Last time, Metaleyes is a lying liar.

Katsa bursts into the room, raging. Metaleyes decides now is the time to confess, but Katsa says it first.

He says he’s not a mind reader. He just can sense where people are. And also sense what they’re thinking.

Katsa points out that’s mindreading. Okay buuuut it’s only when people are thinking about him! Because that’s totally different okay!

Wow, Metaleyes turned into a dick fast.

Instead of eviscerating him as she wanted to do with the little girl, Katsa lets him keep talking.

“Please, Katsa,” Po said. “Please hear me. I can’t sit and listen in to whatever thoughts I want. I don’t know what you think of Raffin, or what Raffin thinks of Bann, or whether Oll enjoys his dinner. You can be behind the door running in circles and thinking about how much you hate Randa, and all I’ll know is that you’re running in circles – until your thoughts turn to me. Only then do I know what you’re feeling.”

Katsa keeps thinking she’s been horribly betrayed by the fact he lied to her and he was only so understanding because of mindreading, and it’s kind of irritating.

I mean, what was the point of the earlier chapters establishing she’s irrationally hateful toward mindreaders? She won’t even get near the guy who can sense your mood if he touches you, who seems pretty innocuous. She was vicious toward the girl who could tell what a person desired. But someone who can sense her and tell exactly what she thinks if she thinks of him, and she’s just upset for the obvious reasons? If this wasn’t meant to be a sticking point because she hates mindreaders in excess of what she should, then why establish it?

But instead her justifiable rage is treated as the excessive nonsense, with Ragamuffin there telling her to calm down like this is no big deal.

Also, Metaleyes does seem to have two graces – one is sense everything and the other is know what people think of you. Not only does this break with the idea that you only get one grace, but if the graces are random, why would you get ones so incredibly close to each other?

“No,” he said. “No. I have lied, Katsa, but my friendship has not been a pretense. I’ve always been your true friend.”

Also, Metaleyes has suddenly become stupid, since the last thing he should do right now is respond to her thoughts like this and she’s probably thinking exactly that at him, so he shouldn’t have needed her to scream at him to knock it off.

Metaleyes explains no one knew except his mom and, for some reason, grandfather. Convenient, since the grandfather’s presumably overheard this whole shouting match. Also, it seems he just told Ragamuffin (?) who’s the only other person in the room.

Well. She would take care of that problem. For Giddon was right, though he couldn’t have realized why. Po was not to be trusted. People must know, and she would tell everyone.
“If you do,” Po said, “you’ll take away any freedom I have. You’ll ruin my life.”

So, on the one hand, yes, it’ll screw up Metaleyes’ life. On the other hand, he does seem to be using the gift to be supernaturally trustworthy, which is kind of a problem and a valid reason for her to spill the beans. I’m not sure it’s quite worth fucking up his life over, but he’s the one who created a situation where other people need to know, so it’s not really fair to just look at it in terms of how she can’t do it because it’ll be bad for him. He’s not making an argument that the harm it does to him would outweigh the comparative good it does to others, which seems quite possible, instead he’s acting as if that half of the argument doesn’t exist.

Also, any freedom? Really? He’s still super useful running around the kingdoms, even if he won’t get as warm a welcome. There’s no need to protect him as a valuable asset, because he’s probably really hard to assassinate. It’ll suck, sure, but he’s currently got an absurd amount of freedom, and even with his grace revealed and that restricted, it’s still way more than the average peasant.

Remember peasants? They’re the people who work themselves to death so you can run around being so free having an awesome life.

Katsa cannot emotions any further, so she just starts crying and runs off.

She goes to see her servant, because her servant is FEMALE and this is a FEMALE THING because it involves being upset at a BOY.

something has upset you,” Helda said. “It’ll be one of your young men.”
One of her young men. One of her friends. Her list of friends was dwindling, from few to fewer. “I’ve disobeyed the king,” she said. “He’ll be very angry with me.”
“Yes?” Helda said. “But that doesn’t account for the pain in your eyes. That will be the doing of one of your young men.”
…
“If the king is angry with you,” Helda said, “and if you’re having trouble with one of your young men, then we’ll make you especially beautiful for the evening. You’ll wear your red dress.”
Katsa almost laughed at that bit of Helda logic, but the laugh got caught in her throat.

Young men! And dresses! Female “logic”!

So, let’s consider emotions here.

I’ve complained before that aggressive/male-aligned female characters pay for it by being emotionally broken compared to similar male characters. We’ve had something like that with Metaleyes, but we’ve just seen that there’s actually a reason for this.

But it’s like, well, like how on TvTropes some editors will run around saying such-and-such is a “justified trope” as if that means it’s somehow beyond reproach. There’s an in-story reason why things are going the same way as usual, but it doesn’t take much more effort to explain that it’s justified for Katniss to be the most emotionally broken because backstory. The fact the author put something in to make it concrete in this instance doesn’t do anything about the problem of “strong” female protagonists always being broken.

