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Jaxon Hall, also known as the White Binder, is the leader of the London-based clairvoyant gang, the Seven Seals. He is Paige Mahoney's employer and mime-lord of I-4, based in Seven Dials. Jaxon is a powerful binder, a type of guardian.
As well as being a feared and respected member of the Unnatural Assembly, Jaxon is notorious for writing On the Merits of Unnaturalness, a controversial and groundbreaking pamphlet that changed the way clairvoyance was categorized in London and France.
Biography[]
History[]
His parents were hanged by Scion when he was four years old, leaving him penniless and alone on the streets of London. He was soon picked up by three kidsmen—all osteomancers—who controlled a flock of gutterlings and made him steal and sing for his keep. Any money he earned was taken from him in exchange for scraps of food. He dreamed of going to the University, so he could be a great and educated voyant like Nostradamus or John Dee, but the kidsmen laughed at his ambitions.
When Jaxon was twelve, he began to experience severe and painful itching under his skin, a sign of his clairvoyance manifesting. The itching caused him to scratch himself so violently that his kidsmen sent him out to beg while he was injured, hoping sympathetic people might five him more coin. At fourteen, Jaxon began carrying out more dangerous crimes for only mouthfuls of bread and sips of water, since gutterlings were considered less valuable as they aged. Three years later, he fell sick with cholera. At this point, the kidsmen left him to die. He was close to asking the Vigiles to arrest him when he was advised to "carve a long-dead name" by a passing woman, likely a binder.
Jaxon walked four miles to Nunhead Cemetery. Though he was unable to read or write, he cut his finger and copied the letters on a grave onto his arm in his own blood. He spent the night delirious, feeling revenants dancing around him, and when he woke, the itch was gone. The spirit he bound was a valuable muse, which he sold to a medium on the New Cut, giving him coin enough to eat and recuperate from the cholera. He paid a bookseller to teach him how to read and resolved to rise in the syndicate.
At this point, Jaxon began his research into clairvoyance, culminating in On the Merits of Unnaturalness, a pamphlet that detailed all known types of clairvoyance and sorted them into seven categories. At some point, he met Alfred, who represented his work to the Spiritus Club. The pamphlet was published in 2031 and caused a spate of gang wars, resulting in the vile augurs being imprisoned in Jacob's Island. The Spiritus Club temporarily withdrew the pamphlet as a gesture of goodwill, but by then, it had spread all over the citadel. Jaxon was forced to renounce the hierarchy and state that all voyants stood on equal footing, but the Seven Orders of Clairvoyance system still became the official method of categorizing their gifts in London, and later in France. On the Merits eventually went back into print and continued to sell briskly.
When Nicklas Nygård was seventeen and getting to know London, he had an oracular vision of Jaxon. One day, they were both walking through Trafalgar Square and noticed each other at once, since Jaxon had not seen a red aura before. They went to a coffeehouse to talk. Together, the pair agreed to found the Seven Seals, with Nick as mollisher. Eliza Renton joined the gang next, followed by Paige Mahoney.
The Pale Dreamer[]
In October 2056, Paige is sixteen and has been working for Jaxon for three months, having been introduced to him by Nick. Eliza Renton brings news that Didion Waite found Sarah Metyard, a poltergeist, and hired an amateur binder to capture her, despite Didion being a binder himself. The spirit is now on a rampage. Nick believes that Metyard may go after Anne Naylor, the teenage girl she neglected to death, now known as the Ghost of Farringdon. Jaxon calls Didion and blackmails him into allowing the Seven Seals to claim both spirits. Didion reluctantly agrees to this to avoid being reported to Haymarket Hector.
Jaxon gives Paige her first chance to go into the field instead of doing paperwork. Before she leaves with Nick, Jaxon gives her a syndicate alias, the Pale Dreamer. Paige is ecstatic, as she one step closer to fully accepted into the Seven Seals. She is desperate to impress Jaxon.
Nick and Paige track down Sarah and Anne to West Street, the location where Sarah disposed of Anne's body. They lure Sarah into the courtyard behind the den and try to hold her in place so Jaxon can come and bind her. When Sarah realizes what Jaxon is trying to do, she hurtles toward him. Paige jumps in front of Jaxon, giving him time to complete the binding. Jaxon, Paige, Nick, Eliza, and Anne are battling against Sarah, trying to hold her in place. The binding isn't working. Suddenly, Paige realizes that this isn't Sarah Metyard, it's her daughter, Sarah Morgan Metyard. She tells Jaxon her realization. Just as Paige thinks holding off Sarah is going to kill her; Jaxon successfully completes the binding. Anne returns to her haunt, while the Seals return to the den to recover. Sarah is now bound to Jaxon and enters the den as well, no longer on a rampage.
