Last time, Katsa steals from one family and then takes advantage of another.

This time she gets to see the ocean! It’s pretty.

Like the mountains, Katsa has never seen it before, despite the fact she’s supposedly traveled around being subversive and there’s people who know of her shenanigans not far off.

This is a nagging irritation because it’s not like it’s wrong or anything. It’d be very easy to say that Katsa never went far from her own country, located in the continent(?)’s center, because her uncle always wanted her around. It’s just that or any other explanation was never given. All we know about Katsa’s movements is that she goes all over the place fighting injustice under the kings’ noses, but didn’t know anything about Monsea and Leck because that kingdom was particularly isolated and the king didn’t do anything that the council cared about.

She explains that she’s successfully disguised herself by covering one eye. Apparently that wasn’t Leck using his grace to make people look the other way, no one in history has considered if maybe a one-eyed person might be graced. You’d think, in a world where graces exist and people hate them so much, you’d get all sorts of discrimination against one-eyed people unless they had people to vouch that they’d started with two eyes of the same color.

They’d moved only at night, and no one had recognized them. Which was the same as saying she hadn’t had to kill anyone.

No, instead when people tried to mug them, the noble Katsa took them down gently so they could continue their murdering on others.

See, this is why her grace could be fighting or even killing and still be useful! You live in a horrible shithole of a society (that is, feudal monarchy). People who prey on the weak are everywhere. Ideally you should have police and judges, but ideally you shouldn’t have kings. Under the circumstances, killing people who try to kill apparently helpless strangers is better than leaving them to keep trying. Certainly better than killing the soldiers whose kings order them to commit crimes.

We keep hearing that Katsa’s the champion of good, and last chapter she got all sorts of benefits for it, but what has she actually done that we’ve seen? She rescued an old prince and a young princess. She also stole food from one family and took what was offered by another without even considering if she could compensate them or regret getting them involved.

“How will we find a Lienid ship?” Bitterblue asked.
“Not just a Lienid ship,” Katsa said. “A Lienid ship that hasn’t recently been to Monsea.”
“I could check around,” Bitterblue said, “while you hide.”

This is a bizarre exchange. There’s no reason why Katsa would need to hide at all – she’s only hiding to keep Bitterblue hidden. And Katsa hasn’t said anything about wanting to hide at all. Katsa says that Bitterblue can’t go alone because it isn’t safe and Bitterblue could be recognized, as is reasonable, but it’s never explained why Bitterblue brings it up at all.

With that non sequitur over, they set off to find the ship together. One of the ships is Lienid but there’s a bunch of people there so Katsa walks by for now. She spends a bit whining that it’d be easier if Metaleyes was there because he could do the whole telepathy thing and they’d know everything. Yes, if this was completely effortless it’d be easier. God, Katsa, how did you even function before Metaleyes?

She thinks about how if the ring doesn’t work she’ll have to use her grace or the money she’s carrying. So see, she did cart the pile of gold over the mountains.

They come across a single Lienid sailor, and because as we know sailors on any given ship are a terribly homogenous bunch and never sign on for anything other than a ship from their native country, especially so when all the countries speak the same language and are apparently at peace, he’s totally from that ship.

She interrogates the guy who decides she’s a spy for Murgle, though honestly if people were going to spy about this sort of thing they’d be less obvious than oh hai tell me things :D and he should know this.

Also, note that apparently non-Lienids can pass as any country.

Katsa says she wants passage, he says she can’t pay, she says she can so and lets him see her purse.

He opened it and shook a few gold pieces into his palm. He inspected the coins in the moonlight, and then in the firelight glimmering dimly from shore.
“This is Lienid gold,” he said. “Not only are you thieves, but you’re thieves who’ve stolen from Lienid men.”

Says the sailor in a trading port.

I mean, okay, points for having realish obstacles and ones that Katsa can’t just lolnope with her grace, but why would Metaleyes be carrying special coins not circulated outside Lienid for his extended trip across the non-Lienid countries? Are there even now all sorts of random people getting punched in the face and accused of theft when they go to use the money Metaleyes paid them with? It’s not even like he looked into the purse and saw it was solid Lienid coins, he just happened to see the first couple on the top.

You know what would have worked? Having the purse itself be obviously Lienid make. It presumably is, since it should be the same one that Metaleyes was carrying around. That’d make it look like she’d stolen the whole thing. She’d have to be a moron to do it, but he already thinks she’s a moron since he thinks she’s the worst spy ever.

“Take us to your captain and let him decide whether to accept our gold. If you do so, a piece of it’s yours—regardless of what he chooses.”

