith is given a tour of Pelphia from the King and his inner circle, including the pyramid that houses the sun (Not sure if the pyramid houses the sun pls check). Edith reveals to them that they will need to produce the painting and that they will get the Sphinx’s technology in exchange. The King and inner circle seem hesitant but agree to give it to her tomorrow. Edith stops by the hotel Senlin stayed at to search his room. She takes the book that the hod left Senlin and deduces based on Senlins note from the Duke that the Duke might’ve learned about his real identity. She joins Haste at the bar and the two talk about their mechanic appendages and time before and during becoming a Wakeman. The fake sun becomes stuck. A hod boy sent to fix it is dangling from a balloon. Edith takes off her arm so she can take another balloon up to save him.

Edith returns to the ship and sees the Ararat coming into port. She returns to the King the next day to find out the painting is missing but the King promises to have it ready by the next day. Edith asks Haste to show her the jail, which is just a show for people who want attention, and the gatehouse where they imprison hods. One of the guards tells Edith that Duke Pell took a tall skinny man and threw him on the Black Trail. Edith returns to the ship and her and Reddleman believe that they are going to be ambushed.

The Commissioner is forced to jump from a plank to his death due to him losing the Bath’s painting and not catching the Stone Cloud. He is despondent due to the death of his daughter. Edith has Haste take her to the Colosseum. One of the guards says that Eigengrau and his men found a hole for small hods to fit through in and out of the hod cell. While Eigengrau is interrogating the hods in the cell, Edith finds a trap door. The three go down there and find a library with math and a drawing of a weapon called the Hod King. They find a hod who tries to escape and blow up the library but he is caught and dies. Edith and Haste return to the ship for dinner. Haste reveals that she is a spy for Marat and that she’s the one that helped him sneak 6 hod engineers into the library to work on the plans for the Hod King. Edith and her fight, and Edith uses her mechanical arm to rip Haste’s arm off and kill her.

Eigengrau orders the Crown Prince to shoot at the ship’s envelope from the Ararat. The ship falls from the sky. The Red Hand, who realized that the alarm that had been ringing the whole time meant that the ship’s levitators were fully charged. He stops it from it’s free fall and returns to Port Virtue, and Edith orders to fire on the Ararat and the port.

Edith and Reddleman go into the city which is deserted. The hod zealots had bombed the will-o-the-whisps and took out the power to the Ringdom. She goes to the King, tells him to not to kill the colosseum hods, give her all the photos they have of the hod king drawings, and asks for the duke’s address. Edith and Reddleman break into the Duke’s house, overpowers him and gives Marya a third chance to come with them, which she does with Olivet. The doors to the Sphinx’s lair remains closed. The ship starts its painting hunt with Algez.

### The Fall of Babel

Edith and her crew, which now include Ann Goucher, Marya and her daughter Olivet, are also trying to collect the paintings in the hope that the Bridge of Babel will have the answer to stop the Sphinx's overflowing lightning sea from exploding and decimating the Tower. They go to the ringdom Oyodin, a ringdom filled with gambling and nudists to retrieve their painting, but when they arrive they find a hod running off with it. Voleta, whose acted somewhat detached ever since she was brought back to life with the Sphinx’s medium, chases the hod and is stabbed through her hand. *The State of the Art* has a brief battle with the Hod King, but the machine retreats.

Edith apologizes to Marya that she kissed Senlin, and Marya says that she’s not the one that should have to apologize but thanks her anyway. Reddleman finds a 3D map of the Tower that can track the Hod King and as they’re discussing how to destroy it, they realize via the Sphinx’s tracking device that Senlin is in the machine. Their next stop is a ringdom called the Cistern, which serves as the Tower’s filtration system. As the citizens overwhelm Edith with questions, they’re ambushed by the Hod King. Edith fights with Marat’s wakemen Thornton and Cael, who toss her into the ringdom’s reservoir. Edith, Iren and Voleta return to the ship, and they take aboard the citizens injured by the Hod King.

