Katsa’s first view of the sea was like her first view of the mountains, though mountains and sea were nothing like each other.

Well.  That was helpful.

Katsa and Bitterblue make it to the port city and start slinking around the docks, trying to pick out a ship to approach without being recognized in the process.  Eventually they come across one that is both Leinid and getting ready to set out, even though it’s the middle of the night.

Lienid men and boys, for in ears and on fingers, in the light of their lanterns, Katsa caught flashes of gold.

Alright, I was willing to accept the ring thing when I thought that commoners wore cheaper metals, but are you really trying to tell me that everyone in that country has gold rings?  And multiple gold rings, at that?

Katsa approaches the guard to the ship and asks a lot of questions.  The guard is suspicious, and after she says she can pay for passage, he assumes she’s lying because she’s dressed like a ragamuffin who’s recently been in a street fight.  Fair point, guard.

This entire conversation drags out far longer than it needs to.

“This is Lienid gold,” he said. “Not only are you thieves, but you’re thieves who’ve stolen from Lienid men.”

Wait, what?

So…do the Lienid just not spend their currency outside of their own country?  It’s money.  It travels.  There should be plenty of people with Lienid coins around if the Lienid are actually paying for things.  This is especially true in a port tow.

“Take us to your captain and let him decide whether to accept our gold. If you do so, a piece of it’s yours – regardless of what he chooses.”

So, if the captain decides that it is stolen, do you think you still get to dictate what happens to the money that is no longer yours?

He has your purse and a knife to your throat, I don’t understand why saying “you can have only part of the money you’ve already taken from me” will work.

Except, somehow, it does.  Because magic, I guess.

They go to see the captain, who is a woman and magical, both of which surprise Katsa.  But when she expresses surprise, the guard only comments on the magical part, saying that the graced don’t all work for the king like in other countries, they can do whatever they want.

More and more, I get the feeling that the world isn’t really all “grr” against female graced and that’s just Katsa’s prejudice showing.

It takes three pages for them to walk into the ship and make it over to the captain.  The book has always had bad pacing, but this is getting downright atrocious.

“Her Grace is the reason we leave in the middle of the night,” the boy said. “She sees storms before they hit. We set out now to beat a blizzard coming up from the east.”

That’s all well and good, but you don’t have a motor on that ship.  There’s a reason ships leave “with the tide,” and unless you’ve got some pretty strong winds heading in the right direction, you’re going to be just as stuck there.

“And what’s wrong with their gold?” the voice asked.

“It’s Lienid gold, Captain, and more of it than it seems to me they should have.”

Seriously, do you just…not ever pay people?

And what is with all the gold?  Why aren’t they saying “well, I don’t trust that it is gold, no one should be carrying around bags of the stuff, after all.”

Katsa explains that Po gave her the gold, and the sailors assume she stole it.  Then she pulls out Po’s ring they all assume she stole that as well.  Because of course they would; rings are a terrible form of personal identification.

Katsa convinces them all that she’s telling the truth…by insisting that she’s telling the truth.  It takes several pages of talking about the plot, and the whole while I’m just bashing my head against the wall, screaming GET THE FUCK ON WITH THIS.

The captain explains that this particular ring means that Po gave her his actual identity, forsook his position as prince and all his possession and gave it to Katsa instead, making her a princess and mistress of his castle.

‘Cause, yeah, that’s totally a sane thing to attach to a FUCKING RING.

Maybe if the ring part was symbolic in a larger legal proceeding, but no, everyone here immediately considers her a princess, because apparently all you need to do is hand over a ring for this to happen.  Or steal a ring off a corpse and then claim it was given when anyone asks.

“You may give it back to him at any time, Lady Princess,” the captain said, “or give it to someone else. And he may reclaim it. In the meantime, your position entitles you to every power and authority held by a prince of Lienid. It’s ours to do your bidding.”

Seriously, that is way too much power for a little piece of metal.

Also, what the fuck am I even looking at?  Why was this deemed necessary?  What even is this?

Do you know what this is?  This is a big giant FUCK YOU to the whole chapter so far.  It’s an abnormally long chapter, and it’s full of endless whining and bantering about will the ship take them on, and what’s going to happen, and will they believe she didn’t steal her money and then NOPE, ALL OF THAT IS OF ABSOLUTELY NO CONSEQUENCE AT ALL BECAUSE KATSA CAN JUST ORDER SHIT TO HAPPEN, HAHA, FUCK YOU.

Why the fuck does Katsa need to be a princess?  There is no point to this.  None at all.  Using the ring as proof of permission like we assumed it worked would have done the job just as well, and spared us all this pandering and heaping of undeserved toys.   That’s really all this is.  It’s just giving Katsa more toys to make her the uberspecialest.

We get a summary of a few days (weeks?) at sea, and then Katsa and the captain talking.  Apparently Katsa wants the captain to hold her ship at sea after they arrive so that no one on board can tell where they’ve gone.  Yes, she wants these people to just stay at sea indefinitely, until and past the time they run out of supplies, while she has no idea how long anything is going to take because she doesn’t even have a plan.

Why not ask them all up to the castle that she’s needlessly been given?  After all, everyone else there is going to be in the same boat, so to speak.

I can’t pretend I don’t understand why you ask it. Leck must be stopped, and not just for the sake of Princess Bitterblue. His Grace is limitless, and a king with his proclivities is a danger to all seven kingdoms.

Well, Captain, you’re stupid for going along with this, but at least you have priorities that go beyond one little princess.

And so they made an agreement. The captain would hold at sea in a place near to Lienid, a specific place just west of an uninhabited island

Wait, then why can’t they stay on the island?

Katsa decides to teach Bitterblue how to use a knife.

How absurd it was that in all seven kingdoms, the weakest and most vulnerable of people – girls, women – went unarmed and were taught nothing of fighting, while the strong were trained to the highest reaches of their skill.

I…just…how many different ways can you be wrong in so short a period of time?

First of all, women and girls are not vulnerable and therefore not trained, they are vulnerable because they are not trained.  The entire reasoning is backwards.

Second, why is it absurd that strong people are trained to the highest level of martial skill?  What would make more sense, then, picking out the skinniest person in sight and saying “you, you shall make an excellent soldier!”

Third, it’s not just women who aren’t trained to fight, it’s EVERYONE NOT A SOLDIER.  Do you think peasant farmers are given regular sword lessons?

Fourth, women are not that much weaker than men.  We’re not talking about delicate ladies here – or at least, I assume so, since she’s making broad statements – and in the pre-industrial world everyone WORKED.  Hard physical labor, no matter what gender or job, outside of those wealthy enough to be able to sit on their asses all day. Hell, just a few chapters ago we saw some girl working at an inn carrying around giant bags of luggage.

The idea that women can’t fight as well as men, when everyone is equally untrained and living equally rough lives, is the absurd part.  In reality, everyone should be at about the same level of can’t-fight-ness.  I can certainly believe that they don’t fight, but that’s a matter of conditioning and social pressures, the same as it is in our own society.  Putting a knife in the hands of young women isn’t going to help them if you live in a culture where they get ostracized for the ‘crime’ of self-defense.

And, once again, THE ANSWER TO EVERYTHING ISN’T JUST TO STAB SHIT.  Part of your fucking character arc, weak as it is, is that you can’t violence your way out of every problem, and yet you insist on thinking that teach girls to stab is the answer to all their problems?  But, psh, character development and introspective thinking, what’s that?

The rest of the chapter is just teaching Bitterblue how to fight.