Wild theory time. Cat won't need to kill Malicia because Malicia is already dead. Archer killed her a while ago. This entire overly complicated, multi strand plan was all to keep the Skein focused on the rest of the Woe, following their threads, while Archer did her thing.

 

I was under the impression that Robber and Akua were playing dumb. Like Akua's conversation with Thief, Catherine overhearing, and then calling her out in this chapter about it make it seem like Akua just doesn't want to give Catherine a chance to voice her thoughts about climbing the tower and set herself against it.

 

Well, if nothing else we're still missing an "Indrani's Plan" chapter (and a Malicia's Plan, for that matter), and the "you have an invisible crossbow" card clearly refers to Archer. Possibly an Archer hiding with Thief?

 

Wow, guys.

Anyway, Cat's plan was pretty terrible and Malicia saw it coming, to the surprise of absolutely no one. Apparently, she decided at some point that openly wandering around the most dangerous place on the continent with people who want to kill her and can do so at long range might be a bad idea and invested in illusions that can trick the Fae, anti-surprise attack measures, and lots of expensive artifacts, with layered plans that actually make sense.

Honestly, I give even odds on the puppet body being a red haring in and of itself, in that it's actually there and guarded by a bunch of protections, but the real Malicia is somewhere else under a completely different set of protections. And somewhat lower but still noteworthy odds of that happening and Assassin being there, as we've actually 'seen' Assassin and Malicia go on missions alone and don't know where he is.

 

In fairness, ten chapters ago I said to myself, "This is a fucking trap."

This goes one of two routes.

Route 1: Cat gives into apotheosis and destroys all around her, gaining the Dead King's respect but not really harming Praes at all.

Route 2: Cat is forced into being Malicia's bitch again, having to march with Neshamah under Malicia's terms and having to find another book worth of excuses to kill her.


Throughout the books Malicia is constantly referenced as a BIG deal. Malicia is second MC. The great majority of interludes either directly reference her being badass of the conditions that made her badass.

People are saying Cat's only enemies are the Gods right now.

Fuck that, Malicia is a league way above Diabolist and needs to be dealt with before Cat can scale up.

The only way out of this scenario is apotheosis bullshit that will render Malicia and all her achievements as irrelevant.

Fuck that.

 

So this chapter ended in the one way I don't think anyone called. Ryuugi pretty much called the puppet trick but the Empress was still there, and had a nice little conversation with Cat. Goes to show that Malicia runs circles around Cat and pretty much everyone if they take their eyes off of her. I think she puts too much faith into Procer and the Good always winning narrative though because the Dead King would eat them for breakfast. Though if the Dead King does take Procer he also has the Ratlings to deal with but I doubt that'll be an issue. Thief's version of Archer was bad and she should feel bad. Calling the Wild Hunt was awesome though and Larat had a great entrance as always. Next chapter will be fun, but it also begs the question of where is Archer and how drunk is she?

 

First things first:

Wow, guys. Also, is this the first time we've gotten an actual dating system? I'm trying to remember another use of A.D.

Anyway, Malicia had another body double and had set an illusions of a more familiar one to fool Cat. Once she caught her, Malicia actually attempted diplomacy with grace, which Cat utterly fails at because she's angry at Malicia for doing a bunch of things she also did. As Malicia even points out:

Cat says that she's changed her mind about agreeing with Malicia on this even for a moment, which...kind of undermines her beef with Black? Like, she says:

Except Black was the one who wanted to blow up the weapon, so...?

Malicia and Cat then have a debate on how awful it is to release the Dead King, which Cat still intends to do, and Cat accusing Malicia of not realizing how utterly terrifying the Dead King is doesn't really change that. Like, she keeps telling Malicia that she has no idea what she's dealing with, but even assuming Cat does, she's still dealing with it in a complicated mess of events wherein dozens of heroes and two precogs are watching. Malicia replies:

Which...is actually pretty much what the Dead King said; he could conquer Procer whenever he wanted, but it'd cost him his head in the long run. And Cat's response comes of as a bit...immature?

Cat, literally all of those problems are a direct consequence of your actions. You were the once who signed on with team evil and dedicated everything you had to the cause instead of turning back--you can't really complain now that you got screwed over, because you getting screwed over was inevitable.