I think you’re not really grasping how theft works here. If you stole it and the captain decides to report you and bring it to the authorities, you can’t say you owe the kid some of the money you don’t have. And if the idea is for him to take it now, he’d be participating in the theft of whoever’s gold this is, which he seems bothered by, otherwise he wouldn’t care where she got the money. And if he doesn’t care about taking it even when it isn’t hers to give, why not just take the whole thing?

But my reasoning is for naught. He takes the coin and brings her to the ship.

“She? Your captain is a woman?”
“A woman,” the boy said, “and Graced.”
A woman and Graced. Katsa didn’t know which should surprise her more.

Arg.

We’re back to Katsa the only sexist in the book. Also the only one who actually showed being creeped out by people with graces, she even has to make special effort to look at Metaleyes’ eyes at first. The book is obviously trying to make it a point that she’s shocked because society at large is a certain way, but we never see that society, only Katsa going on about how women can’t do things.

Katsa assumes this must be the king’s ship, but no.

“It’s her ship.”
“How—”
“The Graced in Lienid are free. The king doesn’t own them.”

This has absolutely no impact on anything but the fact the Lienid are the mary sue country.

Hell, are the non-graced free? If the king’s graced chef dies and he tells the best non-graced chef to come and cook for him, I don’t think the guy can just say no. (Actually, wait, I know he can’t say no, after all, nobles can’t say no to having their daughter married off to a guy in another country while the king steals the dowry.) And I don’t see why most graced people wouldn’t want to work for the king in the first place, so in practice, wouldn’t the Lienid graced largely be employed by their king anyway?

It does mean the babystealing thing doesn’t happen, but it also means those kids are missing out on being raised by the king with education and decent food and whatever passes for doctors in a place where yanking arrows out is considered helpful.

Anyway, Katsa starts obsessing over what grace the captain has. What if it’s mindreading or fighting? Well, Katsa, we’ve established you’re better than any graced fighter at fighting and also come on, like it isn’t going to just have to do with her boat.

“Her Grace is the reason we leave in the middle of the night,” the boy said. “She sees storms before they hit. We set out now to beat a blizzard coming up from the east.”

People can now see the future with graces. Is there any underlying theme here? Can you fly if that’s what luck of the draw says? Where are the waterbreathers? Why doesn’t anyone have telekinesis yet?

The prescient Graces were better than the mind-reading Graces, better by far, but still they gave Katsa a crawling feeling along her skin.

Hey look, the book remembered Katsa has issues with mindreading. And forgot that she presumably got over that with Metaleyes considering she’s been exploiting the telepathy thing for some time now, and that her issue with the mindreading was she didn’t like the idea of someone knowing what she thought, not that she hates magic psychic powers as a broad class. We haven’t had any explanation for why she’d have issues with telling the weather in advance.

“What’s this you’re bringing aboard, Jem?” the man asked.
“They go to the captain,” the boy said.
“Prisoners?”
“Prisoners or passengers. The captain will decide.”

…how exactly are crimes handled, here? What this seems to be saying is that captains can declare people off the street criminals and take them prisoner if they feel like it.

Anyway, although the captain’s graced everyone else is male, because nothing else may be realistic but by god we must make sure women are as marginalized as possible.

A sail billowed down suddenly, released from its confinement in the riggings. It flapped over Katsa’s head, glowing a luminous gray, looking very much like an enormous bird trying to break its leash and take off into the sky; and then it rose again just as suddenly, folded and strapped back into place.

The sail went down looking like it was trying to go up into the sky, then went up and stopped looking like that.

You know, maybe Katsa’s a bit more affected by lack of sleep than she thinks.

Katsa had no idea what it all meant, all this activity

He just told you they’re leaving early to avoid the storm. Has Leck’s memory-screwing done permanent damage? Did part of your brain ice over?

Katsa followed, trusting the ladder she couldn’t see to materialize beneath her hands and feet

You know, when I climb ladders I find that I don’t need to trust the ladder to materialize because I have to touch a step before I can put weight on it. And that’s actually pretty normal even when there’s light – at least, when I climb, I don’t twist around to try to see where I’m putting my feet. Doing something like that seems more dangerous. This description is more suited to walking along a dark corridor than down a ladder.

“Begging your pardon, Captain,” Jem said. “These two Sunderan boys wish to buy passage west, but I don’t trust their gold.”
“And what’s wrong with their gold?” the voice asked.
“It’s Lienid gold, Captain, and more of it than it seems to me they should have.”

