The Devils Summary Chapter by Chapter | Joe Abercrombie

In desperation, the group’s “last resort” is released from a wagon: Vigga Ullasdottr, who transforms into a massive werewolf and massacres the remaining attackers.

The introduction of Vigga adds another devastating layer of power to the team and reveals the depths of the Church’s monstrous arsenal.

Chapter 12: Empress or Death

In the aftermath, they find that one of Alex’s pursuing cousins, Duke Marcian, has been killed. Duke Michael is wounded.

The group realizes the attack means they have been betrayed from within the Holy City itself.

They decide to abandon the official convoy and strike out for Troy alone and in secret, raising the stakes dramatically.

Part II: The Best Monsters

Chapter 13: Least Worst Choices

The group debates their next move, abandoning the planned stop at Ancona.

They decide to disappear by joining a pilgrimage heading to Venice.

Diaz grapples with constant fear and physical discomfort, embodying the fish-out-of-water perspective amidst hardened professionals and monsters.

Chapter 14: Blessed is a Stretch

The group integrates with a “Blessed Company” of pilgrims led by Bishop Apollonia.

They adopt false names to blend in. Jakob deals silently with chronic pain, a hint at the hidden costs of his immortality.

The chapter explores the theme of hiding in plain sight and the performative nature of piety.

Chapter 15: See to the Holy Land

Around a campfire, the group and pilgrims discuss the “unclean” elves and the history of the crusades. Alex feels trapped between the pragmatic Baptiste and the feral Vigga.

The dialogue builds the world’s history and religious schisms, while highlighting Alex’s internal conflict about her new identity.

Chapter 16: What Can Be Spared

Balthazar complains about the poor food and hygiene, while Baron Rikard secretly feeds on members of the pilgrimage. Baptiste charms the pilgrims, further annoying Balthazar.

The chapter contrasts the characters’ attitudes toward their cover, from Rikard’s predation to Baptiste’s easy adaptation.

Chapter 17: Like a Treat

Alex shares a small, careful meal with Sunny, fostering a quiet friendship. Sunny communicates through writing, revealing she was once a “freak” in a circus.

This moment of genuine connection humanizes the elusive elf and provides Alex with a confidante outside the chaotic core group.

Chapter 18: Clean Not Clean

Vigga goes to a river to wash, struggling with the constant internal presence of the wolf. She gives Alex a grave warning: if Vigga ever tells her to run, she must obey without question.

This underscores the ever-present danger Vigga poses, even to those she is bound to protect.

Chapter 19: More About Those Dumplings

Diaz writes sanitized letters home while teaching Alex to read and write. Vigga shares explicit stories of her sexual past, horrifying the repressed monk.

The chapter contrasts Diaz’s clinging to old identities with Alex’s acquisition of new skills, essential for her role as a princess.

Chapter 20: Nothing but the Truth

Bishop Apollonia reveals she has been bribed by Alex’s cousin, Duke Constans, to betray them.

The pilgrim mob turns hostile. Baron Rikard defuses the situation not with violence, but with a mesmerizing “glamour” speech about the virtues of dumplings, showcasing his ancient, subtle power.

Chapter 21: No Smiles at the Monastery

The group arrives in Venice and meets the crime lord Frigo, who operates from a stolen monastery.

Baptiste negotiates for sea passage to Troy in exchange for retrieving a mysterious white box from a cursed illusionist’s house. The deal sets up the next major set-piece and heist.

Chapter 22: Every House an Island

Balthazar lectures Alex on history as they boat to the illusionist’s island house.

The house is described as spatially anomalous and deadly. Balthazar prepares a necromantic ritual using twin corpses to communicate with the team inside.

The stage is set for a magical and psychological ordeal.

Chapter 23: The Magic of Deportment

While Balthazar works, Baron Rikard tutors Alex on how to walk, talk, and carry herself with imperial dignity.

This lesson in performance underscores that being a princess is an act Alex must learn, further complicating her relationship with her supposed identity.

Chapter 24: Talking Heads

Balthazar completes his ritual, using the severed heads of the twins as a communication device. Diaz is horrified by the “Black Art,” but it’s a necessary tool. The group enters the illusionist’s house, linked to Balthazar’s guiding voice from outside.

Chapter 25: In Circles

Inside, the group finds themselves trapped in a spatial loop, repeatedly returning to a grisly dining room.

Unknown to them, Balthazar is simultaneously using the ritual’s power in an attempt to break his Papal binding, revealing his constant drive for self-preservation and freedom.

Chapter 26: Nothing but the Truth

The house’s illusions force each character to confront painful memories or truths: Vigga’s forced tattoos, Jakob’s violent past.

Alex discovers Balthazar’s attempted betrayal and punches him. The house acts as a crucible, testing loyalties and bringing hidden trauma to the surface.

Chapter 27: Too Much Trouble

The group retrieves the ornate white box and delivers it to Frigo. Frigo recognizes Sunny as an elf but lets her go, offering her future employment.

They secure their passage on a ship, but the encounter is a reminder that every ally has their own agenda and price.