Whatever plan Cat had to deal with Malicia apparently didn't account for her getting caught in the first confrontation, though, so the plan kind of became a mess from there. Thief tried to help, but her vaguely defined stealing powers didn't work this time, I guess, and when she went down, Cat had to use the remains of the power she stole from Akua to Call the Wild Hunt.

Meaning she really just threw the last bit of subtlety to the wind, because seriously, she just brought the Wild Hunt into Keter and is having a small army of Faeries chase after Malicia, which seems like a questionable idea when basically the entire plan revolves around maintaining at least the guise of subtlety. Even leaving aside the fact that we've now moved on to murder in the streets, in case it needs to be mentioned, the Wild Hunt has repeatedly proven to disobey a bunch of Cat's orders. Are we now trusting them to play by the honor system?

Also, how did they get here? Back in Ranger's chapter, it was stated that the Dead King had hardened the borders with Arcadia after she invaded that way once; how did they just hop inside?

 

We've gotten them before, rather sparingly. I remember it getting touched on during truce negotiations.

Black blowing up the weapon is something Cat was pissed about, but the larger part of her break with Black came from the rest of Second Liesse.

- Book 3, Chapter 72: Curtains

Black manipulated Cat into getting beaten and bound by Akua for his own purposes. Her apprenticeship came with trust, emotional bonding, and a father figure, and Black's actions betrayed all that. That is what caused Cat to break her status as his successor.

It all ties into one of the story's central themes. Errata's moved on from showing off how great pragmatism is and started holding it up to the light and pointing to the ugliness that comes with it. Black - being the embodiment of Practical Evil - has to therefore be exposed to keep with the theme. If Cat is going to evolve from and reject going full Practical Evil, that means she has to take those objections and apply them to Black, and that's what her beef is all about.

But yeah, I know it's been talked about in-thread before, but Cat's consistently shit at debating and tends to be somewhat hypocritical/lacking in perspective when it comes to this stuff. You're definitely right on that part. This is kinda the point, because finding the balance and differences and flaws in both Good and Evil is another big theme of the story. Cat struggling with this subject is a central conflict of the series, so she's supposed to contradict herself as she figures it out. I find the main problem with hypocrisy in characters is when the author's doing it obliviously. That's not the case here.

I just chalked that up to "because the Dead King allowed it". Cat used Arcadia to get to Keter, and once again to reach the Skein. And it's no stretch to think that Neshamah can soften the border as easily as he hardens it. Seemed straightforward to me. Well, it's that or magic gibberish about how the Queen of the Hunt summoning her riders is a different sort of gating but meh. This will definitely turn to chaos. Should be fun to watch Cat try and gaslight the Dead King after she and Larat go up to the line of what he'll tolerate and lie down on it.


And while I know "these are the things you can't do now that you're a villain" lessons are top priority, somebody really has to teach Thief how to fight. Even if there's some good banter that comes from her sucking, it's starting to get embarrassing.

 

If I remember right, A.D. stands for After Declaration, which marks the founding of the Empire and the beginning of Imperial Calendar. Kind of interesting it's used outside of the Dread Empire but I guess Praes and Callow were one of the first big, human polities on Calernia.

This chapter does an excellent job of showcasing how Malicia thinks. She holds two assumptions true: that Procer needs to be dismantled and that Evil can't win the crusade. Keeping this in mind, I believe her concessions with regards to the Dead King are primarily there to shift the spirit of the crusade. If the tenth crusade becomes a war against the Dead King then the loss of Evil will mean defeating the Dead King - not the Empire. The move is emblematic of Malicia's belief that the only way you can win is by not playing.

I do think she's underestimating both the Dead King and her own Black Knight. Black will almost certainly try his hardest to fuck Procer in the ass and if he kills a couple Principalities' worth of civilians it would be hard to shift the crusade against the Kingdom of the Dead. The Dead King is likely savvy enough that he's either not going to commit heavily against the crusade (because he fears becoming its main opponent) or he's prepared for the retribution that will come.

 

It strikes me that Malicia and the Dead King are both trying to become side characters. Malicia would release the Dead King, because he'd fight Good, become it's main opponent and lose. The speculated reason why the Dead King even needs an invitation is that he's dodging the Goods setup. So he only comes out when he can hide in a side role, e.g. behind Triumphant. They can't both play the side character to the other.

