Mai

Mai keeps her light hair short, spiky, and swept upward, with a slim black band circling her forehead. Her clothing layers a black tank top over a white button-up dress, and a crossbow serves as her weapon of choice.

Within the movement Mai functions as the steady hand beneath August, trusted enough to act as his unofficial deputy. Physical strength backs her authority, enough to hold up the burly Juli without help, and her marksmanship with the crossbow is superb. Revolution never hardens her completely, though. She objects to pointless hostage-taking, offers genuine warmth to strangers, and talks August back to himself whenever doubt begins eating at him.

Her ancestors live beyond the Walls until the Walls' construction forces a relocation to land near the Industrial City, inside Wall Rose. The soil yields little, hunting keeps the village barely fed, and then officials of the Royal Government arrive to demand taxes on top of the hunger. Two years later, with starvation closing in, one villager finally rises against the system, and the woman who will call herself Mai follows him into the growing Dissidence Movement, climbing its ranks to become one of its figureheads and masking her identity with a codename that, like those of August, Juli, and Januar, matches a month of the year.

In the meeting held before the planned uprising she reviews the stockpiled weapons with Juli and Matteus, reports two bombs among them, and spreads word that the revolt begins in two days. When it comes, she leads the team assigned to secure Xenophon Harkimo's workshop, where she seizes a young woman named Sharle Inocencio and learns the craftsman's whereabouts. August's arrival sours the operation; when he trains weapons on the workers, Mai demands he stop. Sharle reminds her of a girl she once looked after, so she stays close to the captive and shares her village's story on the march. When Kuklo drops from above and attacks the column, Mai puts a crossbow bolt through his leg yet argues that he be taken alive.

At the Military Police headquarters the revolt unravels. Sent to investigate a gunshot, she finds Juli gravely wounded; he reports the annihilation of their night forces moments before a soldier decapitates him, and Mai kills the shooter and his squad in return. She then drags August out of his breakdown, pushes him to save the surviving rebels, and falls back with them to the workshop. There August turns on her, blames her village for the failure, and grabs Sharle as a hostage to bargain for his own safety. Mai pleads with him, disarms him after he guns down one of their own, and is then shot through the neck, tumbling down a staircase to her death, a death that buys Sharle's survival.