A Quick Refresher:
Cel/Celery/Cellular Phone = Celaena
Prince Fizzbitch = Dorian
Nehemiah = Nehemia
Nacho = Chaol
Evil King Papa/EKP = the King of Adarlan (I have no idea if we ever learned his name)
Chapter One
Cel is sneaking into a house. A servant girl doesn't notice the wet footprints she leaves behind. Cel goes into Lord Nirall's bedroom, where he's asleep with his wife. He's young.
Lord Nirall awakes as Cel raises her sword.
....wtf that is a prologue or a half-scene not a chapter.
ALSO ARE YOU KIDDING ME CELERY BRAIN FINALLY KILLS SOMEONE AND WE DON'T EVEN GET TO SEE IT?! ONE PAGE IN AND I'M ALREADY MAD.
Chapter Two
This chapter opens with Cel carrying a sack and walking through the halls of the glass castle. For some reason she's wearing a hood that conceals her face but everyone knows who she is. Apparently she outranks most of the people in the castle because that's how this works.
Evil King Papa is chillin' in the throne room and we don't know yet if there's anyone else chillin' in the throne room with him. Cel kneels before the throne. Prince Fizzbitch is standing next to the throne, watching her. Nacho is also there. So I guess EKP isn't alone.
For all the expression he showed, she might as well have been a stranger. But that was expected, and it was just part of the game they'd become so skilled at playing these past few months.
Yes, but why? He spent most of his time all the last book babysitting her and being friends and sparring with her and sitting in her room. Them suddenly NOT hanging out together or showing friendship would probably raise more questions than anything...
Maybe he finally got a sense of duty and decided to do his job?
OOH OH OH. EKP IS WEARING AN OBSIDIAN RING. DID WE NOT KNOW RINGS ARE BAD WHEN THEY HAVE A BLACK STONE LAST BOOK?
He tells her to rise and asks "is it done?" It is. Celaena reaches into the bag she's carrying.
Apparently she had a severed head in the bag because we're in Game of Thrones now and it's time the series started earning that comparison (lol)
Cel throws the head and it rolls to the dais. She also has a severed hand with his seal ring, because the head is rotting. She gives the hand to Nacho.
So like, does the whole court know about Cel? That she's an assassin for the king? I mean, she's just strolling through the hallways with A SEVERED HEAD in a bag and all the guards know who she is. So if that's the case, why the secrecy? The king has absolute power, everyone knows she's an assassin... So pretty much she's just an executioner who sneaks into people's houses to kill them, even though at this point the king could just arrest dissenters for some trumped up charges and kill them publicly. If there is supposed to be an element of secrecy, she's doing a shit job of keeping this all under wraps from the court. Unless they're all on Spring Break in Tijuana or something. IDEK. This makes no sense.
Prince Fizzbitch shifts his weight, and Cel's like OMG HE DOESN'T LIKE THAT I KILL PEOPLE.
First of all, all he did was shift his weight. Second of all, telling someone you kill people and THROWING A SEVERED HEAD ACROSS THE ROOM are two very different things.
And Dorian,who had never seen battle, never witnessed the chained lines shuffling their way to the butchering blocks . . . Perhaps she should be impressed he hadn't vomited yet.
NO NOT THE VOMITING AGAIN.
Also, "butchering blocks" are a thing in this world and the king still needs a secret assassin killing people secretly? Also, apparently Cel chained his wife to the body of Lord Nirall and threw them into the sea.
First of all, nice. Second of all, nice. Let's hope they get rid of the evidence (head, hands, bloody bed sheets, so their "disappearance" actually looks like a disappearance. Because that's what I'm hoping they were going for.
She also cut off the woman's hand with the wedding ring, and offers it to the king. He doesn't want it, so she puts it away. EKP mentions a rebellion growing in Rifthold, and tells her to find them and kill them. Of course this upsets Cel because she wants a rebellion and doesn't want to kill them. Obviously.
Evil King Papa says there's a list of possible traitors, but he'll only give her one name at a time. Because of reasons, I guess. He gives her a piece of paper that says Archer Finn on it. Not Sterling Archer but...
I can't even tell you how freaking excited I am right now
OMG So Cel knows Archer, and apparently he was a high-class courtesan (I bet you a million dollars he was a female clients only courtesan right here and now) who came to the Assassin's Keep for "lessons" to protect himself from jealous clients and their husbands (called it). Cel was 13.
BTW, street prostitutes face some of the highest rates of violence against them out of all occupations. It's much higher against them than "indoor" sex workers (who work in brothels or are call girls or the equivalent of this Archer). Just think about that.
So like, did Arobynn just advertise in the Sunday paper and people just come to the Keep for lessons and no one thought "Hmm... maybe we should take care of that place where they train all the assassins"?
Actually that would explain a lot.
Anyway, Cel had a girly crush on him and would flirt with him and be all giggly. She doesn't know how he could be a traitor to the crown. I don't know, maybe he slept with Clueless Queen Mama.
It was absurd. Whoever was giving the king his information was a damned idiot.
You know who make great spies? People who sleep with nobility for a living and have lots of access to their bedrooms and private affairs.
Cel explains to Evil King Papa that she used to know Archer. He's an "extraordinarily well-guarded man" and it will take awhile for her to penetrate his defenses.
