Kelsea wakes up the next morning and starts to get ready, but suddenly notices that her sapphire has started glowing. Well, her old one is glowing, the new one is not.

There was no time to marvel at the light; rather, she needed to conceal it.

…because…reasons? Her surprise-but-not-overly-surprised reaction makes me think that magic exists but is rare, but nothing yet indicates that it’s somehow bad, so I’m left utterly in the dark about why it needs to be hidden. Hell, no one has even bothered to tell Kelsea that her sapphires are important so it’s not like she was all “Oh no, my super-special-powerful amulet is doing power things, better be careful!” So far as we/she knows, it’s only importance is as a marker of her identity. Or sentimental/heirloom.

Carroll gave her a nod of greeting on his way to the small copse that held the horses, but his face was still shadowed, and he looked as though he hadn’t slept at all.

Hey, you know what’s almost as bad for your cognitive skills as drinking? Not sleeping! Gosh, it’s like there’s actually a reason to have a full compliment of guards, even if a few of you are better than the rest.

The group spots hawks on the horizon while packing, and Carroll makes the executive decision to split up the group and try to confuse those tracking them.

They began to distribute the supplies among the various saddlebags, but Carroll barked, “Leave them!”

…if you’re in such imminent danger that you can’t pack supplies – things which were obviously needed because you obviously used them or else they’d still be packed – then you probably should have made this call earlier. Either that or don’t make the danger something that slowly snuck up on them over the past three days and that everyone knew about the whole time.

Kelsea trades armor and horses with one of the smaller guards, hoping to confuse things further. Mace gets paired with her.

Stay with the Queen, Lazarus, but distant enough that you’ll not be tracked as a pair.

So…I mean, that’s…not really possible. Everyone else is going in totally different directions, and if you’re close enough to this woman to still see her and if you’re traveling in the same direction, how can you not be a pair? All you are accomplishing this way is to be sure that if Kelsea is attacked, her guard is too far away to do any good!

And if just the fact that there’s two is considered a clue, why not have all the other guards pair up as well instead of going off as onsies? In fact, why not do that anyway so that they, you know, don’t die quite as easily?

I would make for the Caddell and then follow it to the city. The tide will cover your tracks.”

Mace nodded, but Kelsea had an odd flash of intuition: he’d already evaluated and rejected Carroll’s advice in a heartbeat, choosing his own direction instead.

So…magic? And if magic, could we get a bit more of a reaction of Kelsea?

“No, Lady, you won’t. I’ve seen my own death on this journey. Enough for me that you sit there.”

Really…magic? The first chapter had no magic, now all of a sudden magic. One would think that, with as long as the first chapter was, we could have had a bit of information on the subject.

Otherwise, random intuition and ‘seeing’ one’s death are just narrative poetry, in which case it’s just bad writing.

Mace gives her directions on where to go, but Kelsea is hesitant because she’s not the best rider in the world and also, ya know, things be weird and scary right now. So Mace mocks her by saying “dolls and dresses” and slapping her horse to get him moving.

First of all, fuck off with the gendered mocking, she’s a poor rider on an unfamiliar horse in a tense situation. Anyone would hesitate. Also she’s already said she didn’t do “dolls and dresses” so it’s just doubly pointless.

Second of all, DON’T HIT THE GODDAMN HORSE. Are you trying to make it throw her? That horse is probably tense, too, especially what with switching riders and losing all its horsey friends.

So, they get going, and apparently Kelsea is galloping her horse.

There was nothing but speed, a pure, clean speed that she had never achieved with Barty’s aging stallion.

*sigh*

First of all, they are in a forest. A frikkin forest. Not on a path, just blindly running through a forest.

HAVE YOU EVER BEEN TO A FOREST, BOOK?

Because I can tell you from experience, horses + forest = going very slow. There’s lots of brush, and horses are VERY BIG ANIMALS which means they need more space than a human to navigate around obstacles. Also, forests have uneven footing and badger holes and rocks and shit. Also known as “things that can break a horse’s leg and then you have no horse anymore.” Does the book just assume that forests are nothing but trees and then wide space in between the trees? Because I’ve never actually seen that outside of a park, aka places that are managed by human intervention.

Second, just don’t gallop your horse like that, they get tired very fast, and also you just spent several paragraphs complaining about the weight of all that armor. Weight that, technically, the horse is carrying.

Kelsea spends some time being randomly self-conscious that maybe she was too…proud of herself? Like, she was so proud of doing things on her own, and she worries the other guards will mock her for being proud about doing very normal stuff? Which I guess is a valid concern for someone with self-confidence issues (lord knows I’ve done it) but is this really an appropriate time for that? Focus on where you’re going, for the horse’s sake at least.

she reached up and slapped herself across the face.

While galloping. …???

An hour later, Kelsea comes out of the woods and into farmland, bemoans the lack of any sort of concealment to hide behind, and fails to even think of looking for Mace. If there’s no longer anywhere to hide, shouldn’t she be able to see him? Is he just…making really, really sure he’s too far away to help should she come to any trouble?

Also we get a nice little aside about how the economy is basically serfdom, and Carlin is all “yar, our founder wanted socialism, everything is awful now.”

Also also, feudalism is a horrible system rife with problems too numerous to name, but keeping all your serfs at a barely-surviving level is a purely human problem. Nothing inherent in the system says “and you must leave your tenants with barely enough food to survive.” The system makes doing that waaay too convenient and enticing, but it is 100% human people being dicks that ultimately makes that happen.

