Last time, Katsa gets a ship and unnecessarily becomes a princess.

This time, Katsa is busy doing dangerous shit for no reason. She likes dangling over the side of the boat or up in the rigging, because apparently doing dangerous shit for no reason counts as survival.

she thought of how Bitterblue had trusted no man when first they’d met. And now the girl allowed this enormous sailor to pick her up and hold her, like a father, and the girl’s arm was around Patch’s neck, and she and Patch laughed up at Katsa together.

So that subplot went all of nowhere. Never explained why Bitterblue was terrified, never shown how she got over it.

Katsa realizes that the people on the ship will know where they went once they get there. The captain says none of them will betray Bitterblue, so apparently she dozed through Katsa’s explanation about Leck.

“You want us to remain at sea, once we’ve left you in Lienid,” the captain said, her voice sharp and growing sharper as she spoke. “You want us to hold at sea, out of the way, all winter—longer, perhaps indefinitely—until you and Prince Po, who aren’t even in communication, have found some way to immobilize the King of Monsea. At which point I suppose we must wait for someone to come in search of us and invite us back ashore? What’s left of us, because we’ll run out of supplies, Lady Princess—we’re a trade vessel, you know, designed to sail from port to port and replenish our food and water at each stop. It’s strain enough that we go now straight back to Lienid—”
“Your cargo hold is full of the fruits and vegetables of your trade,” Katsa said, “and your men know how to fish.”
“We’ll run out of water.”
“Then ride your ship into a storm,” Katsa said.

I really think we need to stop and consider some things.

Obviously, you should offer help to those in need, and adults should sacrifice for children. But one does start to question quite how much, or how many. Katsa is possibly killing forty people for virtually no benefit – once she gets to Lienid, people there are going to know about her as well, and those people are just as vulnerable. In fact, she must know this or else she’d just tell them to stay docked in Lienid rather than staying out at sea. She’s just slightly reducing the total number of people who know, not preventing anything.

All for the safety of one young life.

Yes, that’s a problem. For theoretical slight benefit to one child, other people may die. Other children may lose their fathers. There’s a certain point where you have to ask yourself if this is about protecting a life or about the fact Bitterblue’s a princess and she’s the one who asked for help first and got dibs over everyone else. God knows Katsa’s in no hurry to help any of the other kids.

The captain makes a fine effort to spin things.

Leck must be stopped, and not just for the sake of Princess Bitterblue. His Grace is limitless, and a king with his proclivities is a danger to all seven kingdoms.

If he was he would’ve been already. Presumably Leck can’t get anything more by ruling the other countries as well. A palace to live in and a dungeon for torturing are all he really needs, after all.

So, the captain agrees to do it. They’ll stay near a particular island until they get word or they can’t last longer.

We then spend a page on the captain asking about their trip so another person can be amazed about Katsa crossing the pass.

Katsa finally remembers about the whole teaching Bitterblue to fight thing.

How absurd it was that in all seven kingdoms, the weakest and most vulnerable of people—girls, women—went unarmed and were taught nothing of fighting, while the strong were trained to the highest reaches of their skill.

Yes. Why it’s as if we generally focus on teaching people to do something they’re good at.

What’s really amazing is that the issue raised here is a common one and people have pointed it out before, so why the author couldn’t have used those reasons instead of making up her own jumbled mess of one is beyond me.

The issue isn’t that they’re not taught to be super fighters. It’s that they’re not taught to defend themselves (something which is not the same as simply fighting, and is also not what the men are getting taught either). And the reason why they should be taught has nothing to do with being strong or weak, it’s just you’ll be attacked at some point and in this universe apparently no one but your dad or brother will do jack shit for you at that point, so you need to learn to protect yourself.

Also, noble ladies may not know anything, but plenty of the peasantry will have the women know around as much as the men when it comes to defending themselves. Which is, of course, going to be painfully little – peasants who fight back are not good peasants – but the point is, the extreme gender divide Katsa’s talking about is really an upper class thing. Well, I suppose a middle class one as well, and this book apparently has a thriving middle class out of nowhere.

Problem is, Katsa can’t teach this, not that the book knows it. She was younger than Bitterblue when she accidentally killed a guy. But somehow, Katsa, who has spent her life trying to learn to rein in her fighting ability because she’s infinitely better than everyone else, is able to look at an unskilled kid and think how to teach her to minimize the weaknesses Katsa never had though training Katsa never did because it was all instinctive for her.

Anyway, apparently super teaching grace comes under survival, so Bitterblue is now a stabby little thing. Congrats, Katsa, you’ve successfully taught her the one skill she’ll never be able to use because her dad has super mindrape powers that work at infinite distance. You know what might have been more useful? Teaching her escape skills so that when his mojo wore off she had a chance of getting away again.

And that was the chapter. Even the filler is getting filler now.