Dorian and his father are having a chat.  Dorian wants to know what’s going to happen to Chaol for killing Cain.

“I think he killed him to defend Cel—to defend the assassin.”

“You think the life of an assassin is worth more than that of a soldier?”

1) Cain was a disgraced criminal, otherwise he wouldn’t be in the competition.  It’s not like he was going to go back and do soldierly things after this.  2) Cally was IN DORIAN’S LAP at the time.  Why not argue that Chaol was keeping the criminal with the sharp pointy knife away from the crown prince?  3) Cally had just been declared the king’s personal champion and Cain the looser, so yeah, it’s perfectly normal to assume that her life would take precedent.

Stop ignoring the obvious arguments just for the sake of engineering drama.  If there’s a logical explanation and/or counterargument to be had and you ignore it for the sake of the argument that you want to have, then you didn’t set the scene up right.

The whole scene is moot, however, because the king never intended to punish Chaol anyway.

The king doesn’t think Cally should be his champion in spite of winning.

“She was rather disgraceful at the duel; I don’t know if I can have a blubbering woman as my Champion, poison or no.

Well, that depends; if this is a public position then he has a bit of a point.  Doing public duels in the place of the king means keeping up appearances mid-fight for the honor of the king as well.  If he wants her to just go kill people, then this is stupid.  No one would know if she blubbered before, during, and after.

And yeah, she was poisoned and had a lot of shit going on, but he doesn’t know that.  From his perspective, she just got her ass beat and then started crying and flailing a lot for no reason.  Any argument against this ‘blubbering’ statement should include an explanation of what happened and why it won’t happen again.

If she’d been really good, she would have noticed the poison before she drank.

This, on the other hand, is completely valid.

“Everything she’s done, she did to survive.”

“Survive? Is that the lie she told you? She could have done anything to survive, but she chose killing.

And another good point.  Damn, I’m starting to side with King McEvilson.

What a politician she’d have made if she had been born a man!”

More confirmation that women have no political power and therefore Kate really was doing the only thing available to her by angling for the best marriage possible.  Fuck you, book.

In the end, the king does not decide to get rid of Cally, even though he gives no reason for changing his mind.  To cap off the scene, Dorian switches over to talking about Nemmy.  He argues that keeping her hostage would spark a full-on rebellion and they’re better off trying to ‘win her over.’  Um…I thought the idea was that you keep her hostage and tell people that she’s a guest.  Isn’t that how it usually plays out?  Well, at least he’s come up with something besides “no because reasons.”

Switch over to Cally, who wakes up all injured and bandaged. 

Celaena didn’t need a mirror to know that she was covered in nasty bruises. She frowned, and her face throbbed at the movement. Undoubtedly, she looked hideous.

Is that really your priority right now?

Nemmy comes in and gets straight to the point talking about her actions at the duel.  Apparently she has ‘gifts’ which allow her to see the same things Cally saw, only all the time and not just when she’s drugged.  And…apparently those things really were just visions, not tangibly present?  So she was screaming and flailing at them even though they weren’t hurting her?  Not that it would make her bad; that’s still scary and she was drugged and confused.  But I’m not drugged, and I’d like a clear answer.

Nemmy also explains that she pretended not to speak the language so people would be more inclined to talk around her, and she faked wanting lessons because she wanted a friend.

No word whatsoever on why she randomly dropped the act in the library at the most suspicious moment, though.  She also knows all about weirdmarks, but obviously she doesn’t admit to that because she’d be imprisoned for doing not-magic.

Then she goes on and on about how powerful weirdmarks are and how they can be used to do these huge powerful things and…say, why didn’t you use them when that army was invading your country?  Or did you and the book has decided that’s not worth talking about?

Nemmy continues to infodump the entire plot to us.  Most of it is either pointless or obvious.  Like, is anyone here shocked that Nemmy is a SPY?  Le gasp!  Who would have thought?

The next day, Dorian comes in without knocking, because what’s worse than barging into a girl’s room while she’s asleep?  Doing while she’s so injured she can’t even move!

He’s been all in a tizzy worrying about her because heaven forbid we forget this romance for a few minutes.  There’s lots of “goopy mush” and “let’s talk about the plot that everyone just read through” and god I hate it when books rehash their own plots via dialogue.  Yes, we know what happened.

We get to see the king’s POV for the first time and even he is just sitting around thinking about the plot.

Then he talks to Duke P about Kate.  Apparently they were doing something to her that gave her headaches, but we’re not sure what.  They just keep calling it ‘the power.’

The treachery of Lady Kaltain was disturbing, but had he known of Perrington’s plan to reveal her character

WOAH WOAH WOAH HOLD UP BOOK

WHAT THE FUCK

WHAT THE EVERLOVING FUCK

You do not admit that you’ve been using magic mind muckage and then claim that manipulating her is ‘revealing her true character’ in the same breath.  No.  No.  No.  Fuck you straight to hell.

Also, why is it Duke P gets off scott free for doing THE EXACT SAME THING as Kate, but with her it’s all evilness and punishment?  Your misogyny is showing again, book, and it’s not pretty.

Well, at least they also agree that whatever their power-using plan is, they still have use for Kate so she’s not going to be in the dungeons forever.  Small consolation, though.

Drinking Game Count:  Epithets – 16, Exclamation Marks – 3

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