Last time, they’re on a boat.

KATSA WAS IN the riggings with Red when she first saw Lienid. It was just how Po had described it; and it was unreal, like something out of a tapestry, or a song. Dark cliffs rose from the sea, snow-covered fields atop them. Rising from the fields a pillar of rock, and atop the rock, a city. Gleaming so bright that at first Katsa was sure it was made of gold.

I told you it’s the mary sue country.

Incidentally, as you may have guessed by the “was sure” qualifier, it is not a city made out of gold.

It’s just a city partially made out of gold.

a land so dramatically beautiful. The ship wound around the island kingdom, north and then west, and Katsa barely blinked. She saw beaches white with sand, and sometimes with snow.

In other words, the climate is apparently the same as everywhere else, so why their tomatoes are so special is beyond me. (Also, there are the special gold/silver trees Metaleyes is nicknamed after, and why can’t those be transplanted?)

I will say it’s a pretty picture, and sounds a lot like the pretty pictures people have and say would make a great setting. But it’s out of place here. This is the first (and given the book’s almost over, last) place to be described in detail.

A sailor tells her that it’s a shame she’s seeing it in winter because Lienid is so pretty in all the other seasons… Enough, book.

Her plans once they reached Po’s castle were vague. She would explore the building, learn its hiding places, and fortify it. She would set a guard, with whatever staff she found there.

How will any of that do you any good?

This is so irritating! She knows exactly how his grace works. You can’t hear his words or anyone else repeating them. Strengthening the walls won’t do you any good.

I would go with traps. His grace requires he be able to talk to you. Stay someplace hidden and let him walk in, then boiling oil or whatever horrible thing the castle’s designed for. You trained with torturers, you must know this shit.

If you want to be really clever – Katsa knows the limits of his grace but Leck doesn’t know how much she knows. As far as he knows, they did not have advance warning about his grace. That means he doesn’t know that Katsa knows that you’re vulnerable even when you already know. He’d more likely think she’d guess knowing would at least let you resist – she and Metaleyes seem to have been expecting this, and it’s probably what most people would expect.

So, set up a trap without everyone in the castle knowing about it. Take one of those people and tell them all about how Leck’s grace works and what a monster he is. Send that person out to tell Leck to go the hell away because they know about him and won’t fall for it.

Leck will immediately control them. If he’s even halfway bright, he’ll then ask what the castle’s defenses are. Then he’ll go in the way that the person he’s controlling to tell him the truth says is safe. Depending on how gritty the setting is, he can do anything from have the guy vouch for him to threatening to kill him to asking after the secret backdoor entrance to the castle that Katsa totally didn’t trap.

Just because something’s completely overpowered doesn’t make it unbeatable.

For a less involved plan, just find someone deaf and put a crossbow in their hands. Then, all you have to do is lure Leck into range. You don’t even need to hide the crossbow, he’ll assume he can just tell the person to put it down. This book doesn’t bother following its own rules, so it’s not clear if the power actually requires hearing, but there’s a pretty good chance.

Anyway, the sailor says the captain told him of Katsa’s other brilliant plan, and he’s accepted it.

“I’m glad,” Katsa said. “And I’m sorry.”
“It isn’t your doing, Lady Princess. It’s the doing of the monster who’s the King of Monsea.”

It is so totally Katsa’s doing.

The guy then wonders why Leck likes to torture animals. Katsa says it’s because he’s powerful.

“But everyone has some kind of power to hurt people,” Patch said. “It doesn’t mean they do.”
“I don’t know,” Katsa said, thinking of Randa and Murgon and the other kings and their senseless acts. “It seems to me that a fair number of people are happy to be as cruel as their power allows

And that’s why kings are bad!

You just drew a comparison to all the other kings!

What the fuck is the message of this book? People with mindrape powers enjoy mindrape, so hope they don’t become your country’s ruler? Kings do bad shit, so, uh, try not to be noticed? IF PEOPLE ABUSE THEIR POWER IN PROPORTION TO HOW MUCH THEY HAVE THEN YOU SHOULD WANT TO PREVENT ANY ONE PERSON FROM GETTING A SHITTON OF IT!

The guy then continues to ask leading questions and ones that should have been covered weeks ago by asking if Leck knows where they are.

He’ll look for her here eventually. Katsa says, though why this isn’t the first place he’d look is beyond me.

They get closer and Katsa reports that the king’s castle is huge in comparison to Pandaman’s, because if there’s one common feature of islands that are so desperate for space they build directly into overhanging cliffs, it’s that everything is huge.

Metaleyes’ castle, of course, is smaller, more akin to a large house than
a castle.

Katsa, let me just stop you here.

Do you know why people build castles?

No?

Okay, you apparently slept though your life. You make things of stone because people can’t break through it as easily. One day, after you transition to a constitutional monarchy and then the non-nobles slowly start to get some rights of their own and so on, normal people can build bigger houses.

Until then, housing comes in two forms: the giant place the nobles live in and the dirt hovels everyone else cowers in, because you live in a shithole. Describing a fucking castle as “basically a house” is like when people say they’re poor because of their three summer homes, only two are mansions.

A cliff reached up and out from the water, and the castle balanced at the cliff’s very edge. It looked as if it might tumble forward at any moment, as if the wind might find purchase in some crack in the foundations, and tip the castle, creaking and screaming, over the drop and into the sea. She could understand why the balconies were dangerous in winter. Some of them hung over empty space.

Actually no, the entire thing is dangerous. It’s not like anyone checked the cliff’s structural integrity beforehand. It will come down one day and you’re not going to know when unless there’s a stone-related disaster graceling somewhere to go with the weather-related one.

Anyway, point is it’s ridiculously hard to get to. You have to go up this long, winding path. So I guess they could just chuck rocks down and knock Leck off when he comes calling.

We have a burst of inexplicable realism with Katsa worrying about what’ll happen when she explains to the servants about the whole thing where she’s their new owner and by the way they can never leave and the castle is effectively under siege.

A guy comes to get them as soon as they get there and says to hurry up, the master and the whole family’s waiting for them.

Katsa looked up to see strangers sitting around the walls of a long room; and at the room’s end, smiling and appraising them through a single eye, King Leck of Monsea.

Huh. Well, I’m not sure how he got there so fast, but otherwise yeah, it’s not like this wasn’t the obvious place to look.

Well, no one knows Katsa’s grace is whatever Katsa feels like, so maybe he’ll tell her to jump off a cliff and “survival” will kick in to protect her.

It is a pretty creepy idea, I grant. In basically any other situation there’d be real tension. It’s just the way Katsa accomplishes everything makes it hard to feel any suspense.

There’s five chapters to go. Maybe she runs for it.