Last time, for some reason the book’s still going.

KATSA KEPT to a far corner of the deck as Bear and Red and a number of other men hauled the ropes that swung Leck’s coffin on board. She wished to have nothing to do with it, wished even that the ropes would snap and pitch Leck’s body into the sea, to be torn apart by sea creatures.

First off, Katsa’s right. Burn the body and bury the ashes at a crossroad or something. Maybe invent religion so you can get a priest to bless the site too. Guy was way too powerful and his powers made no sense, don’t take chances.

Second, lol no.

Bodies rot. No one is going to cart Leck’s liquifying corpse around in a coffin for a month or two. There are various ways to move bodies if you really, desperately need to – you can burn them, you can cut the flesh off and transport just the bones, or you can just pack the whole thing in salt if your culture has issues messing with bodies.

And you only bother doing all that if it’s really important you bring back the body, which, it’s not like Bitterblue was particularly fond of him.

Prince Skye and King Ror attended her.
…
The child queen could not be sent off trippingly to Monsea to announce that she was now in charge, and denounce the dead king an entire kingdom adored. Bitterblue would need authority, and she would need guidance. Both of these Ror could provide.

There continues to be shades of another far more interesting plot where this whole thing is some sort of power grab by the Lienids.

turning a deaf ear to each son’s insistence that his proper place was in Ror City, managing Ror’s affairs. Ror left his affairs instead to his queen, as he always did when circumstances took him away from his throne. The queen was more than capable.

Mary. Sue. Kingdom.

The problem is it’s so damn smug about this.

It isn’t just saying that he’s sending off the sons to go fetch things and leaving the queen in charge, but making a big deal of how special he is for this and how he does this over his son’s objections and look look the queen is totally awesome too unlike the queens of the rest of the kingdoms (except Ashen who’s also a Lienid) and also look how she’s been removed from the actual part we’ll be watching anyway.

Anyway, so, Ror’s on the ship and he’s all nice and stuff.

the sound of his laughter, and his good-natured conversation that set the sailors at ease. There was nothing humble or compromising about Ror. He was handsome, like Po, and confident, like Po, and so much more authoritative in his bearing than Po could ever be. But—and this Katsa came gradually to understand—he was not drunk on his power. He might never dream of helping a sailor to haul a rope, but he would stand with the sailor interestedly while the sailor hauled the rope, and ask him questions about the rope, about his work, his home, his mother and father, his cousin who spent a year once fishing in the lakes of Nander.

Terry Pratchett’s Pyramids covers this subject nicely.

Teppic had strolled down the path to the waiting chariots, looking wistfully at the bustle around him, and paused to watch a group of workers who were dressing a corner piece. They froze when they felt his gaze on them, and stood sheepishly watching him.
‘Well well,’ said Teppic, inspecting the stone, although all he knew about stonemasonry could have been chiselled on a sand grain. ‘What a splendid piece of rock.’
He turned to the nearest man, whose mouth fell open.
‘You’re a stonemason, are you?’ he said. ‘That must be a very interesting job.’
The man’s eyes bulged. He dropped his chisel. ‘Erk,’ he said.
A hundred yards away Dios’s robes flapped around his legs as he pounded down the path. He grasped the hem and galloped along, sandals flapping.
‘What’s your name?’ said Teppic. ‘Aaaargle,’ said the man, terrified.
‘Well, jolly good,’ said Teppic, and took his unresisting hand and shook it.

Those of you watching Game of Thrones may also remember dear King Robert Baratheon and how he found it really funny to pretend to be angry at something someone said…and how no one else did.

Power imbalances make people nervous, and rightly so.

Now, it’s possible to have a king people aren’t in fear of. But it largely requires making sure there’s some sort of actual legal structure preventing him from just ordering you into jail when you make a comment he doesn’t like. And for all Lienid’s a mary sue country, there’s no sign the author meant for the king to actually have less power than the rest. He’s just currently choosing not to use it, which lets him look very noble and ensures that if any future king is less noble, it’ll be right back to casual abuses, because obviously looking very noble is far more important than making sure people are protected.

If they wanted to make a point that the king was a great guy, he could be voluntarily giving up some powers in favor of a constitution. If Lienid is transitioning away from monarchy, that could also explain why the country’s so different in general.

Katsa hangs out with Metaleyes’ brother, Skye, who isn’t talkative. When she mentions this he says he’d love to talk/argue/ask a million questions, but he figures from her constant silence that she’s not a chatty person. It seems perfect boyfriendness is genetic.

Actually, it really is weird. Metaleyes’ ease with people was at the time largely an extension of his grace, which gave him a huge advantage there just as it did in a fight. But Skye’s ungraced yet seems pretty similar.