Chapter 28: Greed

On the ship sailing east, Alex practices her writing, feeling a sense of accomplishment. The group enjoys a moment of relative peace and banter.

This calm before the storm highlights the fragile camaraderie developing among them.

Chapter 29: Fire on the Water

Their ship is suddenly rammed and boarded by Duke Constans and his crew of aquatic “fish-people” hybrids. Constans challenges Jakob to a single combat on the burning, sinking deck.

The action returns explosively, pitting the group against another royal cousin and his monstrous forces.

Chapter 30: A Draw Is Enough

Jakob duels Constans fiercely.

Below decks, Balthazar and Baptiste battle a “phrenomancer.” Jakob is run through but uses his curse to his advantage, grappling Constans and dragging him overboard into the depths as the ship goes down.

The chapter ends with the group scattered and presumed lost.

Part III: High Roads, Low Roads

Chapter 31: Strange Bedfellows

Diaz and Vigga wash ashore together on a desolate beach. In a moment of raw humanity, Diaz comforts the naked, weeping Vigga after her transformation back. He realizes his old identity as a simple monk is irrevocably gone.

Chapter 32: Not the First Time

Alex and Sunny survive, finding a chest of Duke Constans’s clothes. They are forced to disguise themselves and immediately become the target of a new band of mercenary hunters. Their survival hinges on stealth and quick thinking.

Chapter 33: Prone to Turmoil

Balthazar and Baptiste survive on a makeshift raft.

Using his knowledge, Balthazar deduces they must find a nearby ancient stone circle to perform a divination ritual to locate the others. Their subplot focuses on magical problem-solving.

Chapter 34: Bit by a Monk

Diaz and Vigga track Alex’s trail. Diaz confesses to Vigga that he became a monk after getting the “wrong girl” pregnant, a shame that defined his life.

This shared vulnerability deepens their unlikely connection.

Chapter 35: The Current Set of Enemies

Sunny uses her elf-skills to scout the camp of Duke Sabbas’s hunters. She poisons their stew and scatters their horses as a distraction.

She then leads their werewolf enforcer, “the Dane,” on a lethal chase through the woods, showcasing her lethal efficiency.

Chapter 36: Our Heavenly Calling

Jakob and Rikard, also alive, are picked up by a corpse cart and taken to the camp of Count Radosav, a rival of Alex’s cousins. The Count enlists them as mercenaries for an impending border skirmish, pulling them into a different conflict.

Chapter 37: The Wrong Way

Alex and Sunny flee through a town being sacked by soldiers. To escape, Alex boldly pretends to be a soldier herself. This moment demonstrates how much she has learned, using performance and nerve to survive.

Chapter 38: Reverses

Balthazar and Baptiste are captured, only for their captor, Countess Jovanka, to be revealed as an old friend of Baptiste’s from Sicily.

They learn the stone circle they need is located in the middle of the planned battlefield between Jovanka and Radosav.

Chapter 39: Famously Dove-ish

At Radosav’s camp, Jakob uses weary, pragmatic logic to argue against a bloody battle. He persuades the Count to seek a negotiated peace, showcasing a strategic mind that seeks the “least worst” outcome rather than glory.

Chapter 40: Loophole

Diaz and Vigga, hiding in a warehouse from a mob, finally act on their attraction. Diaz “lies” with the werewolf, fully abandoning his clerical vows and embracing his new, complicated life.

Chapter 41: What You Can’t Change

Alex is cornered by hunters. Vigga and Diaz arrive in the nick of time, with Vigga brutally executing the mercenaries. The rescue is visceral and unambiguous, cementing the pair’s commitment to Alex and the mission.

Chapter 42: A Splendid Occasion

The armies of Count Radosav and Countess Jovanka meet at the stone circle. The peace talks conclude abruptly when the long-separated couple abandon their troops to passionately reconcile, humorously resolving the local conflict.

Chapter 43: My Greed Is a Famine

At the stone circle, Balthazar, pushed to his limit, attempts a grand ritual to summon a demon and break his binding.

The demon, Shaxep, informs him the binding is unbreakable, even by a Duke of Hell, implying a terrifying truth about the young Pope’s nature.

Chapter 44: End Times

The scattered members of the group reunite at the circle.

Together, they enter the plague-stricken, forbidden Barony of Kalyatta, following a mysterious blue flame towards their destination.

Chapter 45: Good Givers

In a ruined village, they encounter a troupe of actors performing a blasphemous mockery of the Pope. From them, they learn Duke Sabbas is offering a king’s ransom for Alex’s capture, raising the threat level.

Chapter 46: Vows

The group takes shelter in the plague-abbey of Saint Demetrius.

Alex discovers Diaz and Vigga together and, rather than judging them, offers forgiveness, acknowledging that purity is a fiction among them.

Chapter 47: Pride

Duke Sabbas, the “Angel of Troy,” surrounds the abbey with his forces. He reveals his own monstrous allies: twin sorceresses and a rival werewolf, the Dane. The stage is set for a final, desperate stand before Troy.

