night has fallen. At home, this meant shutting down the power and going to sleep

WTF do you have lights on during the daylight hours…when it’s light out?

They head up from the river to the palace, and on the way Maven explains that the eastern city and the bridge are for ‘common’ Silvers. Mare boggles at the idea of any Silvers not being nobles. …even though didn’t she live right next to royals’ summer power-seat? Wouldn’t at least a few of these middle class Silvers – some of which Maven says are even richer than the nobles and serve in politics – come along with them? Wouldn’t Gisa know all about this, since she worked in their town/market?

Mare hasn’t really been set up as this level of culturally unobservant before, so it rather feels like the book wanted an excuse to explain non-noble Silvers to us. But…was no one already running on the assumption that those existed? It seems obvious enough to not warrant a full-on explanation; an off-hand line is fine.

“All the High Houses keep residences here, to be close to the king and government. In fact, the entire country can be controlled from this cliff, if the need should arise.”

Yup. All from this one easily-bombable location.

Look, having a government seat on a cliff behind a wall isn’t a bad idea when you’re only worried about foot invasions. But once your technology includes IDF, your defenses really need to change.

Maven calls it Caesar’s Square, after the first king of his dynasty.

Right. ‘Cause the first guy with that name turned out so well, they decided to have a second one.

Upon arrival, they see there’s a little stage set up for a broadcast.

“Father must be giving a speech. Just some saber rattling to keep the masses happy. The people love nothing more than a leader promising victory.”

Mare, are you ever going to rethink your earlier angstmongering? No? Okay.

I don’t want to admit I have anything in common with Maven’s older brother. Maybe once, I thought so, but not now. Not ever again.

So, you heard him say that he doesn’t think Reds deserve protection under the law and he’s not going to do anything about the injustice in the world, and that makes you willing to make out with him and kill people to mess up his plans of going to the front. But he gets upset in the face of a direct assault on his party, and that makes you go “oh shit, what a monster”????

Eh, it was a circuitous, illogical route, but at least you ended up in the right place eventually.

Strangely, Evangeline is not her usual cool self; I can see her hands shaking. She’s afraid. She wanted the spotlight, she wanted to be Cal’s bride, and yet she’s scared of it. How can that be?

When did anyone ever say she wanted to be on camera?

Or even that she particularly wanted to be queen. She was pleased at having won, I guess, but most of her characterization so far has been irrationally hating Mare, not ambition.

They walk through what seems to be a military command building, passing every sort of room possible on the way to the press conference. Because, of course, logic must take a back seat to giving the main viewpoint character a tour, and that’s why literally every should-be-confidential planning and strategic room is off this one hallway, and also they all have their doors open.

When they arrive, Mare is given a paper with instructions that make her mad, but she doesn’t tell us what they are, because padding. I mean, we find out her little speech on the next page, so why avoid telling us that it’s a speech?

She also has to announce the new security measures, which include a curfew, executing literally all law-breakers, and a lowered conscription age. Also

New outposts will be built on the roads and manned to full capacity.

How the fuck do you have the manpower for this when you’ve also been at full-scale war for a century?

The only good idea on this whole list (besides the curfew) is that they’re handing out conscription wavers as a reward for anyone ratting on the Scarlet Guard. Although when you also murder them for jaywalking, I think on the whole people are still going to be in favor of overthrowing your ass.

Mare is pretty sure it’ll have the opposite effect. I’m not really sure why every dystopia-revolution YA book thinks this, then proceeds to have the opposite happen. I mean, it can’t actually work, because then we wouldn’t have a book, so the writers seem to have some rudimentary idea that “more oppression = more anger.” So why bring up this woe-to-the-cause line in the first place? It’s not like there aren’t alternatives. “More people than ever will be joining the Guard, but that’ll just make things even bloodier before they have a chance at getting better.” See?

Mare mopes in her room about how she had to say words that would have been said with or without her. I mean, I can see how it’s upsetting, but I’m kind of tired of her defeatist moping at this point. If she’d done a little less of it so far in the book, it wouldn’t be bad.

She goes to look at Julian’s gift, which turns out to be a framed antique map. Behind it she discovers a book, and in the book are some handwritten lines from Julian. Once she finds and pieces together all the added lines, it turns out to be a list of soldiers that he’s found that have all been cremated, misplaced, or ‘body not recovered.’ He says this is suspicious because “Cremation is not common. Misplaced bodies are nonexistent.”

Um. There’s 27 names. ‘Not common’ can certainly apply to 27 out of hundreds of thousands. Also, bodies go missing all the time! Especially in a war zone and especially specially when they are “not recovered” after dying on a patrol. I mean, I am just flabbergasted that anyone could think that no body has ever gone missing from a fucking battlefield. How does that thought even enter someone’s head?

Also a quick google search throws upmultiplestories about bodies that are literally misplaced in funeral homes and morgues. And this in modern day peacetime facilities, not a war front. ’ Misplaced bodies are nonexistent’ my ass.

Well, Julian somehow magically divined that these bodies went mysteriously missing, rather than the normal kind of missing. They were also all transferred to “Storm Legion” shortly before dying. He uses the handy-dandy blood database that we just found out about to compare the missing 27 to Mare and found that they all have the same strange marker in their blood, which presumably indicates having x-man powers. (Why the need to destroy the bodies? Or to record them as destroyed/missing? I don’t think anyone’s keeping tabs on the mass graves or anything.)

Well, once Julian found that, he “ searched the rest of the bloodbase.”

….

………

I…I can’t….whut?

Look, the only way to ‘search’ a database is for qualifiers that have already been identified and recorded. If that were the case, then this blood anomaly would already be known to the powers at large. If he’s saying he tested literally every blood sample in the country…I got nothing, this whole everything is too stupid to unpack.

He leaves Mare with a list of names of other people who also have Silver powers.

Well, at least she’s not a special snowflake anymore. And this does explain why the king was more concerned with Mare’s cover story than with the cause: he probably already knew about the magic soldiers.

Mare wants to go find Maven and share this news with him, but she runs into Cal first. Cal is upset because one day she was kissing him and the next she’s mad at him. It turns into an argument about the rebels.

“Their methods are your own fault. You make us work, you make us bleed, you make us die for your wars and factories and the little comforts you don’t even notice, all because we are different. How can you expect us to let that stand?”

FINALLY.

“You can stop this, Cal. You will be king, and you can stop this war, you can save thousands, millions, from generations of glorified slavery, if you say enough.”

Um…pretty sure monarchies don’t work that way. Even at our most ‘absolute’ point with absolute monarchies, the king couldn’t just change the fabric of society without having a lot of support.

“I thought that once,” he mutters. “But it would lead to rebellion on both sides

Why does no one in this book consider…ya know, legislation and diplomacy? Since, generally speaking, bombs can only start a social revolution, they can’t actually finish it.

Cal casually mentions that he knew Julian was involved in the prison break, and he did what he could to delay the actual arrest warrant going out so that Julian could have time to escape.

but everyone leaves tracks, and the queen will find him,” he sighs, putting a hand against the glass. “And he’ll be executed.”

“You’d do that to your uncle?” I don’t bother to hide my disgust, or the fear beneath. If he’ll kill Julian, even after letting him go,

WTF, Mare, he didn’t say he’d personally try and condemn the man, just that it would happen. Not everything that goes on in a government is personally done by the crown prince, and usually he doesn’t have that much ability to change preexisting legislation.

Cal also says that Maven had an idea. Since Mare is going to be in the public eye more than ever after her TV appearance, they’ve sought and destroyed all records of Mare as a Red so that no one can disprove their story. By consequence, that means her blood sample was destroyed too, so good job Maven.