After dropping off Old Prince with Young Prince, Princess Katsa runs all the way to where her two buddies are waiting to meet up with her.

She had to move carefully now, lest she break branches or leave boot prints and create a trail straight to the meeting place. Already the way looked a bit traveled. Oll and Giddon and the others on the Council were never as careful as she

You can’t even attribute this to her magic, since that’s all fighting and/or killing.  Now the book is just hammering in that she’s better than everyone else because…it wants her to be better than everyone else.  I guess.  Unless there’s a reason for these other Council members to not take things seriously, this line here has no point besides bragging.

“And if someone had discovered you,” she said, “sleeping at the edge of the forest when you were supposed to be halfway to the eastern border?” She spoke into her saddle and scratched her horse’s shoulder. “What explanation would you have given?”

…they same thing as if someone found them awake?  The problem with being discovered is that they’re in the wrong place, and they’d be in the wrong place no matter what their state of consciousness. 

So, the group carries on, riding their horses hard to get to their destination on time despite taking a day long side trip. 

…you…can’t actually do that on a horse, though.  True, they switch horses.  Once.  I don’t think that’s really enough, though.

We finally get some more information on the council.  Katsa started it, because of course.

What had she expected when she’d started the Council? She’d imagined herself, alone, sneaking through passageways and around corners, an invisible force working against the mindlessness of the kings. “I never even imagined it spreading beyond me.”

…which is to say she didn’t really start a “council” she just started doing stuff.  Maybe?  How do you “start” a “council” of one person?

The point of this council thing is just to do vaguely good works to counteract the bad works of the kings because once again NO ON ELSE ON THIS ENTIRE CONTINENT DOES ANYTHING except for kings.  And as they keep doing good things, more people keep joining in the good-thing-party.

Did you know one of the Nanderan borderlords brought an entire village behind his walls when the Council learned of a Westeran raiding party?

…um, you mean, he did his job?

Literally, that’s his job.  That’s the entire reason he has a castle.  Bringing in villages and protecting them is why castles were built.  It’s their sole purpose.  Why am I supposed to be impressed by this?

If a lord isn’t protecting his people, then why are they not rebelling against him?

Here’s the thing about feudal societies.  They’re not very stable.  They existed for two reasons: life was hard and shitty and fighting was harder and shittier.  When you spend all your time digging up rocks out of your field in the hopes of growing enough to eat, you don’t have time for anything else.  So if someone else decides they don’t like digging up rocks and wants to steal your food, you don’t have the time or the energy or the resources to stop them.  So labor got divided into “growing food” and “making sure no one else steals your food” and the fighters spent all their time learning to fight.  Then it got more complex from there, but basically, the entire feudal system is a division of labor that came about because it’s really fucking hard to grow food in medieval times.  Lords came about because there was a job that needed to be done, namely protecting the food-growers and keeping order.

If you’re a serf, your life sucks, but it’s still a life because the lords protect you.  If they’re not protecting you, you have no reason to care if they have an army or not, because you’re dead either way.  Dead from starvation or dead from rioting, both are still dead.

Leaders who give their people no down side to rioting don’t stay leaders for long.

We get another flashback (man, really making up for lost time, aren’t they?) to the first time Katsa killed someone on Randa’s orders.  She was to kill a traitor and make it look bloody, but instead she snapped his neck.  After that Randa got really specific about stuff.

Except…in all of these scenarios, she has a passel of soldiers with her and they just walk up and find the guy and hurt him.  Why does Katsa need to be magic for this?  Anyone could do it.  Oll could do it.  What is the point of having a magic fighter if you don’t use her for magic fighting?

Other than bragging about how awesome she is, of course.

her reputation spread like a cancer.

You have a concept of cancer in your society?

And spreading infections?

How?

After a while Katsa forgot about defiance. It became too difficult to imagine.

So, Katsa, the magical fighter who can defeat anyone, gets browbeaten by her uncle…after he called her stupid once and then gave her more specific orders.  If anything else went into crushing her soul, we sure don’t hear about it.  She’s just doing exactly what he tells her to do from the very beginning, never actually trying to defy him, receiving no punishment of any sort because she never steps out of line.

Katsa, you have the backbone of an overcooked noodle.

Then we get a bunch of examples of the ‘horrors’ that go on in the seven kingdoms.

Young girls who had disappeared from an Estillan village and reappeared weeks later in a Westeran whorehouse.

But…what, if it had been a local whorehouse that would be better?

A tax that the King of Wester had decided to levy on the villages of Estill

…otherwise known as an act of war?

a tax Wester’s soldiers saw fit to collect by slaying Estillan villagers and emptying their pockets.

Okay, book, that’s just thievery.  Why do you even call it a tax?  What is the point of that?  You cannot put a tax on someone else’s people because that violates the other country’s autonomy, and going over to collect it anyway is just straight-up looting and plundering.

