The next day, Mare explores around the palace a bit and informs us that it’s really, really big. Thanks? Also she’s briefed on what her duties will be now, or as she calls them, ‘a whole range of evils.’

As a future princess, I must meet the people in arranged outings, making speeches and shaking hands and standing by Maven’s side. The last part doesn’t really bother me, but being put on parade like a goat at auction isn’t exactly exciting.

I can see a lot of people being really super bummed about having to do this, but the people I see are all pretty middle class. Or crowd-shy, but I haven’t really gotten that sense from Mare yet.

Can we just for once get a character in this situation who doesn’t fucking care? “I have to perform for the crowds? Eh, I like people well enough and it’s better than back-breaking labor! I mean, not my favorite thing in the world, sure, but I ain’t gonna complain about it. Did I mention how it’s better than back-breaking labor for 18 hours a day?”

Sheesh, at least dress it up for Mare’s specific situation. This complaint is so generic, when it really wouldn’t be hard to put in a mention about fears of public scrutiny, or discomfort at bolstering the monarchy.

We get a summary of their day meeting and greeting with random people (??? why?) and also Mare reports to us that Reds are being mistreated even more and also oppressive art is bad. When she finally gets a moment to whisper to Maven, mentioning that they really need to find a way to contact Farley, Maven says Farley probably has eyes on them and will do the contacting themselves.

“How—?”

Farley, spying on us? Inside a city that wants her torn apart?

It takes Mare a moment to realize that there’s more than one person in the Scarlet Guard, and any one of them could be spying for Farley. Of course, I don’t really blame her. Given how things have played out, it’s easy to forget that they supposedly have a lot of people.

She starts keeping an eye out for some sign that someone in the crowd is a spy she can talk to, looking so hard that she doesn’t notice when a little Red boy comes up to ‘return’ a scrap of paper that she ‘dropped.’ I’m more curious about how this small child got through any guards that Mare and Maven have. Wait, Mare and Maven have guards, right? They haven’t been released to wander the common masses alone, with rebellion on the rise, have they?

Hexaprin Theater. Afternoon play. The best seats.

It takes me a moment to realize I only understand half those words,

…why? Only one is a proper noun.

She tells Maven, who arranges for them to go to a show. Then he has to explain what a play is to her.

Back home we didn’t have time for bedtime fairy tales, let alone stages and actors and costumes.

I feel like authors don’t realize how incredibly powerful stories are to people who have nothing else, which is really strange considering they are…you know, authors. But seriously, oral traditions among the working poor throughout history, very important shit. Some of the most enduring forms of entertainment were actually invented by said working poor. (Check out the origins of kabuki theater, cool stuff.)

A few Reds rove between the rows and aisles, serving drinks or taking tickets, but none sit down. This is not a luxury they can afford.

…would it matter if they could? I get the feeling if anyone scraped up enough pennies to buy a ticket and tried it, no one in charge is going to say “hey, your money is as good as any other, come on in!”

Mare and Maven get into a box seat (and apparently they only have one of those? I mean, how else would it be the best seats in the house?) and pretend like they’re going to make out so their escorts will wait outside. They chat for a moment, then a ceiling panel moves and they crawl up to find…Will. The peddler from Mare’s village. Because using someone new now that they’re in a new city would just make too much sense. No, far better to re-use a bit character because you have some weird notion that the book’s cast size can only be yea big. It’s not like your sense of scale or worldbuilding will suffer for it or nothing.

How Will came to be here, traveling all the way from the Stilts, I don’t know, but his intimate knowledge of the theater is even more peculiar.

Yes. Yes it is.

Will takes them down the basement and down to a tunnel where…Oh, where to begin.

“The techies call it the Undertrain,” she says as we shakily take our seats. “Remarkably fast, and it runs on the ancient tracks the Silvers never bothered to look for.”

First of all, horrible name. I’m terrible at naming things, and even I wouldn’t pick ‘Undertrain.’