After falling asleep, Paige is woken by Eliza who takes her to the neighboring cookshop known as Chateline's. Paige thinks Jaxon is going to let her go, but Nick and Eliza assure her that he won't. Eliza tells her that everyone, including Jaxon, was impressed that Paige was able to hold back Sarah on her own, while they can only repel spirits with spools. Eliza also explains that Jaxon had a strong suspicion that the two spirits would confront each other at West Street, but he wanted to test Paige by seeing if she could work it out herself. He was delighted when she did. A few weeks after the capture of Sarah, Jaxon offers Paige the position of mollisher, which she accepts.
The Bone Season[]
In March 2059, after accidentally killing two Underguards, Paige rushes to her father's apartment and calls Jaxon for guidance. Jaxon does not initially seem to acknowledge the danger, instead effusively praising her for cracking her gift of dreamwalking—something he has craved from her for a long time. He then orders Paige to stay out of sight and dispose of her phone, and sight tight for an hour, after which she should make for the River Thames. Paige is captured by a detainment squad led by Beltrame before she can do this.
After Paige vanishes, Jaxon spares no expense in searching the entire citadel for her. While she is imprisoned in Oxford, she has numerous flashbacks to her time in London. It is slowly revealed that, while Jaxon taught Paige about her clairvoyance and protected her from Scion, he was also highly manipulative and emotionally abusive, alternating between praise and outright abuse. In one memory, he is seen forcing the gang to attack the unreadable Zeke Sáenz, knowing this would cause Zeke excruciating pain, in the name of advancing his research. Arcturus Mesarthim, who caused the flashbacks using oneiromancy, identifies the iron grip Jaxon has on Paige. He counsels her to embrace her independence and step outside his shadow while she has the chance.
After Jaxon learns that Paige is in Oxford, he rallies the Seven Seals to her rescue, using explosives and guns from the black market to get her free of the Guildhall. When he tries to force her to leave the other prisoners behind, Paige stands up to him for the first time, calling him a "stretched weasel" and angrily quitting her job as his mollisher. Jaxon coldly threatens her before heading down to the Pentad Line with Danica Panić using a maintenance shaft. To her surprise, three other members of the gang—Nick, Zeke and Nadine—still defy him to join her on Port Meadow, with Nick pointing out that he can't fire them all.
The Mime Order[]
Before going to the Unnatural Assembly after Hector's murder, Jaxon binds the London Monster to him so that he can keep the poltergeist from further hurting Paige. During the meeting of the Assembly, Jaxon keeps Paige from talking about the Rephaim. Immediately after the meeting, Jaxon threatens to show the Abbess the London Monster's mark on Paige's arm if she tries to talk about the Rephaim. Paige realizes that he never meant to use the meeting to protect her from being charged as Hector's murderer, but to trap her to ensure she would never rise above him. With the Underbodies gang's deaths, Jaxon is able to bind their poltergeist, the London Monster, to himself.
The Seals gather at Chatline's where Jaxon announces that he will be participating in the scrimmage to determine the next Underlord or Underqueen. Paige sees two Rephaim and rushes back to the den, convinced she must go into hiding. Jaxon follows her and they get into a heated argument. He threatens her once again, saying she can stay with him and have protection, or she can be cast out of the syndicate and charged with Hector's murder.
As per tradition, participants in the scrimmage include three flowers with their application. The three flowers that Jaxon includes are Forsythia, to tell Grub Street how much he's looking forward to the fight, Ragged-robin, for wit, and monkshood, which can mean either chivalry or beware.
Jaxon is now working on a new pamphlet called On the Machinations of the Itinerant Dead, which discusses the various kinds of spirits. A sample is handed out before the scrimmage.
During the scrimmage Paige and Jaxon fight as a team in the Rose Ring. He saves Paige from the Hare by cutting off his arm at the elbow, then stabbing him in the eye. Jaxon kills the London Particular by gutting him. Paige and Jaxon are the last two combatants standing. As Jaxon is about to be named Underlord, Paige challenges him for the crown. As they are fighting, Jaxon tries to undermine Paige's claim to the crown by reminding the Unnatural Assembly that she's a murder suspect and a wanted fugitive. However, as many members of the syndicate are murderers and all voyants are wanted fugitives, this tactic doesn't work. He comes extremely close to defeating her, but she is able to beat him at the last minute by possessing him and forcing him to issue the words of surrender. Jaxon leaves, warning Paige that he will find other allies.
