Last time, finally, Leck. His powers make no sense.

“She became hopeful when she saw me,” Po said, speaking quickly as they rushed through the trees. “Ashen did. At the sight of me her heart filled with hope, for Bitterblue.”
This hope was what directed their steps now. Ashen had hoped so hard for Po to find Bitterblue that she’d left him with a sense of a place she believed Bitterblue to be

“We’re replaced Metaleyes’ grace with a string of plot devices! Let’s see how long it takes anyone to notice.”

Anyway, so they’re running around the same forest as the soldiers, and at one point have to hide while one goes past.

the fellow never took his eyes from the ground. “Princess Bitterblue,” the man called. “Come now, Princess. Your father is very worried for you.”
The soldier wandered away, but it was a number of minutes before Katsa was able to climb down. She’d heard the man’s words, even with her hands over her ears. She’d fought against them, but still they’d clouded her mind. She sat in the tree, shuddering, while Po grasped her chin, looked into her eyes, and talked her through her confusion.

Why would that confuse Katsa? It’s not directed at her and the effect should only be “oh, the king’s worried”, not turn her whole brain to mush.

Finally, they find the area the kid’s in, and then Metaleyes senses where she’s hiding, but she won’t come out.

Po stood and turned to Katsa. He spoke in a low voice “She’s afraid of me. You must try.”
Katsa snorted. “You think she’ll be less afraid of me?”
“She’s afraid of me because I’m a man.

You also look like her mom, while Katsa has the same coloring as the kingdom hunting her, but sure, let’s reduce this to gender.

Between Katsa’s boobs and them saying they know the king’s grace, the kid comes out.

Oh, little girl, that doesn’t prove anything! And you were so smart, running away down a stream and hiding in a log and all that. Did you really think your father was above telling people to say he’s graced? He can just tell them to forget it again later, or kill them, or anything.

Really, this should be a major problem. The girl must know she can’t trust anyone at all, no matter what they say. Especially when her mother didn’t say anything about some cousin, and even if there was one, he’d be controlled by the grace too. So the challenge shouldn’t be getting her to trust them, but just getting her at all. The only thing that matters now is actions – if they drag her out kicking and screaming and don’t bring her to her dad, then they’re really not under his control and she’ll calm down.

What’s most irritating is that they don’t need to talk her out, because Metaleyes can sense her.

They’d need to talk her out if they didn’t know where she was and were just calling to her because they thought she was in the general area, and it’s possible that could work – kids make mistakes and she’s desperate, so she could convincingly gamble that guy-who-looks-like-Mom and small-harmless-looking-woman, who both look nothing like the people in Leck’s court or the soldiers, are there to help her.

But instead she doesn’t want to come out because she knows she can’t trust them just because they say they’re here to help, then changes her mind on the basis on them saying they’re here to help a bit more. Since her going willingly isn’t necessary when she’s a little girl and they’re both super fighters, it can’t be justified on the basis it was needed for things to progress.

Poor Bitterblue is blue with cold! Katsa was apparently daydreaming through wilderness survival training because her grace told her to, so she figures she can just put some jackets on top of a soaking wet kid and it’ll work out.

In the event you’re ever fleeing from a magic king and need to deal with this: remove the wet clothes, then open up your jacket and pick the kid up, dumbass. You are warmer than your jacket. People about to die of hypothermia do not magically return to normal temperatures if you put another layer on them!

Unless that’s their grace, I guess.

Anyway, while they’ve been easily avoiding soldiers this whole time, suddenly there’s lots of soldiers coming their way! Because!

So they have to murder them. Metaleyes and Katsa are both worried the men will say something and confuse Katsa, so they try to do it as fast as possible. There’s seventeen men and seven are dead in the first attack, so clearly, Katsa just sniping Leck was a perfectly good plan.

The bodies of the dead slumped from their horses to the ground, and the bodies of the living jumped after them, pulling swords from sheaths, yelling, screaming unintelligibly, a mindful one or two drawing arrows.

Somehow that doesn’t affect Katsa despite the fact we’ve seen the content of the message doesn’t seem to be what makes it work.

Anyway, when it’s over they’ve killed a score of innocent men! Luckily this, like all stories, will be avoiding the ethical issues created by mindcontrol.

Bitterblue’s knife back to her and found the girl standing, arms crossed against the cold, eyes alert now, lucid. Katsa glanced down at her bloody clothing. She found herself hoping the child hadn’t witnessed the massacre of men.
“I feel warmer,” Bitterblue said.

Apparently Katsa’s survival grace also covers making whatever she does count as good wilderness survival.

“You’ll have to kill the king,” she said, “if you ever want him to stop chasing us.”
Katsa looked at this child, who barely came up to her chest. Po’s sleeves hanging almost to the girl’s knees; her eyes and her nose big under her hood, too big for her little face. Her voice a squeak. But a calmness in her manner of speaking, a certainty as she recommended her father’s murder.

Even for this book that’s some particularly bad writing.

Also I can’t figure out what the big deal is. It seems she and her mom could resist the guy’s grace and they don’t have a graced immunity, so they must be really, really certain he’s evil to be pulling that off. At least that’s how I’d expect it to work. So, of course she wouldn’t have any problem with killing her dad – if she had any lingering emotional ties that’d probably be enough for the grace to get to forget and trust the soldiers long enough to be recaptured.

And even without that, Katsa has done her raised by wolves bit a few times about having no idea how families work, and the only father/child relationship she knows of is Ragamuffin and Pandaman, where the only issue she expects Ragamuffin would have at her killing his dad is that then he’d have to exile her. The only other parent she’s in contact with is Helga, who supposedly loved her son but for no discernible reason left the kid to be harassed and hated by the rest of the town so she could come to the capital and pick out dresses for Katsa. Katsa shouldn’t think anything of a kid wanting a parent dead.