To see this, you need only to look at the rest of the cast. All of the boys are miles better at emotions than she is. On the other side we have only Helga, who isn’t outright crippled emotionally – that would get in the way of revolving around Katsa – but can only handle emotions in instinctive female ways. She knows Katsa has a GIRL PROBLEM but her only solution is a GIRL SOLUTION that has no meaning to Katsa. Indeed, Katsa’s only opinion on colors is she doesn’t like red because it reminds her of blood, so assuming clothing has any effect, it’s just going to make her think she’s a terrible person every time she notices. I assume it won’t even do that much, because she’ll forget she’s wearing it in five seconds and go practice her tumbling skills in the barn. Point is, Helga has no special insight whatsoever, she’s just going through an instinctual framework meant to apply for all girls – Katsa is a girl and needs a woman around to tell her girl things, Katsa is a girl and so her problems must be about romance, Katsa is a girl and so dresses solve problems.

(Also, considering Pandaman is apparently such an asshole, hearing she pissed him off should make Helga worried for her own sake, since Pandaman is surely not above punishing the servants of someone who disobeyed him.)

Then, Ragamuffin shows up to say that he just heard about what she did with the lord. He says that he supports her, but he can’t actually do anything, his dad doesn’t give a fuck about him.

Raffin considered her for a moment. He started to speak, then stopped. His eyes were very gentle. “Dear Katsa,” he finally said. “You’ve had a rough few days, what with Randa and Giddon and Po.”

See? Compare that to Helga’s behavior. The boys are winning the emotion-off by several miles.

So Ragamuffin says that look at it from Metaleyes’ POV. Can’t you imagine how much it would have sucked for him if everyone knew his grace and they all used or…shunned…him oh right sorry Katsa. But anyway, he’s had some great ideas for leads on the kidnapping case, why doesn’t she go talk to him? She says she doesn’t want to be around a mindreader. Really, Ragamuffin, you know she’s got issues with them.

He responds by saying Metaleyes is leaving the court…FOR GOOD! No, seriously:

“He’s leaving the court,” Raffin said, “for good.

Katsa responds as expected.

She seemed unable to control this strange water that flowed into her eyes.

With her now too confused and miserable to object, he says he’ll get Metaleyes to talk to her.

See, this is why I just can’t take the criticism of Giddy seriously. It’s not like Ragamuffin’s any different when it comes to assuming he knows what she wants better than she does. And Katsa’s at least admitted that she doesn’t mind being around kids, she’s just sure she doesn’t want them, while her reaction to mindreaders has been nothing but terror and revulsion.

What makes this worse is that up until now, it’s seemed Katsa was acting within expected norms for her culture, and indeed the entire argument for why he didn’t tell is based around the idea people don’t like mindreaders. Yet Ragamuffin’s acting as if she has no real basis for feeling this way. He doesn’t seem to have any sympathy for why she’d feel this way, yet alone a trace of similar disquiet toward Metaleyes. If Katsa was unique in her phobia, I could understand people thinking she’d be happier if she let it go, but if it’s accepted that this is a normal reaction, why insist Katsa’s wrong for it?

All of this goes away if he isn’t actually a mindreader, incidentally. If his power really is just sensing location, with maybe a degree of sensing emotion from that, it’d still be close enough I could see Katsa reacting horribly because she’s got issues while other characters tried to explain it isn’t actually that bad. If she was saying she didn’t want to be near him ever again because he’d read her thoughts when he can’t actually do that, then Ragamuffin ignoring her objection makes sense.

But anyway. Metaleyes shows up and Katsa goes to stare out a window and it’s apparently not quite autumn yet and maybe this symbolizes something? It doesn’t seem to.

Metaleyes is curious how she found out, and insists he can’t tell from mindreading, so she tells about Giddy and how there were other hints.

He claims he was being obvious about it because he secretly wanted to tell her. Ugh. What is this, babby’s first crush?

And that did not absolve him. He had taken her thoughts without telling her, and he had wanted to tell her, and that did not begin to absolve him.
“I couldn’t tell you, Katsa, not possibly,” he said, and she swung around to face him.
“Stop it! Stop that! Stop responding to my thoughts!”
“I won’t hide it from you, Katsa! I won’t hide it anymore!”

This is impossible to take seriously.

Metaleyes insists she let him explain, again.

“Almost all of your thoughts are your own,” he said. “My Grace only shows me how you stand in relation to me. Where you are nearby physically, and what you’re doing; and any thoughts or feelings or instincts you have regarding me. I-I suppose it’s meant to be a kind of self-preservation,” he finished lamely.

