The deadline for sending slaves to Mort arrives, and Mace is nowhere to be seen.

Pen explained that Mace had a habit of going off on his own errands from time to time, leaving without warning and returning the same way.

This is both super shady and also a terrible thing to do when you are apparently in charge of shit. I mean, presumably the other guards know what to do in his absence, but he’s basically taken over the running of things while Kelsea is still…um, Kelsea, and then he just vanishes? What are people even doing while he’s gone? Do the things he takes care of just not get done? We know he manages Kelsea’s “queenly” duties and schedule for her, what does she do all day while he’s missing doing TOTALLY UNREGULATED SHADY SHIT?

on the third day Mace did return; Kelsea found him sitting at the table, freshly showered, when she came out for lunch. She demanded to know where he’d been, and Mace, being Mace, refused to tell.

As per usual for this villain-in-the-making.

Is this supposed to be an endearing trait, somehow?

And why will they follow her mother’s orders so closely that they don’t tell Kelsea anything about her even 20 years later but when it comes to Kelsea (who they supposedly respect more than the previous queen) they’re like “haha, nope, DEFIANCE”?

If Arliss was to be believed, word was running like quicksilver through the city that the Queen had killed a Caden herself, that she’d used magic. There wasn’t a mark on the young Lord Graham,

So, wait, the assassin is an aristocrat that Kelsea’s guards recognized on sight after he died, but also he’s part of the super secret assassin guild? …whut? Like, I can’t even find words to express why that is wrong, it just feels so very wrong. Like, he can’t be a second son or something that said “fuck this being dependent on my relatives thing, I’m going to go be an assassin,” because he has a title. But why would a super elite skilled assassin guild take in a recruit who also has to spend time being all lordly and shit? Or is he an aristocrat who just disappeared one day to go train with assassins, and they were just waiting the required seven years to declare him dead and ennoble his heir?

One line and I’m SO CONFUSED.

Kelsea has another conversation with Mace about how he knows shit but won’t tell her any of it, then a guard comes in to show her a surprise. They’ve brought all the books from Carlin’s house and set them up on the shelves in her sitting room. Several more pages are wasted on Mace thinking books are useless so that we can have more bookish-fellatio. This just really isn’t necessary. Nothing is being said about this whole mess. There aren’t actually any barriers to Kelsea having books, people are just dragging their feet because they don’t agree with her, but that’s not actually a problem and they get her books anyway. Nothing new is being said, and what is being said isn’t that deep. Or any amount of deep. For a subplot all about loving books, it sure does waste a whole lot of perfectly good reading time.

“If there’s ever something I can do for you in return, you’ve only to name it.”

Mace raised his eyebrows. “Be careful about making open-ended promises, Lady. I know all about those, believe me; they bite you in the ass when you least expect it.”

“Even so, I mean it: if there’s ever anything I can do for you, it’s yours.”

“Fine. Put all of those books in a pile, and set them on fire.”

“What?”

“There’s your open-ended promise.”

Kelsea’s stomach clenched in knots. Mace watched her with an interested gaze for a moment before he chuckled. “Relax, Lady. The debt of a queen is a valuable commodity; I wouldn’t waste it.

First of all, making Kelsea this level of thankful that he did WHAT SHE TOLD HIM TO DO (she is, supposedly, the queen in this relationship) is just weird and demeaning. Second, Mace is a GRADE-A DICK for taking her words seriously and counting that as an actual debt she owes him, which he obviously fully plans to collect on one day.

More talk about Kelsea’s new/old library, which for some reason includes the Harry Potter series. Whatever.

Morryn, who was eight and a girl’s girl, seemed entirely disgusted with the choices. All of the romances were too old for her, and Carlin had never collected what she called “women’s literature.”

First of all, Carlin needs to get over her misogyny.

Second of all, “women’s lit” that isn’t romance tends to be over the head of an 8 y/o anyway? Why not just say Carlin kept a minimal amount of children’s books?

Oh, and the Hobbit is part of the books that survived. Carlin doesn’t have room on her shelf for Austen, but she does for Tolkien? Granted, I like Tolkien for the most part and those books are classic, but if we’re talking hard core book snobbery I can think of a lot of things that would get included before a fantasy series.

So after that detour into “hey, I like books, please sypmathize with me!”, Kelsea goes out onto a balcony and wishes she could see all the way to Mortmesne. And then…she can. She has a total out of body experience and flies all the way to the neighboring country where she sees giant impressive factories and mines an absolutely no farming. Because, you know, who needs food, psh. Oh, and an army.

An army lay beneath her, a massive army that covered the ground for several square miles: tents and campfires, men and horses and wagons filled with extra ordnance, knives and swords, bows and arrows and pikes. At the rear were several pieces of massive wooden equipment that Kelsea recognized from descriptions in books: siege towers, each of them at least twenty yards long, laid flat on their sides for transport.

So if this has been gathered in response to the lack of a shipment, then that was mighty quick, considering it’s only been a few days. And if not then…do they leave their army just sitting around in tends 24/7? That’s weird.

Also they have canons.

Impossible! There’s no gunpowder, not even in Mortmesne!

Look, Kelsea, if you know what it is (and you obviously do) then it’s not exactly hard to make. Stuff doesn’t require super advanced science or labs or nothing. It’s saltpeter, sulfur, and charcoal, all three are things found (or made) all around the globe.

Her chest exploded. Below her, she heard a man’s roar of triumph. Something pierced deep into her right breast, a flaming spear that crushed her heart.