Here we see why editing is awesome. The author could have gone back and said that he looked into the bag of money and saw it was all Lienid gold. Instead he saw two or three pieces and decided it was all Lienid from that.

She was a woman past childbearing years, her hair steel gray and pulled tightly into a knot at the nape of her neck. Her clothing like that of the other sailors: brown trousers, brown coat, heavy boots, and a knife at her belt. Her left eye pale gray, and her right a blue as brilliant as Katsa’s blue eye. Her face stern, and her gaze, as she turned to the two strangers, quick and piercing.

It’s Lin Beifong! <3 Punch someone, Lin! This book is boring.

Lin wants to know where they got this gold. Katsa says they’re friends of the prince. The first sailor hears “we beat up your prince and took his stuff” despite the fact Metaleyes is a graced superfighter.

Katsa finally shows the damn ring.

There’s actually a moment of people being halfway rational in response – they assume she stole it and lunge at her. Sure, Metaleyes in particular would be pretty hard to steal from, but in general the whole ring thing is stupid. You could kill one of them, loot the corpse, then have their own people help you escape by saying you were given the ring. For some reason, Katsa feels like threats are more fun than taking people out cleanly, so she knocks out one of them but then gets a knife to the throat of the original sailor and then threatens the third to stop.

Lin is the voice of reason and even better, moving the damn plot along. She gets it, Katsa didn’t steal the ring. Katsa explains the girl is Bitterblue.

“The princess is in great danger,” she said. “I’m taking her to Lienid to hide her from . . . from those who wish to harm her.

Why is she actually taking her?

The reason Katsa’s been desperately trying to avoid talking to anyone connected to Leck’s kingdom is that she’s still vulnerable to Leck’s grace, so she won’t be able to protect Bitterblue if Leck or his people show up. If anything, she’s endangering Bitterblue, who’ll have more of a chance of escaping if it comes to that if Katsa isn’t one of the people on her tail.

And it’s not like Katsa has nothing better to do than tag along.

Remember all those other girls? The issue isn’t that Leck wants Bitterblue. The issue is that Leck wants to hurt girls and one of the girls he’s after is Bitterblue. The other girls are still getting hurt and killed.

Even if Katsa doesn’t care (she doesn’t care), there’s the issue of Metaleyes. Katsa crossed the pass wearing regular, badly torn clothing and carrying a kid. She’d be able to get back across fine. She could go get Metaleyes and they could plot how to take out Leck. Maybe Ragamuffin could help! If they had some way to make Katsa temporarily deaf she could take out Leck easily.

Po said you would help us when I showed you his ring. But if you won’t, I’ll do everything in the power of my Grace to force your assistance.”

As with the theft earlier, Katsa doesn’t have any thoughts about having to do this because she has no other choice. She doesn’t think that she can’t go to another ship now that they know about her, or that if there’s a blizzard coming in they need to be on the only ship leaving now, or that she saw Monseans chatting at the other ships and they’re probably infected by the king’s grace.

It’s much simpler than that. Katsa wants a thing. They will do the thing or Katsa will make them.

The woman wants to know what happened to Metaleyes, and Katsa tells the truth. She wants to know why he gave her this ring and not any other, in that case. Katsa has no clue. They’re the weirdos who care about rings.

Bitterblue decides to help out the plot and point out that Metaleyes didn’t explain so why doesn’t the captain just do so already.

“It’s very rare for a Lienid to give away one of his rings, and almost unheard of for him to give away the ring of his own identity. To give that ring is to forsake his own identity. Princess Bitterblue, your lady has around her neck the ring of the Seventh Prince of Lienid. If Prince Po had truly given her that ring, it would mean that he’d abdicated his princehood. He’d no longer be a prince of Lienid. He’d make her a princess and give her his castle and his inheritance.”
Katsa stared. She pulled at a chair and sat down hard. “That can’t be.”
“Not one in a thousand Lienid gives that ring away,” the captain said. “Most wear it to their graves in the sea. But occasionally— if a woman is dying and wants a sister to take her place as the mother of her children, or if a dying shopkeeper wants his shop to go to a friend, or if a prince is dying and wants to change the line of succession—a Lienid will make a gift of that ring.”

So what I’m getting here is they don’t have a concept of writing wills, and also that it seems a good many of them are dicks and want to take their stuff with them to the grave.

