Niccolo Santi

**Niccolo Santi** is a captain in the Great Library's High Garda. He is called **Nic** by his close friends and family.

## Biography

### Early Life

Niccolo is from Italy and is a Christian. He becomes a captain and one of the most elite of the High Garda's companies. His long career is at risk because of his relationship with Christopher Wolfe.

### *Stormcrow*

Santi and Wolfe meet when they are eighteen and on a Library mission to the Moscow Serapeum. Nic is a lieutenant at the time and Wolfe is a Research Scholar.

### *Ink and Bone*

Captain Santi is Scholar Wolfe's strong right arm in the training of Jess Brightwell and his fellow postulants. The two have been in a long-term partnership and live in the captain's quarters in the High Garda compound.

Santi and Jess discover that the personal journal Jess got in the Welsh camp was mirrored to send everything he wrote back to the Library and the Artifex, even though personal journals are supposed to remain private until the owner's death. Santi tells Jess that he had been willing to let Morgan Hault slip away, as long as there was no proof that they were complicit, but now they can't and he has to take her into custody.

Santi reveals Wolfe's history to Jess. He tells Jess how Wolfe invented a printing press and was immediately imprisoned and tortured for it. Santi says that when Wolfe was taken by the Library, Santi was told he was on assignment, then that he was on a mission for the Artifex. Finally, he was told to stop asking. When he didn't he was tortured until he agreed to do so.

### *Paper and Fire*

He thinks Wolfe’s attempts to get involved with helping his students rescue Thomas Schreiber are suicidal and will most likely only get one or both of them killed, but he stands with Wolfe regardless.

Captain Santi becomes Jess and Glain Wathen's commanding officer.

### *Smoke and Iron*

Santi, Dario, Khalila, Thomas, and Glain are all prisoners on a ship bound for Alexandria from England. The ship belongs to Red Ibrahim who has switched alliances to make a deal with the Archivist.

### *Sword and Pen*

Santi releases Jess from his contract to the High Garda and tells him that he gets full salary for the rest of his life by order of Archivist Khalila. Santi will continue as Commander of the High Garda.

## Physical Description

Santi is a tall man, but not overly tall, with close-cropped dark hair and eyes that look brown in one moment and green the next. He has a strong, square chin and a straight, long, thin nose. He's beautiful. Santi has heavy dark brows and his sharp-chinned face is unmarked by any scars or disfigurements, a testament to his fighting skills. He has the build and pose of a fighter. His skin is the deep brown shade of an Italian who spends a lot of time in the sun. Santi has white even teeth. The deep lines at his nose and mouth betray his age, which is older than his still-dark hair would suggest. He speaks with a liquid accent. He wears the black uniform of the Library's High Garda elite and a gold band on his wrist. He also wears a complete weapons belt. Santi has scars on his chest that are too regular, even, and calculated to be battle scars that he got from the Library for asking about Wolfe's whereabouts.

## Personality

Unlike many of his fellow soldiers, Santi is perfectly aware of the evil the Library is capable of behind closed doors. Even at eighteen, Nic believes the Library "shouldn't be built on a shivering foundation of fear, yet it is." He can be rather cynical. He wants to change things in the Library. The battlefield is Santi's natural home. He always seems calm. Santi displays a strong paternal instinct when his students are threatened. He is undyingly loyal to Wolfe.

## Relationships

### Christopher Wolfe

Upon first meeting Santi, Wolfe finds himself experiencing what he describes as a "tidal pull, a compass pointing north. As if he was seeing a familiar shore after a long, long journey." Nic makes Chris stop arguing and simply listen.