Wait, so, Kelsea isn’t flying around as a disembodied consciousness, but rather as some sort of physical being? …but also she could fly hundreds (thousands?) of miles to Mortmesne in a minute?

Some time after she wakes up back in her own body (days? hours?) she’s in a meeting with a couple of generals, trying to explain that the Mort army has already mobilized. The generals insist that it’s possible to still make peace. I’m not really sure why think that, since they refuse to elaborate, giving Kelsea plenty of time to infodump on us. Apparently Mace burned down a house that used to belong to Lord Graham, full of innocent servants and family members, because yeah, that’s what heroes do. Sure. Murder innocent people for taking work from a guy they probably didn’t know was an assassin in an economy where work is hard enough to find anyway, all for the sake of…what, spiting a dead guy? A warning to others? Others who probably aren’t going to be swayed by that since no one really goes off planning regicide on a whim to begin with?

Bermond turned to Mace. “Certainly, sir, you can advise the Queen on this matter.”

Mace held up his hands. “I guard the Queen’s life, Bermond. I don’t make her decisions.”

Mace is both a murderer and a liar.

“Then, once again, I think your best option is to send emissaries to Mortmesne. Genot’s no fool; he knows this would be a difficult kingdom to hold. He won’t be anxious to invade, but believe me, if he chooses to do so, he will succeed.”

“General Genot is not the king of Mortmesne, any more than you are the king of the Tearling, Bermond. What makes you think he’s the one I would have to convince?”

…because he’s in control of the armies? Look, I know the evil queen could overrule him, but if this guy (who clearly has experience dealing with Mort) says talk to the general, do you think possibly it’s because he knows the queen leaves decisions up to him? Or at least that the general has a lot of influence? FFS, Kelsea, listen to the people who have been doing this longer than you!

Bermond’s next suggestion is to send the slaves late, which Kelsea rightfully rejects.

The two generals don’t believe that Mort has “recovered the secret of gunpowder” (FFS it’s not a secret) because none of it is on the black market, and presumably by the point that you go into large-scale production on canons, that’s about the point it’s hard to keep explosives a secret.

“All of the gunpowder that came over in the Crossing went bad.”

“Even if they found some preserved under ideal conditions,” Hall added, “it would never have lasted more than a century.”

“To power a cannon, they would have had to synthesize it, or some substitute.”

DID YOU WRITE THIS WHOLE FUCKING BOOK NOT KNOWING WHAT GUNPOWDER IS GOOD FUCKING GOD WHAT EVEN AM I LOOKING AT THIS SHIT WAS DISCOVERED LITERALLY THOUSANDS OF YEARS AGO IT IS NOT HARD TO MAKE YOU FIND THREE COMMONLY OCCURING ITEMS FROM NATURE AND MIX THEM AND THEN LIGHT THEM ON FIRE IT IS NOT HARD TO COME UP WITH SOME GUNPOWDER WHEN YOU HAVE THREE HUNDRED YEARS AND ALSO ALREADY KNOW WHAT IT IS GOOD FUCKING GOD WHAT IS WRONG WITH EVERYONE IN THIS BOOK I DON’T UNDERSTAND WHY HAS NOTHING BEEN INVENTED IN 300 YEARS DO YOU REALLY NOT KNOW HOW MUCH HUMANS ARE CAPABLE OF BUILDING IN 300 YEARS FUCKING CHRIST ON A CRACKER THESE PEOPLE SHOULD HAVE REINVENTED SPACE SHIPS BY NOW THAT’S RIGHT I SAID IT QUEEN OF THE TEARLING SHOULD BE HAPPENING IN SPACE AND I DEMAND A RESON FOR WHY IT ISN’T BECAUSE THIS IS SO FUCKING RIDICULOUS THAT I CAN’T EVEN.

The generals posit that the Red Queen will try some harassment tactics first, test the waters so to speak, and that she’ll do it in a hilly part of the country because, well, it’s hills and not mountains (which is apparently all their border is made of). They also say they could mount a campaign to slow her down, but likely cannot hold off a full invasion, but slowing her down would give more time for diplomatic efforts to at least be attempted. Weird, since ‘try diplomacy’ was literally the first thing these two suggested and Kelsea was all STFU I don’t deal with stupid generals. Except now that they’re going to also be sending people off to fight and die…suddenly now diplomacy is a thing?

They also talk of evacuating the border villages. Mace points out all these people will essentially be refugees.

“So we feed and house them.”

“Where?”

“I’m sure you’ll figure it out, Lazarus.”

Our heroine, ladies and gents.

“Hall, being a colonel, I assume you command your own battalion?”

“I do, Lady. The left flank.”

….

The…left….

Left …

I…just…you….have entire battalions…already designated…for the left…what…how…I just…do…what…what process of research led to someone writing those words? How does one even get to that point? I don’t understand. I cannot fathom how this sentence came to be written.

“I command the left flank.” Like that’s…just… an independent thing somehow. “Ah, yes, what a lovely parade we have, and what unit is this passing us by now?” “Oh that? That’s the left flank. All the battalions are standing in a line, but that one, that’s the left one.”

Do you even know what a flank is? It’s a side. It’s just…the edge of something. (Unless it’s a verb, but whatever.)

“You like soccer? I like soccer, too! What position do you play?” “Left.” “Left what?” “No, just left. No matter what’s going on, I just be sure to stay on the left of it.”

Kelsea decides she’s going to general better than the general so she takes the left flank and has them go do the hastily slapped together guerilla warfare plan than COL Hall laid out.

I guess their army is now just a right side and a middle.

Dude, I just cannot with all this, we’ll have to continue the military fever dreams tomorrow, I guess.