Carlin had hammered this point home many times,

So, I agree with Carlin, and convincing the future ruler that exploiting the labor of the poor is a bad thing, all good. But this line really highlights how much power Carlin had over…you know, the future ruler of the country. Kelsea’s entire worldview and moral code was built by two people, and what if Carlin had some extremist views? Hell, what if she just had this view, but lacked any ability to teach Kelsea how to change it? You can’t just hand down and change an economic system, so Kelsea comes to the throne all full of spitfire and revolution and her own nobles stuff her in her own dungeon because they like being nobles?

Yet another reason why it’s a bad idea to have your future ruler live alone in the woods with only two other people for company!

but it was very different for Kelsea to see the system in front of her. The people working the fields looked hungry; most of them wore shapeless clothes that seemed to hang from their bones.

Could you possibly save your soapboxing for when you’re not on the run from would-be assassins?

…are you on the run from would-be assassins? Carroll got all nervous and split them up earlier, but we haven’t actually seen any hint that anyone is closer on her tail.

The overseers, easily identifiable on horses high above the rows of crops, did not look hungry. They wore broad, flat hats, and each carried a thick wooden stick whose purpose was painfully clear; when Kelsea rode close to one of them, she saw that the end of his stick was stained a deep maroon.

…granted, I’m not completely up on the practices of feudal societies, but don’t they just…let people go farm and then take most of the food? Is direct, in-the-field, 24/7 supervision + stick-stabbing really needed? What else are these people going to do?

A whole paragraph explaining what a black market is. Also, bricks.

This book decides to painstakingly explain some really obvious concepts, then continues to ignore the status of magic in this world.

I feel like this entire introduction to their oppressive economic system is just there so Kelsea can look good for being horrified. It’s just way too hamfisted and it’s dropped in like a boulder, halting what little bit of story flow we had.

Ah, here’s a nice little assassin hawk in the sky to remind Kelsea of her more immediate concerns.

She dug her heels into Rake’s sides and relaxed her grip on the reins as far as she dared. The stallion picked up pace, but it was futile; no manned horse could outrun a hawk in hunt.

X 100 when said horse has already been running for more than an hour. Do you just not understand the concept of horses getting tired?

She glanced around wildly in all directions and saw nothing,

[…]

“Down! Get down!” Mace shouted behind her.

So is she just so unobservant she didn’t see the giant dude on a giant stallion, or can Mace turn invisible?

Hawk appears to be just a normal hawk that attempts to kill Kelsea with his made-for-hunting-mice claws, and instead of whacking that thing with any handy stick, she decides to gallop away.

On a horse that has already been running for more than an hour.

so fast that Kelsea could no longer distinguish the farmers in the fields, only a continuous blur of brown and green.

But hey, it’s alright, because apparently this isn’t even a horse! It’s a car with four legs.

Seriously, the top recorded speed for a racehorse is about 44 mph, and that’s on a well-rested horse that has been through rigorous racing training carrying a tiny, tiny jockey. An average horse will get you 25-30 mph, tops, and again that’s when not already exhausted and not carrying someone weighed down with armor.

The hawk somehow manages to dive and gash up her neck, which is such a lucky shot on a moving target that I’m going to chalk it up to magic, and then the beast is somehow not fouled up by either running into Kelsea or getting its claws stuck in her armor/clothes. It also somehow manages to immediately come at her again for another pass. I don’t understand how a hawk in a dive just magically stops being in a dive just because it scraped her?

Check out this hawks vs lizards. Note two things: 1) even lizards can fight these things off, WTF, they are like 1/20th your size, Kelsea and 2) all that fighting happens on the ground. For a reason. Hawks hunt things on the ground because it’s hard to keep flying after you hit something!

There is no part of this hawk!assassin idea that I’m not going to keep complaining about.

Mace manages to kill the hawk as easily as…well, killing a hawk, but he’s worried about larger, human assassins following behind and suggests they head off to a noble house that should take them in. It’s about 10 miles away.

By now the sun had risen fully over the horizon, and Kelsea thought she could see their destination: another brick tower outlined against the blue shimmer of the river.

From wikipedia:

For an observer on the ground with eye level at h = 5 ft 7 in (1.70 m), the horizon is at a distance of 2.9 miles (4.7 km).

I actually don’t mind the book getting this one wrong, as it’s something not many people think of, but now all you people know it! Go forth and do not repeat the mistake, unless your character is standing on a hill.

They had covered perhaps half the distance to the tower when Mace reached out and slapped Rake’s rump, hard.

WHY THE FUCK ARE YOU SO MEAN TO THIS HORSE?!?!?!?

So, either the horses actually are slowing down from exhaustion, or the other guys just have better horse-cars, because four assissins soon show up and start gaining. Also the assassin guild in this world is called “the Caden.”

Hearing of the Caden in her childhood, Kelsea had asked Barty why professional assassins would wear such a bright and distinguishable color. Barty’s answer was not comforting: the Caden were such confident killers that they could afford to wear bright red and come in daylight.

Then they aren’t assassins. I’m sorry, but they just aren’t. They’re thugs, murderers, a hit squad, but not assassins. We can quibble over the exact definition of assassination, but most people agree that it is some level of surprise attack.

I’ll spare you guys the details, but there’s a protracted fight scene. All you need to know is Mace kicks (literally) unbelievable levels of ass, and also the book apparently thinks every single injury ever spurts blood, instead of bleeding in a more normal fashion.

Alas, he’s up against four assassins and five guys from a different group, and eventually the other group (all wearing masks) takes Kelsea and Mace prisoner. Kelsea’s neck keeps bleeding, which is odd because I feel like it should have either stopped that or had her go ahead and bleed out by now. New group + prisoners ride off into the woods to escape more assassins, because apparently the landscape in these parts is just 90% assassin now.