Since when are graces “meant” to be anything? God, book. You have one simple type of magic. It has all of two rules: graces are inexplicable and you only get one grace. How hard is it to not break those? Or, if you were going to break them, how about not giving those two rules when you introduced the concept! EDITING!

Anyway, this sort of thing is behind his weird behavior like deciding she was trustworthy when she first met him in the courtyard.

What would you have done differently, Katsa, if this were your Grace and your secret? Hidden yourself in a hole and dared to burden no one with your grievous friendship? I will have friends, Katsa. I will have a life, even though I carry this burden.”

Ugh.

It’s not a burden. It would be a burden if you told the truth, instead of keeping a secret so none of your friends would know and be able to choose if they wanted to keep being around you. But keep insisting Katsa owes you forgiveness, Metaleyes! That’s really going over well.

He’s getting steadily more dickish. The original explanation that he had to keep it secret in general lest specific people keep him at home was rational, if not very well justified by what we’ve seen from the universe. But this has rapidly turned into him being owed friendship, and he keeps not leaving when Katsa says she doesn’t forgive him. Stop trying to badger her into it, asshole.

“You would have me friendless, Katsa,” he finished quietly. “You would have my Grace control every aspect of my life and shut me off from every happiness.”
She didn’t want to hear these words, words that called to her sympathy, to her understanding. She who had hurt so many with her own Grace, and been reviled because of it.

It’s actually not that similar. It would be closer to if Katsa was not, in fact, able to control her violence, but kept it a secret so people weren’t aware she might at any point punch them in the stomach. But even though Katsa’s grace isn’t actually harmful and she has a much better case for being unfairly rejected, we’ve never seen her even consider trying to make friends with someone who doesn’t know about it.

Also, again, you’re a fucking prince with a castle. Unless you’d lose both of those if people knew you were a mindreader, no, it would not destroy every bit of your life.

But Katsa’s been successfully worn down and starts asking him about how he’s such a good fighter.

“But you’re too good. You must have a fighting Grace as well. You couldn’t fight me so well if you didn’t.”

So I guess we have confirmation now that graces do pile up. Which then makes the whole idea of waiting for a kid to show their grace and then figuring it’s done with weirder. Maybe Katsa also had a bring-people-back-from-the-dead grace or something, how would they know?

Anyway, he says that no, she’s the better fighter. She always wins and she’s holding back. He isn’t, at all. She could totally kill him!

Katsa considers this. Yeah, she totally could.

She asks more about his grace.

It’s not always exact. And it’s always changing. I’m still growing into it.

Oh boy. I thought it was odd that mindreaders were specifically mentioned to have this aspect to their power, and it’s to set this up.

None of the other graces function like this. And he’s an adult by this point, when will he grow into it?

Also his range varies by person and he can feel her super-well. Better than his grandfather, it’d seem. Oh, and he couldn’t sense animals but now he’s starting to. And he’s super sad and Katsa feels bad because it’s not his fault.

He says he’s going to see Leck’s court, because there’s been weird things going on, plus his aunt was never the sort of person to go into hysterics over anything.

Katsa emos because she’s glad he’s going but also not and she’s so confused because how is that possible????????

He says he’d like her to come with him if she doesn’t hate him forever.

Thank god, someone interrupts all this to say the king wants to see Katsa right this second and if she doesn’t he’s sending his whole guard for her. Welp. Katsa considers not going just to laugh when the guard shows up.

Oh, Po, if he angers me, I fear I’ll want to kill him. And what if he threatens me and gives me no choice?”

Why do you – or anyone really, save him – care? Also if you don’t want to go you could just leave now.

Metaleyes gives her a pep talk about how only Katsa controls Katsa’s actions, and more modern self-help bullshit that has no place in this setting. She just needs to remember that she’s decided not to hurt him.

She says it’s not true that she can do whatever she wants, since she can’t stop Metaleyes from mindreading, which, not at all what he meant.

“You could kill me.”
“I couldn’t,” she said, “for you would know I meant to kill you, and you’d escape me. You’d stay far away from me, always.”
“Ah, but I wouldn’t.”
“You would,” she said, “if I wished to kill you.”
“I wouldn’t.”

A great illustration of how romantic so often overlaps with creepy. It’s not particularly bad here, since he’s not actually saying he’d refuse to go unless she killed him, but there’s the awkward implication when he first suggests it as a way to make him stop reading her thoughts, so it boils down to “I want you to not do a thing and can’t make you” -> “You could make me not do it if you killed me, which you would have to do because I wouldn’t leave even knowing that”. Which is incredibly manipulative given she doesn’t want to kill him and he knows it, and given that he’s already shown up once after she made it clear she didn’t want to be around him.

Admittedly, he is saying he’ll leave, but that’s not because she wants him gone.

Anyway, time to go see the king. Or not, because that’s the end of this chapter.