PS: Malicia and Cat could agree on a deal and spare themselves the fighting. Offer a quarter of Procer, and he has to give them 6 months to prepare, evacuate etc. Should be a good enough compromise for both of them. Any frontal attack by the Dead King should be enough to disrupt the crusade, why's Malicia even trying so hard.

 

Sure, but Cat's complaining about pragmatism in the context of accepting Malicia's offer, citing Black as an example...except Black is the pragmatic one and refused the offer, so that doesn't make much sense. In Black's eyes, the pragmatic choice was to not keep the weapon.

Eh, I'd say Cat's hypocrisy is fairly obvious, simply because it keeps coming up. And it's less about her finding the balance and differences and flaws in both Good and Evil and more just apparently forgetting what she's actually done or thinking it doesn't apply to her for some reason.

Except they didn't? Crossing over from the heart of Keters analog in Arcadia put them all outside the City, where they would have had to lay siege to the walls like anyone else. Crossing over within the Three-Fold Reflection put them inside a different, messed up version of Arcadia that led them to running smack into the Spellblade. I guess in theory, the Dead King could be doing it, but that makes the shift from turning a blind eye to direct involvement here, which is a big deal.

Also, it means that Cat's called them from through a ward that was cutting her off from anything outside it, through the boundaries of the Crown of the Dead, and also across the continent, instantly, which seems fairly worthy of questioning to me.

 

Call isn't her power so it's not blocked by the ward. The mages setting up the ward didn't know they also had to block Akua's power.

And seemed straightforward that Cat can call her Court from the inside since she acts as point of entry. After all, she can already call Winter inside Keter.

 

I think the reason she can summon the hunt are twofold.
First she is inside Keter and opening the door to Arcadia from there and second she is using an Aspect specialized in calling things into reality. I do not think you could stop that combination at all, since Aspects are bullshit.

 

Actually, she explicitly made Call a part of her power when she metaphorically buried it in Winter, which is the reason she was able to dissolve it into Winter and return it--she mentions this when she and Larat talk about it before fighting the Crusaders. It's also not technically an Aspects anymore, supposedly, though she said that doesn't change the power of it. None of which matters because Akua explained what Call did in her Interlude and it doesn't work this way.

Also, Cat couldn't act as a point of entry in this case because she was cut off from her power and inside the ward besides. They didn't enter from her besides, but instead appeared nearby.

To the first part, no; Ranger went over this in her chapter--the Dead King shutdown passage into his house from Arcadia after the first time she broke into it that way, though the story might have just forgotten about that--still, Cat crossed over from Arcadia from the center of the Shard city and still wound up outside. We also saw that happened when Cat tried to open a path into Arcadia inside the place and it took her to the Spellblade's house.

To the second part, also kind of no? Remember, that's not really what Call did at all--though, of course, we barely know what anything does in this story, so take this with a grain of salt. But in Akua's Interlude, Exeunt, Call was actually about controlling the things she'd already called into Creation--it let her own anything she'd personally summoned into Creation while she used it, which had some overlap with Bind, which let her bind other things. But she didn't use it to call things into reality that time and the only other time we saw her use it was in Coda, when Cat took it before it did anything; as far as we've been told, this is not what Call does.

Seriously, how the Narrative/Magic/Names/Reality fucking work in this series varies from moment to moment, but I'm damn well keeping track and literally none of the things mentioned were stated to work this way.

(Also, for what it's worth, you can very obviously stop Call, because Cat totally stopped it with Winter, without even using Take--although that might have been changed, because she mentions the limits of Take in regards to it later. Still, Aspects are very powerful, but far from unstoppable, as we've seen a bunch of different things--up to and including some mages working together--forcefully suppress an Aspect.)

 

So this was...disappointing.

Okay, just to start with, Cat talks several of Malicia's men into betraying her.

...How? Like, I'm not the only one who remembers how Malicia's powers work, am I? That she can use Rule to control people, and through it can Speak to them even without words? That she can, and specifically has, used it to plant contingencies in people's minds and that she explicitly uses it to command loyalty? How the fuck does Malicia have people around her in a vital situation who can betray her?

Second of all, yes, I'm still upset about the summoning, because Call does not work this way. Remember Exeunt, Akua's Interlude? She told us was Call did and it wasn't summoning:

So her summoning these guys still doesn't make any sense.

