We finally get to see why Mare was let in on this little plan, because she finally gets to do something for it! After the shots, she makes the lights flicker and fail for a minute to give the rebels time to escape.

1. …they were snipers. Literally the entire point of snipers is that they don’t have to be close to the target. Even assuming that these rebels don’t have long-range sniper guns, a regular WWII era rifle (about the time period their war seems to be imitating) is about 200 yards. Even if they’re staying well within that range, the point is, they should not be in this room, or else everyone would have seen them pull out guns and take aim. So blacking out the lights here shouldn’t be doing any good for anyone. (And if they have M16-comparable rifles, they could be 550 meters away and still have relatively good point accuracy.)
2. Mare says she’s got to knock out the lights for at least a minute, but unless someone does some actual physical damage to the electrical system, it’s going to be blindingly obvious that Mare was involved. If the lights go out and come back on for no reason, of course everyone is going to look at the only person in the room with electricity powers.

And of course all her “yay, I knocked out the lights” is immediately undone by the family of frikkin fire manipulators who just light everything up the old fashioned way.

There’s a bunch of general confusion as people try to get out while guards try to come in. Mare trips over the colonel’s corpse and freaks out over it, until Cal and Lucas pull her away. Lucas is charged with getting her out, while Cal goes on to join the manhunt.

A Sentinel tosses him a handgun, and he catches it deftly, putting a finger to the trigger.

HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAATTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

Why is it so hard to have even a smidge of gun safety in a novel? Why? Why must you do this to me? WHY IS IT SO HARD TO REALIZE WHY YOU SHOULDN’T FUCKING THROW A LOADED WEAPON OR WHY YOU SHOULDN’T FINGER THE TRIGGER WHILE IN THE MIDDLE OF A JOSTLING MOB?

These seem like self-evident bad ideas, so what the fuck?

In the center of it all lies Belicos Lerolan, pierced not by a bullet but a silver lance. Shot from a spear gun, like the ones used to fish.

…whut?

…

…whut?

So the operational range of a spearfishing gun is 3-4 meters. Which is to say, the spear might travel further than that distance, but it’s not going to have the oomph to penetrate anything. In fact, if it’s used for fishing, it might have a hard time going through a human body even from point blank range. In short, killing someone with a spearfishing gun is basically a suicide mission because you’d have to be right fucking next to the guy to get it done, and even then you might be better off just pulling out the spear itself and stabbing him by hand.

Which, admittedly, would be pretty demonstrative. Look, they hate you enough to die just to kill you! In fact, why aren’t suicide killers more frequent with these rebels?

Lucas gets her out of the ballroom, and then suddenly, a bomb!

The door behind us explodes inward, destroyed by flame.

…I don’t even know.

Mare freaks out, saying it makes no sense because a bomb wasn’t part of the plan and Kilorn would never let her be put in danger if there was a chance she could get exploded. (Well, okay, she only said the first part out loud.) Lucas replies that murderers don’t have to make sense.

Except…no, they usually do have actual reasons behind why they do things, and I’m with Mare here. If the whole point was to kill specific people, a bomb is just weird extra, especially since most of the people fled after the shooting. You’re basically exploding an empty room, plus making it easier for the royals to cover up the fact that specific people were targeted. On top of that, this is presumably a very dangerous operation, and sneaking in a bomb is just one extra facet of the plan that could go balls-up. If you’re going to go through that kind of danger, why not just set the bomb off first, when the room is stuffed full of royals and nobles?

Well, apparently the only thing the bomb accomplished was for Mare to be mad at the rebels now, because they ‘betrayed’ her and also killed whoever was leftover in the ballroom.

Mare and Lucas get to where the others are, and when asked she tells the king and queen about the bomb and the Scarlet Guard banner. The two start squabbling at each other about which one of them bungled the handling of the rebels worse.

The queen sweeps out to go question the servants (the only ones involved fled already, so she won’t find anything) and then Evangeline and Cal come in. Cal’s all red-bloody, and they tell Mare to come along with them. They take her to the cells were the only four named rebels we’ve met so far are being kept, because apparently this operation is only four people big. That’s the only excuse I can think of for why there’s so few faces getting recycled over and over again.

Anyway, Cal recognizes Kilorn from when he took Mare home for a visit, and he demands an explanation.

Mare starts babbling about how all she did was get him a job because she was worried about him, and that’s all, she just wanted him to be safe. Except…whut? Kilorn got a job at the palace? Since when? Wouldn’t it make more sense to just say the truth: we were friends before, but he was super angry after I left and we fought when I went home and that’s the last time we spoke? Why like and say you were more involved in this than you already were, especially when that lie actually makes you more suspicious!

Evangeline says they should have the queen question them, but “in the meantime” they’ll use torture. …why, because waiting five extra minutes is just too much for you people?

I mean, in a society where mindreaders are a real thing, would torture even exist? It wouldn’t really have a place, would it? It’s so crude and unreliable, it would be like going to war with bombs and rifles, but keeping a team of slingshot throwers around just for shits and giggles. The practice should be so obsolete that no one even thinks about it anymore.

There follows a, frankly, pretty inventive torture scene, but it’s still ultimately pointless because 1) Farley doesn’t talk and 2) OH YEAH THEY STILL HAVE MIND READERS, WHAT THE FUCK?

Finally they are interrupted by Ptolomy, who was healed before he actually wound up dead. I’m not sure why Mare is surprised; they have magical healers and it’s actually kind of hard to kill someone instantly with a gun. The human body is surprisingly durable.

Ptolomy is all in a rage and storms in, all intent on murdering the rebels, even though the others try to stop him. They still need these guys for questioning purposes! Ptolomy kills Tristan (oh he of like 5 lines and no purpose), but when he turns on Kilorn next, Mare powers up to stop him. She shocks him until he drops, and then when everyone turns to her all shocked, just says it was just because they need the prisoners alive.

“Mother can attend to the prisoners later,” [Maven] says

And you know this because of all that communication you haven’t had with her? Seriously, it’s been a few minutes, and the last time you saw her she didn’t know about prisoners. Why would she prioritize questioning the staff over this?

Also, aren’t there and entire family full of mindreaders that she’s related to? Where are all of those people and why can’t one of them help?

Maven convinces the king and Cal that they need to go reassure their people while the prisoners will keep. Evangeline doesn’t agree, but probably because she’s just bloodthristy and upset. I can get that. She did have a serious shock just now, what with seeing her brother almost die.

Sentinels and Security guard the immense door, their guns raised and aimed at the passageway.

HAS NO ONE IN THIS WORLD EVER HEARD OF MUZZLE AWARENESS? God, all it would take is one guard to sneeze at the wrong time and suddenly the king has a hole in his chest.

They find out there are ten dead and fifteen wounded, but of course the wounded will be healed soon. Father Diplomat’s two sons were also killed, and that gets Mare flibberting over “oh, noes, I never wanted this!” Mare, god, do you really have no mental images of silver atrocities to hold against all this? No Red children starving to death, no Red body counts that are surely higher than ten? How about just your dad, confined to his wheelchair, against those fifteen who are going to be magi-healed within the day?

And then the king gives a rousing speech about how they will hunt down these killers and avenge their fallen.

Maven glances at me, his eyes wide and afraid. I know what he’s thinking, because I think it too.

What have we done?

…so, you really didn’t see this coming? The stated point of all this terrorizing was to get their attention; did you think their attention was going to be fearful and cowering? Calm down, you nugget, this is how revolutions go. Besides, just because they’re all shouting now doesn’t mean their fervor going to be enduring or effective.