Last time, we’d run out of plot.

“Katsa.”
His voice woke her. She opened her eyes and knew it to be about three hours before dawn.

How the hell does this sort of thing come under “survival”? Or knowing true north to the degree? She’s not a bird. Those are learned skills and ones of dubious value.

Metaleyes explains he can’t sleep, and since she doesn’t need to they might as well get going.

They head down, and as day comes, they hear horses and see a running woman.

Dark hair and gold hoops in her ears. A black dress, and gold on the fingers she stretched out to Po. And behind her an army of men on galloping horses, led by one man with streaming robes and an eyepatch, and a raised bow, and a notched arrow that flew from the bow and struck the woman square in the back. The woman jerked and stumbled. She fell on her face in the snow.

Katsa sure has suddenly gotten slow to react. She claims she can grab a (non-throwing) dagger from the belt of a guy next to her and chuck it through her uncle’s face with perfect accuracy before a roomful of archers blink, but she can’t fire an arrow while standing still faster than a guy trying to aim while on horseback?

Po stopped cold. He ran back to Katsa, yelling, “Shoot him! Shoot him!” but she had already swung the bow from her back and reached for an arrow. She pulled the string and took aim. And then the horses stopped. The man with the eyepatch screamed out, and Katsa froze.
“Oh, what an accident!” he cried.

Christ, Katsa, even a normal person would probably have gotten off the shot before the guy managed to say all that.

Anyway, because Katsa has suddenly had her blood turned to molasses and couldn’t attack before the guy got around to talking, she now sits and listens while he goes on about his beloved wife and how sad he is.

Metaleyes? How are you doing? Because you did figure this out before and therefore guessed you were immune, but come to think of it, it took you an awful long time to realize there was anything wrong with an incredibly suspicious story, so maybe it’s just you’re resistant to the effect, enough to throw off the secondhand stuff.

“No! Shoot him!”

Oh, so you are immune. I guess you’re just really slow on the uptake.

Well, so much for that. Katsa doesn’t understand why, but she knows she promised to do what he said, and since the king wasn’t expecting someone like Metaleyes, he didn’t think to say anything about how Katsa shouldn’t listen to Metaleyes.

Only no, actually Katsa starts arguing.

Katsa gaped at Po, shocked at his words, at the wildness in his eyes. “But, it was an accident,” she said.
“You promised to do what I said.”
“Yes, but I’m not going to shoot a grieving man whose wife has had such an accident-“
His voice was angry now, as she’d never heard it. “Give me the bow,” he hissed, so strange and rough, so unlike himself.
“Give it to me.”
“No!

Good god..

I understand Katsa believes the man’s wife died by accident, because he said that. But he didn’t say “Don’t listen to Metaleyes” so her memories of that should still be intact. Hell, her memories of knowing he’s got a manipulative grace should still be intact because he doesn’t know she knows so he didn’t think to tell her to forget that, and she shouldn’t even need Metaleyes to explain.

You can’t even excuse this as Katsa just being a moron or that the guy’s grace makes you particularly invested in defending the truth of whatever it is (Metaleyes suggested that the men in the inn were honestly offended by the idea Leck had to do with the kidnapping even though they shouldn’t have cared one way or the other). Because Metaleyes didn’t say “shoot him because he killed his wife“. Metaleyes isn’t engaging with the lie. He isn’t giving a reason for Katsa to argue against.

This is only happening because the author wants to drag the story out.

What’s particularly irritating is that this doesn’t have to be a plot hole. If Metaleyes had said to shoot him because he’d killed his wife, then Katsa would obviously argue the point, and then the king could have shouted something about how Metaleyes was crazy and don’t listen to him so that Metaleyes couldn’t correct himself and tell her to shoot the guy for a different reason. That’d be much better than Katsa deciding he’s crazy and she shouldn’t listen to him.

Luckily, Metaleyes thinks fast.

Po turned back to her, calm now. Desperately, urgently calm.
“Will you do something else, then?” he said. “Something much smaller, that will hurt no one?”
“Yes, if it will hurt no one.”

Arg! The king didn’t say that either!

This is being written as if the king’s grace just makes everyone in the vicinity act however he wants, and his words are either because he feels like it or possibly a way of picking their rationalization for them.

