The next morning, Chaol bursts into her room and Cally comes up swinging a candlestick.  In spite of the fact that every other instance had her lazing about like a spoiled cat.  There’s no real rhyme or reason to the difference.  One day she does X, the next day she does Y.  Y?  Just because.

Chaol demands to know where she was last night, because another Champion has been found murdered.

She flicked her eyes to him, then back to her nails.

Cally persists in being flippant whenever possible.  Y?  Just because.  This isn’t the kind of situation where flippancy will help her at all, and also, your peers are being murdered!  Show some interest!

“And I suppose you think I did it?”

“I’m hoping you didn’t, as the body was half-eaten.”

If you don’t think she did it, then why are you bursting in and demanding to know where she was last night?

Her stomach felt tight—another Champion murdered. Did it have to do with whatever evil Elena had mentioned?

YA THINK?

This really should have been an issue after the second murder, not the third.  Obviously she didn’t need to think that it was an ‘evil’ doing it, but surely it was obvious that someone was picking off these criminals.  At the very least she could have assumed it was infighting, someone quietly culling the competition, but no.  Cally isn’t allowed to make any guesses except correct ones, therefore she’s not going to worry about anything until all the relevant plot coupons have been collected.

Guys, really, I cannot reiterate how much it is OKAY TO HAVE YOUR CHARACTER BE WRONG.  Really.  It’s fine.  In fact, ignoring obvious theories just because you, the author, know they’re not right makes the character look oblivious.  Take a hint from crime dramas in this case.  You know the first person the cops arrest didn’t do it, but they have to investigate every possibility and rule them out, rather than just sit with their thumbs up their asses until a convenient ghost explains everything.

“Cain is the most likely candidate. You’re from Anielle—you should know more than anyone how they are in the White Fang Mountains.”

…okay, but we don’t.  Is cannibalism part of their culture?  Maybe the use of hunting animals, to explain the ‘eaten’ part?  Do they sacrifice the organs of their slain enemies?

Oh, I see, you’re shoving everything under the heading of “it’s just in their genes.”  Fuck you, and fuck you fantastical racism, too.

“And I’m the Crown Prince’s Champion!” She flipped her hair over a shoulder. “I should think that means I can accuse whomever I please.”

Oh my god, just die already.

Chaol leaves after learning that she was in her room all night (or close enough) and Cally gets the morning to herself since he’s busy with murder investigations.  Further begging the question of why the hell he’s in charge of her in the first place. Cally tries to convince herself that the weird things she heard in the tomb last night didn’t eat this last victim.  Because it’s not bad enough that she ignores obvious-but-wrong answers, now she’s even ignoring the obvious correct answer, too.  Figuring out stuff is hard, let’s just go ask the ghost to hand us all the answers, instead.

Really, WTF, book?  Is “did the weird demon monsters eat people or not?” really the mystery you want to stick to?  There’s so many other tracts you could take.  Like “What are the weird demon monsters?” and “Are they after me next?” and “How do I stop them?”

Cally goes back to the tomb to look for clues.

There was nothing here that explained Elena’s motives. Or what the source of this mysterious evil might be. Absolutely nothing.

THE FUCKING CLOCK TOWER.  That’s not even a clue; it was blatantly spelled out for you.  The gargoyles on the clock tower are magic.

Since she can’t find any clues and has decided to ignore the bleedingly obvious, Cally instead mopes around about how she has this destiny and it’s just so hard to be special, you guys!  In fact, it’ so hard that she’s just not going to do it.

No, really.

And besides, if Elena wanted her to be the King’s Champion so badly, then she couldn’t spend all her time hunting down whatever this evil was. It would probably hurt her chances of winning, actually. Celaena huffed. She’d focus on becoming King’s Champion. And then, if she won, she’d go about finding this evil.

Maybe.

Later, Cally gets escorted to the library.

She smiled at the young chevaliers they passed—and smirked at the court women who eyed her pink-and-white gown. She couldn’t blame them; the dress was spectacular. And she was spectacular in it.

God you’re so smug.  I just want to…like…

Along the way they find the body of the latest murder victim.  Because apparently Cally’s guards were too stupid to say “wait, no, let’s not go down that hallway.”  And the other guards in the palace were too stupid to go “hey, maybe we should block this hallway off so that every rubbernecker in the building doesn’t stop by.”

