Last chapter, sex.

This chapter, we spend a while on Katsa practicing thinking at him. At first she tries to think clearly, but Metaleyes explains she doesn’t need to because he can make sense of her jumbled thoughts fine and understand her without her needing to work it out for herself.

We then see this demonstrated with a conversation that involves, shockingly, actual worldbuilding! Katsa thoughtquestions him about his rings.

“Every ring worn by a Lienid means something. This with the engraving is the ring of the king’s seventh son. It’s the ring of my castle and my princehood. My inheritance.”
Do your brothers have a different ring, and markings on their arms that are different from yours?
“They do.”
She fingered the great, heavy ring with the jagged white stone. This is the ring of a king.
“Yes, this ring is for my father. And this,” he said, fingering the small one with the gray line running through the middle, “for my mother. This plain one for my grandfather.”
Was he never king?
“His older brother was king. When his brother died, he would’ve been king, had he wished it. But his son, my father, was young and strong and ambitious. My grandfather was old and unwell and content to pass the kingship to his son.”
And what of your father’s mother, and your mother’s father and mother? Do you wear rings for them?
“No. They’re dead. I never knew them.”
She took his right hand. And these? You don’t have enough fingers for the rings on this hand.
“These are for my brothers,” he said. “One for each. The thickest for the oldest and the thinnest for the youngest.”
Does this mean that your brothers all wear an even thinner ring, for you?
“That’s right, and my mother and grandfather, too, and my father.”
Why should yours be the smallest, just because you’re the youngest?

Because they had to do something so they could be told apart, Katsa. What’s next, “why can’t you inherit just because you’re the youngest?” At least that would be a complaint that matters.

Anyway, look, worldbuilding!

Worldbuilding that suggests their culture probably hates orphans, no less! No but really cultures that prioritize blood ties tend not be very nice ones. If you’re ever deciding which island tribe you want to be marooned with, pick the ones where the guys are chill and have no idea who their kids are over the ones who can recite their lineage twenty generations back. It’s like raising sheep, it’s one of those cultural setups that results in a lot of angry men murdering you at the drop of a hat. Island cultures that share responsibility and resources on a community level = good. Island cultures that have intricate kin rankings to decide who gets food and who starves = run away. (Also a good idea to check to see if any alcohol-based drink is being treated as a staple food group. That’s a warning sign your choices will be liver failure or malnutrition. Islands! They often really suck.)

It’s interesting that they have such a different tradition when the rest seem so similar yet they all speak the same language. And we’re not really told anything substantial here, besides my own assumption that this means they probably view family ties as really important. Even if Katsa were given to telling us anything about her world, she doesn’t even know. She found the idea of siblings baffling, but that tells us nothing about what sort of families are found in her kingdom or on the mainland in general. Do other countries have a similar but different practice? How much emphasis is put on kinship bonds? All we know is that if Katsa murders the king, his son as the new king will be obligated to try to kill her, and generally, most cultures frown on both allowing kingslaying and supporting someone who killed your dad.

He also points out that his ring is special because the rest are plain but it’s marked with stones for his eyes because he’s graced.

“The Lienid honor the Graced.”
Well, and that was a novel idea. She hadn’t known that anyone honored the Graced.

Apparently getting employed by the king if you’re at all useful and being allowed to ignore any social convention that conflicts with your grace doesn’t count.

Also why. Why do people usually do one thing? Why do these people do it differently?

My mother has four brothers, four sisters, seven sons, two parents, and a husband.

So I guess you don’t get to take rings off when people die, and that giant families are the norm? How do they fit everyone and have free castles for all the kids?

Anyway, all Katsa says is wow, she’d hate to wear lots of rings and Metaleyes says that of course Katsa will never do anything she doesn’t want and as the perfect boyfriend he doesn’t mind.

“YOU BELIEVE Leck cuts those animals up himself,” she said to him one day while they were riding.
“Don’t you?”
He glanced back at her. “I realize it’s a disgusting accusation. But yes, that’s what I believe. And I also wonder about the sickness that man spoke of “
“You think he’s killing people off.”
Po shrugged and didn’t answer.
Katsa said, “Do you think Queen Ashen closed herself away from him because she figured out that he’s Graced?”

Why is that your assumption? When he said he sheltered animals, it was so he could torture them. When he said people were sick, it was so he could kill them. So if he says the queen locked herself away in her rooms out of grief, then it’s the likely reason that he did it?

Katsa ponders this.

It was a Grace. Or if it was not, it was something unnatural.

What, graces aren’t?