His company, and the friendly rumble of Ror’s voice below. The small kindnesses of the sailors toward Bitterblue when the girl came onto the cold deck for exercise. Captain Faun, who was so competent and so steady, and who always met Katsa’s eyes with respect. All these things comforted Katsa, and a tough little skin began to stretch across the wound that had opened in her when her dagger had hit Leck.

This is weird.

I mean, it’s the sort of thing you see a lot, really – the hero’s been traumatized and is now slowly healing through exposure to happy normal people. Except what upset her wasn’t anything traumatic that happened but her instinctive murder, and why would being around laughter heal that wound? We get a jumbled explanation that what really hurt Katsa was the loss of control, which also doesn’t seem like it has to do with laughter, and besides, that wasn’t just the dagger part, surely that was something Leck did in general –

Wait. Why the fuck wasn’t Katsa terrified of Leck?

She can’t stand mindreaders for just reading her thoughts. Her skin crawls at the thought of even non-mindreader psychics like the captain. Yet she was fine going into his kingdom and even after he’d hit her with his grace she kept asking Metaleyes to let her go with him and try again.

It had nothing to do with self-condemnation; she couldn’t blame herself for what had happened

Uh. Yes, it did. You were bothered that when all you knew was you wanted the person to stop talking, you did so by throwing a dagger down his throat. It was one of the only moments you raised a valid point for angst instead of inane whining. Please don’t take that away from me.

Suddenly, Skye says he’s got to ask her why the people on the boat all call her princess if she’s not Metaleyes’ wife, because I guess it didn’t occur to Katsa to use her princess powers to order them to shut up about the princess thing. So she shows the ring and said Metaleyes didn’t tell her what it meant at the time.

Anyway, that’s all for the boat. They get to Monsea and start explaining that Leck was actually evil, and also, did anyone find Metaleyes?

“Has . . . has who?” the captain of the Monport guard asked, stupidly, his hand to his head, his manner afflicted with a vagueness the Lienid party recognized.

I’m wondering how the fact Leck’s people act like they’re heavily drugged was somehow overlooked this whole time. Even if you assume the grace also meant no one thought this was weird, it’d have at least been noticed. People commenting on how weird and forgetful the kingdom is would have been some good foreshadowing.

Then Katsa gets into a fight with the king because she wants to rush out and get Metaleyes, and he says she needs to take a guard to explain to all the other soldiers they’ll run into that the orders to capture Katsa are revoked. Katsa says lol sure if they can keep up because Katsa is a dick. The king attempts reason, but sadly turns out to be a dick as well.

It does none of us any good at this juncture for you to barrel through Monsea with the queen of the kingdom on your horse, killing her soldiers left and right.

Also they are all innocent people who you shouldn’t murder.

But I guess no one would give a fuck if they weren’t Bitterblue’s property.

Bitterblue would make a good ruler someday. And Raffin a good king; and Ror was strong and capable and would live a long time. That was three of the seven kingdoms in good hands. Three of seven, however inadequate it seemed, would be a vast improvement.

So go kill the other ones. This sort of stuff is understandable from a normal person but Katsa is apparently unstoppable. If she wants the other four dead, they die.

Also the real moral is having kings is a bad idea.

A little further on one of the guards takes a shot at Skye thinking he’s Metaleyes and Katsa saves him and Skye promises to name his firstborn child after her and why is this book still going end already.

Katsa drives the horses on.

“I believe we’ve lamed one of the horses,” Skye called up to her, early one morning when they were so close she could feel her body humming with it. She stopped and turned to look back. Skye gestured to the horse he was leading. “See? I’m sure the poor beast is limping.”
The animal’s head drooped, and it sighed deeply through its nostrils. Katsa grasped for her patience. “It’s not limping,” she said. “It’s only tired, and we’re nearly there.”

Haha, they’re arguing over which way the poor animal’s been mistreated! Our hero, ever the joker.

Katsa begins to drag the poor animal by its halter because fuck humane treatment when a voice, thankfully, intervenes. It’s Metaleyes, who she immediately tackles.

Po shook the hands of the smiling, exhausted guards and led the party, lame horse and all, up to his cabin.

I

The author just doesn’t know what lame means. No one ask her this on facebook, I don’t want to find out otherwise. She must think it means the horse isn’t walking right but not understand that it’s the horse not putting weight on its leg because doing so causes horrible pain. It doesn’t mean the horse has to walk slower. It means you stop and try to find out what’s wrong right then before the horse gets worse. In the event you can’t, you do not want to keep walking it up a mountain unless you have no other choice.

Mysteriously, we have three chapters to go.