*The State of the Art* leave the Cistern refugees in the ringdom of Jinst, then discuss what their next move should be against the Hod King. They figure that Marat could likely have enough paintings to unlock the Bridge of Babel, and so their next move would be to stop the Hod King from drilling into the Sphinx’s lair. Marya asks Edith that she’ll at least give Senlin a chance to escape the Hod King if she intends to destroy it, Edith says she will, even though she doesn’t have much hope for him.  Edith meets with the editor of a news publication called The Acorn, who despite publishing salacious lies that paint *The* *State of the Art* crew as monsters, warns her that Duke Wilhelm Pell has been hunting them down.

*The State of the Art* enters Cicilia, the ringdom below the Sphinx’s lair, to find that the citizens are evacuating the ringdom due to the electricity going out. Before abandoning her subjects, the Queen attempted to fix the issue with explosives which ruined the plumbing for the entire ringdom.

Edith, Iren, Voleta and Reddleman travel to where Reddleman suspects the Hod King will be and are attacked by the Sphinx’s creatures. Edith and Reddleman take on the Hod King in Cicilia and while it looks like Reddleman miraculously destroys the machine with explosives, it’s revealed that Senlin, Goll, and Tarrou created the blast from inside after Senlin announced his codeword over the loudspeaker. Marat kills several of his followers when they see that he can walk. He and his wakemen then take Senlin as prisoner and use an escape pod that Senlin had been fueling with the medium to drill into the Sphinx’s lair.

The crew goes up to Nebos to enter the Sphinx’s lair from above, where they rescue Adam and Runa from execution. Adam explains that the Nebosans are currently voting on whether to allow the hod children to remain in Nebos. Edith threatens the Nebosans that anyone who votes against the Bricklayer’s edict will have their citizenship reviewed, so everyone votes to allow the hods into the ringdom.

Adam is distraught after hearing that Voleta died – though Edith assures him that no one could’ve prevented it and that she would trade both of her brothers for a brother like him. Edith, Iren, Voleta, and Reddleman then head to the Sphinx’s lair. Voleta goes off to find Senlin. Edith, Iren, and Reddleman go on to find the Sphinx, who it turns out had died some time ago – Edith and Iren carry her to a final resting place. Iren says that she was an awful boss, but that she taught her to become motivated by love instead of fear and anger. Reddleman finds that the Sphinx left behind two messages – one message warning Marat about the inevitable downfalls of tyrants and one message for Edith that is destroyed before Edith can listen to it.

Senlin and Voleta reunites with the rest of the crew in a room with all of the Sphinx’s past automations. The reunion is interrupted by Marat and his wakemen, and that interruption is interrupted by the Sphinx’s automations turning on and attacking everyone. Edith and Marat then have a duel over the lightning sea. Marat gets then upper hand, but Reddleman tackles him into the lightning sea and to their deaths.

Senlin, Edith, Iren and Voleta return to Nebos to find the entire ringdom shaking. Ann tells them that Marya took Olivet for a walk in Nebos, Edith orders everyone to get back to the ship. Senlin is stuck between returning to the ship or searching for Marya in Nebos. As the gates to Nebos start to close, Edith pushes him inside the ringdom. She then knocks three times on the glass, a hard knock, soft knock, and another hard knock, which was how they used to communicate aboard the Stone Cloud, and the two part ways. Edith, Iren, Ann, Byron, Tarrou, and Goll exit Nebos on *The State of the Art* and see that the ringdom of Nebos is floating above the Tower. Nebos then disappears.

Edith and the rest of the crew must handle the messes left behind in the wake of the Hod King's rampage. Byron gives Edith the Sphinx’s mask and tells her that she intended Edith to become her successor. Edith initially declines, as she isn’t a skilled inventor, but Byron convinces her after explaining that there have been multiple Sphinxes throughout the Tower’s history, starting with the Bricklayer, but not all of them were inventors.