So... was he that well guarded with so many defenses before or after he decided to get assassin training? Asking for a friend.
EKP gives her a month to 'dispatch' of him and that if she doesn't do it, he'll fire her (or worse). The king dismisses her, but makes her take the head of Nirall. Nice of him to not make the servants clean up a rotting head.
Side note, the piece of paper with Archer's name on it doesn't make any sense either. Especially since Cel keeps it and pockets it in front of the king. If he's so worried about spies and won't give her more than one name... why does he have a paper trail? EKP was half dumb-half smart in the last book. This doesn't bode well.
We switch POV to Prince Fizzbitch. He's watching the servants rearrange some chamber for a council meeting. Why don't they have a room just for the council meeting anyway? This castle is oozing with space if Cel could have a damned games room in the last book.
Prince Fizzbitch is upset that Cel killed a man and his wife. He's also upset that he couldn't get his father to change his mind on his "brutal policies." He thinks how Cel wasn't her "usual self" when she brought in the head. Maybe because she actually had proof that she was an assassin instead of just gloating about it verbally?
If she could kill people like this, then manipulating him into believing she felt something for him would have been all too easy. Making an ally of him--making him love her enough to face his father on her behalf, to ensure that she was appointed Champion. . .
Now I'm upset because that would have been an awesome story and we didn't get to read it.
We switch back to Cel. She's heading to the sewer (the same sewer that goes through the secret passageway). Nacho is following her, and he asks if he's going to act like Celaena or the King's Champion (further hammering in that she acts different as EKP's little assassin, though why she decided to all of a sudden act different is anyone's guess).
They chat about her recent assassination, and Cel throws the head into the sewer. I can't help but shudder at the bio hazard. She's close to the sea, why can't she go there and toss it in like she did with the dude's body?
Apparently Nacho gets really anxious when she goes on killing trips. They chat more about her new mission to kill Archer.
Nacho asks for the details of Nirall's murder, but Cel doesn't want to talk about it. He's worried that witnesses might have heard her kill Nirall. No word yet on if she cleaned up the MASSIVE AMOUNTS OF BLOOD from chopping off his head.
She doesn't want to be debriefed by Nacho, but isn't that the wrong terminology? Wouldn't she be the one debriefing him? Anyway, Nacho is freaking out because he doesn't know what's going on with her when she's out assassinating people and is all worried about her getting caught or killed.
"Yesterday I heard a rumor that they caught the killer responsible for Nirall's death."
Wait so they know Nirall was murdered? So what was the point of throwing the bodies in the sea? How do they know he was murdered? Were there bloody sheets left behind? This is so sketchy!
Nacho hugs her. Then tells her she smells.
I was tempted to make a Nirvana joke
She gets really upset for a moment, but then links arms and they go to her rooms to "debrief" (fnar-fnar).
Fleetfoot is still around, apparently. Anyway, after a bath and talking to Nacho about the kill, she chills on her bed and thinks about the hit on Nirall. She thinks about how she lied, but doesn't exactly explain the lies. It's very clumsily worded, but it sounds like maybe she didn't actually kill Nirall.
I swear to God, if she didn't actually kill anyone yet so far in her tenure as King's Champion...
She then thinks about Elena the Deus Ex Machina, whom she hasn't seen since the last book. And yep. She isn't killing any of the targets the King is giving her. Because they're so nice and Evil King Papa is evil.
Can this bitch please act like an assassin
She does give her hits a "choice" to fake their death or be killed right then and there. She's using the corpses of recently deceased ill people to furnish the heads and hands. The targets give their signet rings or other personal effects or whatever to convince EKP.
Then she thinks about Archer and how she might fake his death. It's hard because he was so popular and recognizable.
As opposed.
To.
The nobility.
She's been "killing" before.
Who the king probably has seen personally.
And who are recognizable by sheer virtue of their class
She wonders what Archer could possibly be doing, what plans he might know that would undermine the king because EKP is so powerful.
She was playing a very, very lethal game.
I was going to make some joke about her being an assassin but she has literally not killed anybody since the beginning of Throne of Glass.
Chapter Three
Cel has a nightmare about Cain and the ridderack. It's boring.
Next day she's actually playing with Fleetfoot outside (!!!) and Nehemiah is chillin' with her. Cel decides it's impossible that Evil King Papa knows that Nehemiah is a spy because she's friends with Cel. Yeah, that may be so, but he's still not going to let any information get to her as she's the princess of an enslaved country. But then again everyone in this series is as dumb as a pile of rocks so who knows.
They talk about Archer, and how Cel has to kill the list of suspected traitors who are interfering with his plans. Nothing new here. Just rehashing what was already said and thought about. Cel doesn't really want to share whatever the "plans" are if she discovers them, because she's afraid that EKP will start killing the people Cel cares about.
Cel doesn't want to get involved in the rebellion, she just wants to be free of the king. Nehemiah is currently upset because more rebels are arriving in a labor camp. The conditions there are terrible, and Nehemiah wants to meet with Evil King Papa to discuss them. Nehemiah being upset about this is pretty well done, actually. Nothing to snark.
It's obvious that Nehemiah wants Cel to help her with the rebellion, but Cel wants nothing to do with it, and so Nehemiah leaves. Cel decides to get off castle grounds.
She had blood money to burn.
Is it still blood money when she hasn't spilled any blood?
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