Anyway, seems the guy wasn’t really half-eaten so much as just flayed and had his organs removed.  Which…is absolutely nothing even like ‘half-eaten.’  Chaol, you suck at your job.

This was no accidental killing.

When the fuck did anyone ever imply that it was? 

Also, there’s more strange wyrdmarks on the wall.  Cally continues to fail to put two and two together.

She sees Grave watching the whole scene too.  And that…yeah, amounts to absolutely nothing.

POV switch to Dorian and Chaol sparring.  Not sparring very well, since they manage to have an entire conversation about Cally at the same time.  Heaven forbid we go a whole page without someone talking about Cally!  They talk about utterly pointless stuff, like “I wonder what’s going on with these murders” and “I have no idea where the king went.”  Wow, thanks for that riveting insight.

Next chapter, CALLY FINALLY GOES TO THE CLOCK TOWER! 😀

Of course, it’s only to stand there and stare at it morosely.  

Nemmy comes by so they can chat about how ugly the gargoyles are.

“And I’m afraid the Wyrdmarks don’t help,” Celaena said. A Wyrdmark was at her feet, and she glanced to the others. There were twelve of them all together, forming a large circle around the solitary tower. She hadn’t the faintest idea what any of it meant. None of the marks here matched the three she’d spotted at Xavier’s murder site, but there had to be some connection.

Good god, how dense can you possibly be?  When you first got to this castle you practically creamed yourself over how awesome the library was and gave a little smug soliloquy about how powerful information is. 

JKR WROTE AN ELEVEN YEAR OLD WHO CAN FIGURE THIS OUT, WHY IS IT APPARENTLY SO HARD FOR YOU TO JUST GO RESEARCH THINGS YOU DON’T KNOW?

Nemmy says she can’t read them, then tells Cally she shouldn’t try and figure out because ‘nothing good will come of it.’  Cally, naturally, does not follow up on this incredibly suspicious comment.

Instead they talk about the weather.

Then they talk about the murder, and Nemmy is very interested in getting a description of the scene, and good god, book, stop it.  Look at yourself.  You are literally repeating the exact same description we got last chapter with absolutely no new information added.  What is the point of this?

Also, I’m adding Nemmy’s epithets to the drinking game.  I’ve only been counting them for Cally, Chaol, and Dorian so far, because I don’t want VL to die from alcohol poisoning, but Nemmy’s getting important enough to warrant inclusion.

Cain shows up and mocks both of them.  He taunts Cally by revealing that he knows she’s holding back and he knows who she really is.  And…okay?  So?  Cally’s done nothing but whine about not getting attention, so it stands to reason that she didn’t keep her identity that secret before now.  And apparently the other competitors aren’t really going all Hunger Games on each other, so the advantage from playing weak doesn’t seem to be as great as anticipated.  So…oo, burn?  I don’t get it, what’s the big deal here?

Nemmy pulls Cally away before things can break out in a fist fight, so once again we get to see Cally talk big but not follow through.

She’s got access to secret tunnels under the castle; why doesn’t she do some assassin shit and take Cain out if he’s really so terrible?  Or at least do something petty and vindictive; that seems more Cally’s style.

POV switch to Dorian and Chaol, who are watching her train, because apparently they both have nothing better to do.

“I think if she doesn’t get too riled and keeps a cool head when they duel, she might. But she’s … wild. And unpredictable. She needs to learn to control her feelings—especially that impossible anger.”

World’s Best Assassins aren’t known for being wild and prone to fits of anger.

No, really.  That’s a disadvantage in the field.

Chaol didn’t know if it was because of Endovier, or just being an assassin; whatever the cause of that unyielding rage, she could never entirely leash herself.

This is the point in the book where I don’t even know which way to be mad at it, because it’s fucked things up so badly.  We know Cally has a temper issue because she shakes with rage at every tiny slight and comment.  We know she’s got entitlement issues and severe lack of empathy and nowhere near the amount of professionalism that she should have from a lifetime of martial arts training. 