Third of all, if there's not some kind of major twist in store, this is going to be a huge disappointment, so I'm really hoping there is, what with the multiple Aspects Malicia has that are still unknown. But if it doesn't turn out that Malicia is on the other side of Keter sipping tea, this is going to be a major anticlimax. We had a bizarre and confusing plan that everyone involved said was dumb and bound to fail which didn't really fail at all in any way, shape, or form, and at most had some people who were slow on the ball. In the course of that plan, however, we saw the Spellblade and Skein be utterly amazing and make fantastic showings. But after that, we have Malicia outwit Cat and trap her in an honestly pretty good show of cleverness that Cat proceeds to break out of with Call, which she shouldn't be able to do, and we come to our climax which...ends with no real difficulty at all whatsoever. Cat talks Malicia's mages into betraying her some-fucking-how and then basically just has her men walk in and kill all her enemies no problem.

Is this the climax of this whole arc? Because if so, it was an utter let down. I've complained multiple times about how every arc in the last two books kind of led up to a lack of payoff and this is just another example, because if this is actually the end of things, if Malicia actually lost like this, it's an utterly pitiful showing and a far too easy victory, just like her last five or six or seven. Cat winning isn't a problem, if that victory is earned, but this one wasn't; once Cat escaped the first trap by breaking established facts, she undermined Malicia by breaking established facts, and Malicia folded like a house of cards.

I'm holding out hope on a turn around, but if there's not a major catch--if Malicia's not somewhere else, if she didn't do this all fifteen minutes ago, etc.--then this entire memory gambit was a waste because it built up to this.

Really? Come on.

 

Was the sleeping woman Archer killed off was the real Malicia? It would be just like her to create a distraction with her puppet so that the real her can escape and she wouldn't really be sleeping so much as controlling the other body. I guess it could've also been a backup puppet or Ime, though I would expect the latter to stay back in Praes to work on the home front.

 

This book has just been bad overall, so I guess the chapter is fitting.

On Call; one of the implications is that Cat doesn't have a name right now; she thinks in terms of aspects but that's just due to how she was taught. She's actually just a being of power right now, so she's not actually stealing Diabolist's aspect to do this, just forming what she thinks should be it.

 

I doubt it; the implication was very much that it was just a puppet body. Which is good, because if it was the real body and Malicia was killed off-screen by Archer, this already bad chapter would be downright awful.

No, it's the actual Aspect, if frozen over--Cat even mentions having used Take to claim it, while talking to Larat, though she didn't seem to use it that way while killing Larat. But the entire point of the whistle was that it was Akua's Aspect bound for use at a later date. Except not really at all.

 

Backup puppet for sure. Having Malicia die blatantly offscreen by Archer on a drunken lark and at this point in the story... look Errata's just not that dumb an author, no matter what other flaws he has. Given that Malicia was never actually in Keter and it was just simulacrums, all the worrying about her being present are wasted words. It's not a possibility the reader would've really considered otherwise.

It's not unprecedented for Call to have two uses. Tyrant used Wish to get out of Arcadia (i.e. making a wish) and to see the wishes of others. While things don't always have to be spelled out, and "well it was used that way here" is something in and of itself, it's still a weakness. Seeing Akua use Call as summoning rather than just "call to heel" in Book 3 would've helped, though this may not have been planned back then. A note if Errata edits and decides to publish. Somewhat ironic that a series prone to tangents can run into clarity problems.

The Praesi betraying Malicia was so goddamn dumb and shortsighted on their part. Like yeah, Praesi, but c'mon guys. Cat's powerful but she's not nearly clever enough to stop Malicia from assassinating you as retribution. Which she will.

I will certainly echo that this arc has been disappointing as fuck. Skein was terrifying and great, and the premise was fun, but unless Malicia has a third decoy or her actual body or something else to ruin everything, this was very anticlimactic.

 

I don't think the artefacts are exact aspects though. All we know is that Cat can make them from aspects of those that she has killed. So she transformed the aspect of Call into an artefact that does something similar but not the same. Akua's use of Call also is pretty similar to Cat's use. She got demons that she already summoned to do a task for her. In her case she had them fight the attacking Summer fae. Cat got the Wild Hunt, which was probably just chilling around Callow or whatever they do, to come to her aid. She didn't summon them into existence, she just called them to where she was. The artefact just made it happen a little faster.