I can’t tell – the ring presumably is meant to override regular inheritance and not just special prince succession stuff, but we don’t have much idea of how regular inheritance works. What happens to that shop if the guy doesn’t give it to his friend, does it go to the king? That would explain why they have so many spare castles and stuff to give away to each new generation, but otherwise wouldn’t make any sense. Does it get bundled up as part of whatever their seagrave traditions are and burned/sunk? Or are there rules of inheritance like that the firstborn kid gets everything, or that it’s divided according to some formula, or something? In that case it’s mostly dickery to give away the ring.

There’s actually nothing wrong with this at all if only we understood how things worked. It seems like the ring isn’t so much inheritance as making everyone treat you as if you’re the same person – two of the examples, after all, are that a mother giving you the ring makes you her kids’ mother and a prince doing it makes you royalty. The problem is the book never told us what the original system the ring lets you make an exception in. Could someone just adopt the kids? Leck was declared an heir in Monsea, can you not do that in Lienid?

Also, it raises questions, like, what happens if it’s a brother dying and wanting his sister to take care of the kids? Does she inherit his wife? They seem to be preserving gender roles because the captain says she’s a princess, not a prince. This is not merely boring but disappointing. There is fine cultural precedent for declaring people are now the opposite gender if they take up an approved opposite gender role.

Oh, also it’s redundant. Katsa’s already a king’s cousin, she’s friends with the beloved grandfather of another king, and she can survive on her own fine anyway. She doesn’t need a surprise princessdom. This actually might be worth something if the book hadn’t piled on the early sueishness of making her Lady Katsa and just had her working for the king for the same reason every other graced person is.

Katsa decides to flip out because omg why did he do this he wasn’t that badly hurt oh god.

Bitterblue continues to be the better character and points out that Metaleyes gave it to her before he went after Leck originally, not when he decided to split up with them afterward.

“Why in the Middluns didn’t he tell me?”
“If he had,” Bitterblue said, “you wouldn’t have taken it.” “You’re right, I wouldn’t have taken it. Can you see me taking such a thing from Po? Can you see me agreeing to such a thing? And he’s right to have given it, because he is going to die, because I’m going to kill him when next I see him, for doing such a thing and frightening me and not telling me what it
meant.”

While this, like everything related to Katsa, is written like she’s a particularly emotionally stunted child, it does raise some valid points regarding trust. Metaleyes is initially set up as special because he trusts Katsa and because she can trust him back, and he later promises not to keep secrets since she can’t. But by the final third of the book, this all disappears. He keeps plenty of secrets for increasingly minor reasons and Katsa doesn’t even try to badger him about them.

Naturally, the ring thing doesn’t mean he can never be prince again. They don’t even need to marry! She can just hand it back to him.

In the meantime, your position entitles you to every power and authority held by a prince of Lienid. It’s ours to do your bidding.”

While there are many flaws vying for attention in this book, definitely one of the top ones is that the book keeps giving more than they need. Like Lady Katsa being Lady when it doesn’t matter, or how her grace is a pile of redundancies, and now here – Bitterblue is Metaleyes’ cousin, the daughter of a murdered Lienid royal, chased by a king who also tried to murder a Lienid prince as well, and apparently in possession of enough gold to simply buy passage in the first place.

Yet the author hands her absolute prince authority to make them do it, even though she shouldn’t need that.

“I’ll be content if you’ll take us quickly to Po’s castle on the western shore,” Katsa said, “and stop calling me Princess.”
“It’s your castle now, Lady Princess.”

This is less funny than people think it is. There are characters this works with but an apparently normal captain is not one of them.

Katsa thinks about how she guesses the ring is okay because she’s glad to have the power to make sure Bitterblue’s safe, even though I just explained why that was already handled by the existing setup. This is quite in character for Katsa’s portrayal this book, though, the author is always insisting that anything short of absolute certainty is impossible.

“Prince Po is recovering from his injuries?” Captain Faun asked; and Katsa heard the worry, the authentic worry, as if the captain were inquiring after a member of her own family.

That’s sad, book. The whole caring about people just because they’re well-known and powerful is a terrible human impulse. Earlier they were going on about how much they loved the prince, to the point they’d fight her (knowing full well her grace) if she’d attacked him.

It’s not even like Metaleyes throws them some scraps of consideration that make him look kind in comparison. He barely notices people. All he can say about his holdings is how great it is other people run them without asking for his attention, all he says about his castle is how pretty the place is, nothing about the people taking care of it for his occasional visits. He tells stories of his family but never anyone else.

And it occurred to her to wonder then if the Lienid would love their prince so much if they knew the truth of his Grace.

Easy come, easy go.

It’s hard to care when it’s not like he deserves it in the first place.