And what the fuck do you think you’re going to find in a serf’s pockets, anyway?  Dirt?  Strings?

All these stories Randa’s spies reported to their king, and all of them Randa ignored. Now, a Middluns lord who had hidden the majority of his harvest in order to pay a smaller tithe than he owed? Here was worthwhile news; here was a problem relevant to the Middluns. Randa sent Katsa to crack the lord’s head open.

…

… …

Yes you fucking moron.  Yes, absolutely Randa should not get involved in the politics of autonomous nations.  THAT’S CONSIDERED AN ACT OF WAR YOU FUCKING SHIT HEAD HOW DO YOU NOT UNDERSTAND THAT A KING FROM ONE COUNTRY IS NOT ALLOWED TO GO MUCK ABOUT IN A DIFFERENT COUNTRY?

Also, part of HIS JOB is to make sure that his own area of authority is governed fairly, and cheating on your taxes is not a good thing.  Do you know what those taxes pay for?  Roads.  Bridges.  Armies to defend you, since you’re in the middle of a fucking hotbed of skirmishes.  Food aid during famines.  Emergency aid during disasters.  THOSE FUCKING CASTLES THAT THE VILLAGERS HIDE BEHIND.  Lawyers and judges and jails.  It takes a lot of money to keep a country running, and these are things that everyone benefits from, so it’s important that everyone pays for them.

Also, if taxes are based on your actual stores, then that’s a good thing.  It means no one is being taxed more than they can pay.  But that requires a level of trust, and if corrupt fuckers keep hiding their income, the only way to rectify that is to go to a flat tax that screws over the neighboring lord who just had a flood this season.  So, yeah, go after that ‘hides the majority of his harvest’ fucker and knock him around.

You know, earlier the book said that the five ‘middle’ kingdoms used to be ruled by five siblings.  And it feels like those dynamics have stayed the same.  Imagine that these ‘seven kingdoms’ are really seven really rich families living in one city.  Then all of this “why aren’t you being philanthropical to these people over here” and “why are you actually punishing people who cross you” business makes a lot more sense.

Royalty are not the same as rich people.

ROYALTY ARE NOT THE SAME AS RICH PEOPLE.

ROYALTY ARE NOT THE SAME AS RICH PEOPLE AND I DEMAND THAT YOU STOP WRITING THEM AS SUCH.

In her very first mission, Katsa intercepted a small company of midnight looters that the Estillan king had set on his own people

…why the fuck would you need to loot your own people if you’re the king?

Man, everything about this makes more sense if they’re just rich families in one city.  Then this shit here is just an insurance scam.  Even Murgon doing dirty jobs for pay makes more sense.

So the flashback carries on and talks about how at first it was just Katsa doing things with Oll and her Prince Cousin to help her organize, and then more and more people joined in and got involved with the whole doing-good-things…thing.

The virtuous among Randa’s borderlords, who were tired of sitting around while neighboring villages were plundered.

I don’t understand why you need a ‘council’ to do your fucking jobs if you’re so ‘virtuous.’  Really, what was stopping you before?

Everyone was tired of the fool kings.

[…]

all of it had become dangerous. One careless word spoken by the child of some innkeeper, one unlucky encounter across the world between two people she’d never met, and everything would come crashing down.

So…only the kings are dong bad things, no one else, and everyone in the world hates the bad things they do, but…you can’t just fucking depose them?  How is a chance meeting across the world such a danger if everyone and their dog is happy to join your little band of do-gooders?

She wasn’t normal. A girl Graced with killing, a royal thug? A girl who didn’t want the husbands Randa pushed on her, perfectly handsome and thoughtful men, a girl who panicked at the thought of a baby at her breast, or clinging to her ankles.

Oh.  You’re one of those heroes.  “Woe is me for I’m not like GIRLS who like GIRL things and all of them are EXACTLY ALIKE because that’s not insulting or anything, right?”

Also, she’s been harping on that ‘girl with a killing grace’ thing a lot.  Is that actually unusual?  Does the magic in this world follow gender conventions all on its own?

You know what would be kind of cool.  (Only kind of, I mean, I could do without gender bullshit in my fantasies and be perfectly happy.)  A magic like this, that doesn’t follow gender guidelines, so you get guys graced with loomweaving or whatever and girls who hunt shit and they’re considered outside the concept of gender.  They’re ‘girls’ or ‘guys’ they’re ‘magic.’  They are their own gender, at least as a social construct, and so they’re allowed to actually go beyond the expectations of society and truly be whatever they feel like.  That would be cool.  Instead we get…this.

Also, that’s the end of the chapter.  Two chapters in a row now that this little party has been doing nothing besides riding somewhere and thinking a lot.  *zzzzzzzz*