Chapter 48: Our Latest Last Stand

A huge battle erupts in the abbey graveyard.

Jakob leads a charge while Balthazar raises the plague dead from their pits. The fight moves into the crumbling abbey itself as magical and physical warfare collide.

Chapter 49: The Angel of Troy

Baron Rikard reveals a more monstrous form, a “mountain of teeth,” to kill a key hunter. Sabbas takes to the air with biological wings, but Jakob continues fighting relentlessly, even while grievously wounded.

Chapter 50: A Miraculous Medicine

Balthazar achieves a masterstroke of necromancy, commanding the risen plague victims to drag Sabbas and his sorceresses back into the earth.

Victorious but exhausted, the group shares wine, embracing their identity as a family of devils doing divine work.

Part IV: Saint Natalia’s Flame

Chapter 51: End of the Road

The group finally arrives at the base of the immense Pillar of Troy. They are formally received by Lady Severa, Warden of the Imperial Chamber, and cheered by crowds.

The physical journey ends, but the political battle begins.

Chapter 52: To Duel with Giants

The group ascends the Pillar in a vast hydraulic lift. Lady Severa takes a sharp intellectual interest in Balthazar’s heretical theories on matter, creating an immediate and dangerous connection.

Chapter 53: Rivers in the Sky

Duke Michael shows them the Hanging Gardens and the Athenaeum, a laboratory used by the late Empress Eudoxia for sarcomantic experiments.

The wonders of Troy are revealed to be built on dark science.

Chapter 54: Before You Ask

Alex is bathed by handmaidens, who are later revealed to be Eudoxia’s hidden apprentices.

Sunny joins her in the bath, sharing a moment of quiet intimacy and reinforcing their bond before the coming storm.

Chapter 55: Tomorrow’s Ghosts

Jakob and Duke Michael talk atop the Pharos lighthouse. Jakob discovers his own name carved into the stone from a crusade a century prior, a haunting confirmation of his long, cursed life.

Chapter 56: Close to Heaven

Lady Severa shows Diaz the heart of the Athenaeum—the machine where Empress Eudoxia supposedly died. The tour feels like a recruitment pitch, hinting at hidden agendas beneath Troy’s splendor.

Chapter 57: The Beautiful Compromise

Alex meets her final cousin, the scholar Arcadius, for negotiations.

To secure the throne and avoid civil war, she is pressured by Michael and Severa into agreeing to marry him, a political transaction that sickens her.

Chapter 58: Not Nothing

Alex confesses to Sunny that she is a complete fraud who stole the real princess’s identity. Sunny tells her that what she was before doesn’t matter; she can choose to be “something” now.

It’s a moment of absolution and empowerment.

Chapter 59: The Sword and the Book

Before the coronation, Jakob is offered a legendary sword but refuses it, knowing “good fights” only turn him into a devil. Alex is formally crowned Empress of Troy in a lavish ceremony, achieving the mission’s goal.

Chapter 60: Evil Friends

On her wedding night, Arcadius is suddenly frozen and shattered by the handmaidens. Alex realizes Duke Michael and Cardinal Zizka have conspired to kill her and seize power themselves. The final betrayal is unveiled.

Chapter 61: Release the Leftovers

In the Basilica, the Devils fight for Alex’s life against a possessed Vigga and Lady Severa. Balthazar breaks Severa’s control by proving a philosophical point about the nature of matter, using intellect as a weapon.

Chapter 62: A War in Miniature

Jakob duels the traitorous Duke Michael in the throne room. Despite being stabbed repeatedly, Jakob’s immortality lets him grapple Michael and throw them both through Saint Natalia’s sacred flame and off the cliff.

Chapter 63: Unacceptable Behaviour

Balthazar confronts Lady Severa, who reveals herself to be the reincarnated Empress Eudoxia. They fight to a stalemate, and she offers him a place as her ally. He refuses, choosing his monstrous “family” over ultimate power.

Chapter 64: Deep Pockets

Alex confronts Cardinal Zizka with a compromising letter. She secures her throne but is forced to make a “beautiful compromise”: sending her protectors, the Devils, back to their cages in the Holy City. Victory tastes like ashes.

Chapter 65: Another Man’s Poison

Jakob, alive after his fall, washes up in a fisherman’s net. He finds Rikard, now aged back to an old man, and they mourn Baptiste, who died in the final battle.

Their survival is bittersweet and lonely.

Chapter 66: All Bad Things

Sunny says a heartfelt goodbye to Alex, calling her “the best person I ever met.” The Devils are taken away in chains.

Balthazar, however, smiles in his cage, secretly plotting his next escape with Eudoxia’s knowledge.

Chapter 67: Epilogue (Saint Tabitha’s Day)

The narrative circle completes. A new nun, the steadfast Mother Beckert, arrives in the Holy City.

She is summoned by Cardinal Zizka to become the new Vicar of the Chapel of Holy Expediency, implying the Church’s cynical cycle will continue with a new set of monsters and a new keeper.

Must Read Next: Aces Full Summary by George R. R. Martin: Unmasking the Wild Cards Universe