On the other hand, she’s also nowhere near what these two are describing.  In her actions, she’s been sarcastic and short tempered, but she’s never flown off the handle.  She hasn’t done anything.  And I mean anything.  She gets angry, but she’s never lost control.  She hasn’t even managed any quiet sabotage!

The book wants to display her as this super cool assassin, and it wants to display her as having a deep-seated anger issue, and it’s failed at doing both.  So I end up alternate complaining that she’s too angry and that she’s not angry enough, depending on what the book claims at the moment.

Going by what we’ve seen, Cally is no more or less angry than your average teenager with a chip on her shoulder.

Also, Dorian still has a crush on Cally, just in case anyone forgot what kind of book we’re reading.

A few days later, Cally finally goes to the library.  She can’t find anything about the wyrdmarks.

The more she knew about what this killer wanted—why and how he was killing—the better. That was the real threat to be dealing with, not some mysterious, inexplicable evil Elena had mentioned.

Your stupidity is physically hurting me.

Chaol is there, too, and she wonders if she should tell him about her research.

Shouldn’t Chaol already know?  I mean, maybe not that she’s looking into it, but he did see the marks at the crime scene as well.  Why isn’t he looking into them independently?

What were Wyrdmarks, and where did they come from? […]They’d been all over Elena’s tomb, too. An ancient religion from a forgotten time

They’re magic.  They’re all over a clock tower that’s a portal to another world, part of an ancient religion, used in a clearly ritualistic murder… This isn’t hard, Cally.  They’re magic.  You even know magic is real; you used it within your lifetime, so it’s not like it should be a foreign concept or some far-out-there theory.

Chaol asks what she’s looking into, so she tells him about the marks, but implies that it’s just because they saw them at the tower.  Even though, again, Chaol has seen the murder marks himself.  We get some information, finally.

Some books claim the Wyrd is the force that holds together and governs Erilea—and not just Erilea! Countless other worlds, too.”

Horribly unclear information, but at least something.  They also say it’s not included as part of their religion, which apparently has one goddess and many gods.

It’s interesting: some theories suggest the Mother Goddess is just a spirit from one of these other worlds, and that she strayed through something called a Wyrdgate and found Erilea in need of form and life.”

“That sounds a little sacrilegious,” he warned.

Okay, but why?  What belief is it going against?

There’s another ‘theory’ that there was a civilization from before the Mother Goddess came, and they left behind ruins that are even older than the Fae.

Ever notice in books that whenever ‘some myths say’ something, it’s without fail spot on correct and there’s no conflicting myths or stories ever mentioned?  Just once I’d like to get “well, no one’s ever seen it before, but some myths say it’s about yea tall and shiny.  Some other ones say it’s a box.  There’s a whole religion over here that thinks it’s an invisible pyramid in the clouds.  Again, no one’s seen it.”

“As you said, these sound like radical and outlandish theories.”

This is a fantasy world where magic is real and mysteriously went missing all on its own 10 years ago and fairies are real and somehow it’s possible to make castles out of glass.  You have not given me the proper context to start calling anything outlandish, because we have no rules for the world that would prohibit these things.

Also, Cally continues to fail to connect ‘wyrdgate’ with ‘the gargoyles are guarding a portal to a different dimension.’

Magic had been wiped away on the king’s orders;

NO IT DIDN’T, IT LEFT ALL ON ITS OWN, WHY CAN’T YOU KEEP YOUR OWN WORLD STRAIGHT AND JUST GOD DAMNIT BOOK!

Cally finds a book called The Walking Dead on her pile of books, and she doesn’t remember putting it there.

Jeeze, you couldn’t think of any other title?

The book is full of illustrations of creepy demons.  As she looks through it, there’s weird groaning and scraping noises coming from places unknown that only she can here.  She gets freaked out and asks Chaol if he heard that, and he’s running a knife along the ground to make that weird scratching noise?  Why?  He doesn’t know that she’s reading a book about demons, so why is he randomly trying to prank her?  Did he hear the noise as well and after that try to scare her?  Clearly the book is trying to toss and awkward red-herring my way, but it’s not convincing enough to actually make me think that the Obviously Ominous Book isn’t Obviously Ominous.  Instead, the whole scene is just awkward and confusing.

Drinking Game Count:  Epithets – 11, Bragging – 2, Exclamation Marks – 9

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