So, on the day before Halloween (when Diana is going to do her uber-time-walking episode), Hamish has decided to be a lawyer and do up a bunch of paperwork.  Still going on the idea that people will have to do stuff while Diana and Matthew are gone.  I’m still wondering why they can’t just return to five seconds after they leave.  I mean, it’s fucking time travel.  You don’t need a power of attorney for Diana’s affairs when it’s entirely possible that she’ll be ‘missing’ for a few minutes!  Instead everyone’s carrying on as if “There is no telling when Matthew and Diana will be back with us.”  All without one single word on why this is so.  Seriously, they’re talking about making arrangements for missing all of the next academic year.

Wasn’t one of the excuses for this trip the fact that they didn’t have enough time for Diana to learn magic before all hell breaks loose?

Oh, and part of this paperwork is the ‘marriage agreement’ between Diana and Matthew.  Agreement.  Not license.  They still aren’t legally married in any sense of the word.  But Matthew is giving her a third of his stuff.

You know, I’m kind of liking this plot, now.  I mean, probably just because it’s so silly, but still.  They aren’t in any way married, but she gets rich.  Matthew basically just went insane and started carrying on about this married stuff, and Diana is playing along because she loves him.  But if she decides to realize that he is, in fact, loco, she can up and run with no legal hang-ups at all and she gets to keep his stuff.

More paperwork talk.  Going on about how people are going to be shuffled around in the Knights of Lazarus with Matthew gone.  Normally, I like logistical stuff like this.  It’s why Lady Knight was one of my favorite Tamora Pierce novels.  But in this case, it all feels quite pointless.  I mean, we don’t know what any of this means, because we don’t have a proper context for it, and we know that Matthew’s just going to be his usual overbearing, controlling self once he gets back, so making someone else ‘grand master’ for a while doesn’t really have any sense of weight to it.

“Miriam believes that there will be a war. I disagree. This war has already started.”

HOW?  Where, who, and how are they fighting?  What war?  What are the effects of it?  How is it changing, harming, hindering, or doing anything to their society at all?  Fuck it, we don’t even really see their society, so we can’t know!

And if someone sits there and tells me it started because of Diana’s kidnapping, I’m going to slap them.  Diana is one person, not a fucking nation.  Kidnapping her counts as assault, not the entirety of a war.

They decide everyone should scatter and then meet at Ysabeau’s house, so the three daemons leave.  Then Diana time-walks Matthew back to France because…um, final practice?

My arms were so full of stuff to help me steer—one of his pens and two books from his study—that Matthew had to hold on to my waist.

I…just…how can you not hold two books and a pen?

They go and return within a few minutes, so they’re back in time for dinner.  And…apparently they can’t follow the same concept with the next time jump?

Then the next day Marcus and Miriam leave, and the goodbyes are long and drawn out and oh god I’m so bored.  So, so, so very bored.