Metaleyes tells her to cover her ears and run away, so she does that.

She half heard a muffled clatter of hooves growing behind them. The clatter turned into a thunder.
And then she saw the arrows striking the trees around them.
The arrows made her angry. We could kill these men, all of them, she thought to Po. We should fight. But he kept yelling at her to run, and his hand tightened on her shoulder and pushed her forward, and she had that sense again that all was not right, that none of this was normal, and that in this madness, she should trust Po.

So first, not clear why Metaleyes can’t just sic Katsa on the guy again now that she’s pissed. Second, god, way to make it obvious that her trusting or not trusting is entirely based on the needs of the plot.

They manage to get away and he senses a hollow in a tree to hide in, so they climb up.

“Avoid that branch,” he called down to her. “And this one: A breeze would knock it down.”

Okay. So even assuming that plants count for mindreading, weak branches tend to be dead ones, so he’s now reading the thoughts of dead wood to find out how much weight they can hold.

Katsa is muddled and can’t remember quite what happened.

That woman who looked like a Lienid. Ashen. The wife of Leck was a Lienid, and her name was Ashen-and yes, that made sense, because that grief-stricken man had called her his wife. That man with the eyepatch and the bow in his hands was Leck.
But wasn’t it Leck’s arrow that had struck Ashen? Katsa couldn’t quite recall; and when she tried to watch that moment again in her mind, a fog and falling snow blocked her sight.

That? Reasonable, though it seems that the effect should leave people puzzling out the truth on their own when they’re away from Leck for a length of time. I suppose that means he isn’t usually that blatant…but then why was he so blatant there? It’s not like he needed to kill the woman right there to stop her from reaching help. Aside from the fact he didn’t know that Katsa can beat an army rather than the two of them just being two more people he could slaughter if he needed to, he didn’t know that Metaleyes is somehow immune to his grace. So he could have just said “hey, stop the thief” or whatever and he’d expect them to help him bring down the woman.

It turns out Katsa also can’t remember everything else about Leck until Metaleyes reminds her. So somehow as soon as she hears him say one thing and alter one memory, it fucks up every related memory about him, but only removes the parts that he wouldn’t want you remembering if he knew about it.

Which is theoretically possible if he’s telepathic, but he only realized Metaleyes was immune by how Metaleyes acted. And even still, if his powers work by voice he’d have needed to say something to edit the memories.

In conclusion, Leck’s grace makes even less sense than Katsa’s “survival grace = I can do anything I feel like” or Metaleyes’ “mindreading = sensing the structural integrity of wood”.

Katsa is upset because she promised to obey Metaleyes and then she didn’t. Metaleyes says it’s not her fault. Yes it is, Metaleyes.

“Katsa. No one could’ve kept that promise. If I’d known how powerful Leck was

Yes they would have! Because Leck said nothing to confuse her about it, because he didn’t know he’d need to!

Then Katsa is confused about why they’re hiding.

“What do you mean, we’re in great danger? Why aren’t we fighting these butchers, why…” She dropped her face into her hands. “I’m so confused. I’m hopelessly stupid.”
“You’re not stupid. It’s Leck’s Grace that takes away your own thought, and it’s my Grace that sees so much more than a person should. You’re confused because Leck confused you deliberately with his words

No he didn’t! He’s not here right now, she’s just suddenly decided to forget the conversation while she’s in the middle of it!

Anyway, Metaleyes explains. Ashen was killed because she was protecting Bitterblue, her child. I actually don’t mind the name itself but why would you pick that for a kid? I mean, Bitter? You have no one but yourself to blame for things going badly after that point, lady. Not that Ashen’s much better.

Katsa says she’ll go kill Leck, and Metaleyes says that Leck will just talk again. Considering Katsa is able to sneak around as silent death unconsciousness, I don’t see why it’s impossible for her to just kill him while he’s not talking. I mean, maybe he’s doing nothing but constantly repeat that he’s innocent with every breath just in case Katsa comes after him, but if he was that sort of paranoid, he’d have been chanting it the whole time.

She realizes that if she hears Leck she might attack Metaleyes, so she gives him all her weapons even though she made it clear that she can stab someone with their own dagger just as easily. All this does is ensure that if she sees Leck while he’s not talking she probably won’t be able to attack before he notices her.