The Song Rising[]
Upon winning the scrimmage and being crowned Underqueen, Paige discovers that Jaxon has gone to the Rephaim, and Nashira Sargas has named him her new Grand Overseer. Paige realizes that Jaxon was XVIII-39-7, the human who betrayed the Ranthen during the Novembertide Rebellion of 2039. After gaining his freedom for his treachery, Jaxon secretly maintained contact with Nashira, but never met her in person. He began selling her rare clairvoyants for the Bone Seasons and attaining significant wealth in exchange.
The Mask Falling[]
Jaxon is working as the Grand Overseer in Sheol II.
Physical Description[]
Jaxon is 6"1' and fine-boned with pale and petulant lips, candle-white skin, and steely milk-blue eyes "alive with a sort of agitated intelligence." He has rich, black hair that shows no hint of gray and that he usually wears smoothed back. He frequently carries one of his antique canes. His hands are soft and bony with long fingers. Jaxon looks ten years younger than he is. There's scarcely a line on his face. He has a deep, slightly amused voice.
Personality[]
Jaxon is a debonair, waistcoat-wearing, cane-swinging gangster with an upper-class chip on his shoulder. He’s a ruthless man with highbrow manners and airs of intellectualism. His every word and movement ooze panache, and he has no real conscience. Jaxon is feared and loved in equal measure. Alfred calls him fiercely imaginative. He claims modesty is a vice. Paige often describes him in her mind as off the cot.
Jaxon is very sardonic, ruthless, suspicious, and money-hungry. He drinks absinthe frequently. Jaxon treats the Seven Seals like property and shows absolutely no concern for their mental well-being. He doesn't let them have relationships because they are supposed to be completely devoted to him. He has dangerous, erratic mood swings, to the point where everyone tiptoes around the den if they hear Danse Macabre playing. He can be very charming. He manages to persuade Zeke and Nadine to leave their lives in the United States, a free country, for a life of crime in the London syndicate. He believes himself to be the benevolent boss, despite keeping the Seven Seals on a tight leash. He also has quite the repertoire of insults. For example, he calls his long-time rival Didion Waite "a lily-lived curl of besmirched slime, unfit for human civilization."[1] Jaxon is uncommonly wealthy for a mime-lord and spends most of his time lounging around Seven Dials smoking cigars, drinking absinthe, and indulging in various blacklisted entertainments.
While in Paige's memories he's shown to be an ebullient, charismatic man who really cares about his gang, this illusion is later broken when he slams her against the nearest available fence and threatens to kill her if she leaves his service. He shows the full extent of his ruthlessness by severely beating Paige in the scrimmage and then joining the Sargas. He is cunning and plays mind games with his direct subordinates. He is heavily implied to have used false promises to get Zeke and Nadine to stay in Seven Dials. He keeps his gang financially and emotionally dependent on him. He blackmails Paige into keeping her silence in front of the Unnatural Assembly. He sows discord in the Mime Order by suggesting to Paige that Warden doesn’t truly care for her and that she’s become an instrument of Terebell Sheratan’s control, which cleverly plays on her existing fears. Jaxon is capable of kindness, but he's not kind. He can act like he cares, but it will always be an act.
His dreamscape is full of snarls of weeds and twisted tree roots with whipping branches. Each branch drips bloodied leaves. Lichen-covered slabs radiate out from the center right into the depths of halal zone, embossed with numbers. His dreamscape is an enormous graveyard, most likely based on Nunhead Cemetery. Specters, tall and translucent creatures, scuttle from his hadal zone reaching for Paige when she enters his dreamscape during the scrimmage. He has immense defenses around his dreamscape. They're stronger than any other voyant Paige has met. His midnight zone is made of frost and grass. In his twilight zone the grass is thick and living and the air smells of lilies.
Etymology[]
Jaxon is an English name meaning "God has been gracious; has shown favor".[2] Hall is a surname of English origin but has Scottish roots. It means "kind" and "forgiving".[3]
Trivia[]
- Jax calls Paige his thaumaturge when she develops a new way to use her ability.
- He likes to sniff lemon Floxy to cleanse his palate.
- One of his boundlings is someone who died of bubonic plague in 1349.
- Warden reveals to Paige that Jaxon was Nashira's one and only tenant at Sheol I. Jason was twenty-eight when he was sent to Sheol I.
Appearances[]
- The Pale Dreamer
- The Bone Season
- The Mime Order
- The Song Rising
- The Dawn Chorus (mentioned only)
- The Mask Falling
Gallery[]