Second of all, subway tracks take a FUCKTON OF MAITENANCE, so abandoned ones aren’t going to be able to support your ‘remarkably fast’ cobbled together trains. Especially since you live in a city that apparently has a riverside cliff on one side. Are there any modern American towns that have frikkin cliffs right next to a river? They seem to be vaguely New Englandish, and there’s just not an abundance of cliffs in that area in general. So, we’re talking semi-cataclysmic forces that have altered the geography, which means no ancient underground structures that require precision and maintenance are going to be functioning.

In short, those rails are caved in, under water, or buckled beyond all use, if not all three.

“We have techies and tech towns of our own, little prince,” Farley says, looking very proud of herself. “What you Silvers know about the Guard couldn’t fill a teacup.”

And yet you keep using the same half dozen people over and over again.

They head off a fast enough pace to make Mare freak out, but Maven notices they’re heading south, and the area south is all irradiated. Farley seems wholly, mockingly unconcerned about this fact.

“How do you know the south, the Ruins, are still radiated?” she asks with a mad smile.

I’d really like to find out how and when they got fatally radiated, because that shit’s predictable, you know. A bit of math should provide a rough estimate at least.

But apparently things are fine now, because the Reds have been fudging the equipment to show it as more dangerous than it really is. I want to know how long the Scarlet Guard (or their predecessors?) have been doing this, because radiation doesn’t clear up overnight. Even if the stuff is no longer fatal, if it was fatal in living memory then it’ll probably still do a number making you sick. Radiation isn’t an on/off switch, it doesn’t go from “kill you” to “nothing.”

They reach the old “City of Ruins,” which Farley calls Naecery and which seems to be NYC.

Trying to google what would happen to NYC post-apocalypse turns up nothing but zombie hits. 😦

They wander around NYC and see all the happy, hiding Reds there making a home among the ruins. All the while I’m thinking…why are they there? Not the Reds, Maven and Mare. The play can’t be very long, wouldn’t chatting in the subway, or even above the ceiling, be better? They could be discovered as missing at any moment by a guard just cracking the door open because he’s a voyeur, or their cobbled together train could break down and strand them, or any number of other things could happen to prevent them from getting back to their seats before the end of that play. This seems really risky. At the very least, they should have set this up for something that didn’t have a set end time. They’re an engaged couple; I’m sure they could lie about going on a romantic picnic or something.

They chat about how things have gotten really bad for all the Reds, and Mare gives over the list of names.

“Farley, you must find them first.”

Kilorn glares at the names like they offer him some kind of insult. “This could take months, years.”

…why? The one thing this society seems pretty adept at is keeping track of everyone. They can find people on their birthdays so reliably that Mare thinks there’s no escaping them, and they have everyone’s DNA in a database. Why would finding someone – someone who has already been found through records searching once, mind you, so we know they are in the records – take that long?

Your techies can maintain a massive, organized fiction about how radiated this city is, but you can’t hack into a database?

Well, apparently the reason they can’t do it is plot. The book wants them to go “no, we need action now!” therefore these names are impossible to track down because reasons.

Maven suddenly gets the idea to sneak an army of Reds into the palace, where they could easily stage a coup, then completely ignores Farley’s comment that she doesn’t have that many people. (so…going to be addressed later? I hope.) Instead they all talk about how the Silver soldiers in the palace are loyal to their commander, in this case Cal, and Cal would totally cave if they pretended to threaten Mare.

This is a really fucking slap-dash plan. Not just on the part of the characters, but the book. If you didn’t want to use the names, then you shouldn’t have introduced them at a point where ignoring them makes no sense. It’s not like it would be hard to change the chronology of events and have her discover things after the coup plans are in motion, or even after the fact. This is what editing is for, people!

Farley scoffs. “You want me to pin my entire operation, the entire revolution, on some teenaged love story? I can’t believe this.”

Across the table, a strange look crosses Kilorn’s face. When Farley turns to him, looking for some kind of support, she finds none.

“I can,” he whispers, his eyes never leaving my face.

I’m with Farley on this one. And not out of any sort of hatred of love triangles, I just really don’t see Cal as being so in love with her that he’d turn his back on the monarchy, when being the consummate Silver Prince has been 90% of his character so far.