We get more of Katsa being super. Metaleyes remarks on how she doesn’t mind cold. He also thinks she’s even more awesome for catching fish barehanded, which actually doesn’t strike me as that impressive. That’s possible for humans, particularly since we haven’t specified the size of these fish, while Katsa being able to beat up everyone at once is obviously superhuman.

Katsa says well you can talk to the horses, which it to say he can sense when they’ve got a stone in their hoof or whatever. Which, actually, if he can sense stuff like that he shouldn’t be happily gutting fish, should he? Ouch.

But a killing Grace can’t account for all the things you can do. The way you never tire. Or suffer from the cold, or from hunger.”

God dammit.

She starts listing off all the ways she’s awesome. Apparently, she never gets sick, barely needs food, doesn’t need rest, rarely gets even minor injuries, and she can decide to go to sleep at will, and can tell true north instinctively.

The physical needs that limited other people did not limit her. The things from which other people suffered did not touch her. She knew instinctively how to live and thrive in the wilderness.
And she could kill anyone. At the slightest threat to her survival.
Katsa sat on the ground suddenly.
Could her Grace be survival?

Fuck fuck fuck fuck.

Do you know what happens with boy characters? They learn to use their powers, which are often powers that are based on violence, because everyone understands you can use those for good.

But Katsa can’t. Katsa’s story arc is not learning that the ability to be incredibly good at fighting – because come on, superhumanly good at subduing the guards safely is not a killing skill it’s a fighting one – can be useful. It is that her power is apparently totally innocent! It’s just a defensive power. Because girls get defensive powers.

Fucking book.

Let me tell you why I liked the concept. I really hate superman type characters. They suck.

When my mother was younger, she would buy comics. She liked the Flash, because he had one power and he had to use that to solve things in different ways. In contrast, Superman has a million powers he uses to solve everything the same way: brute overwhelming force. Multipowered characters are fine, even superman types, so long as they’re weak enough that punching, heat-visioning, blowing, speed etc, don’t all end up having the same effect of instantaneously destroying whatever was the problem. But if you’re going to have major power, it’d better be only one.

See, let’s consider an actual killing grace. Katsa now has to work at all her other skills. However, her ability can be leveraged as a threat – don’t let this come to a fight, because if it does you die. Depending on how lenient we’re being, she could have some degree of general fighting superiority if she checks her blows at the last second, assuming all normal blows start off at a set amount of fatality. Personally I think it’s more interesting without that, but that combined with a lot of legitimate training could result in her having regular skills plus severely enhanced accuracy. This would also explain her constant desperation to keep herself in check – she really will murder someone if she’s not always careful.

If we really must, even a fighting grace is okay. Katsa is unstoppable in a world ruled by force. Wherever she plants her feet belongs to her. She could wander around doing general good, or again, work as a threat, where she’ll stay out until she hears you’ve been abusing power, and then she’ll come for you personally. With a general fighting grace, there’s absolutely no reason to avoid using her grace. Her character development would be from believing her own judgement is flawed and she should obey the king and never use her ability except under orders to realizing she can and should act on her own.

Hell, I’d even take a ninja grace that made her super quiet super sneaky super climby and super able to get into locked everything, even though it wouldn’t make much sense.

Anything but the resolution being that never mind, her grace isn’t about that so she never has to get over her problem with it.

Katsa spends a moment of “oh but it can’t be my grace must be killing because I suck!” followed by accepting it.

she hadn’t meant for that cousin to die. She’d been a child, her Grace unformed. She hadn’t lashed out to kill him; she’d only lashed out to protect herself, to protect herself from his touch.

First, so that implies that non-mental graces shift around too despite everyone treating it like they don’t.

Second, so that implies killing Cousin Badtouch was wrong.

Fucking book.

She laughed then. For it was almost like saying her Grace was life; and of course, that was ridiculous.

Yes, it’s sickeningly sueish. It’s like Twilight Sparkle’s magic talent being magic talent.

She tells Metaleyes, who says it makes perfect sense because as we’ve covered, that’s the sum of his personality now.

And it’s not just your own life,” he said. “You’ve saved many lives with your Grace.”
She shook her head. “Not as many as I’ve hurt.”

Even without counting stuff like being able to knock out all the guards so no one had to kill them to rescue a prisoner, she’s apparently saved villages left and right. So how many people was she murdering? Jesus, she shouldn’t have had time to be plotting a secret council, there’s only so many hours in a day and it’s not like her uncle was bringing people to her for the arm-breaking.

Anyway, point is everything awesome and resolved and we’re only halfway through the book. The Leck plot had better get here next chapter.