Time to raise a ruckus about the theft of the body I’d just stolen.
it doesn't involve setting anything on fire, and yet this step of the plan feels even more the quintessentially Catherine thing to do than the last.
Diego Altraste, a highly-recommended captain from Valencis
I really hope that was deliberate on both levels
(Captain Diego Alatriste is a character from a popular series of Spanish novels. 'Al traste', literally 'to the ass', is an expression roughly analogous to 'to shit', as in 'everything went to shit')
so, ok. in Book 3, Chapter 68, Akua tries to kill Black only to notice it wasn't Black at all, it was Assassin. Except she doesn't believe it's Assassin:
“Assassin,” she said. “No, a fake. You are in Procer, I know it. The Prince of Orne died choking on his own correspondence.”
Ah, I thought as an old detail finally clicked into place. It’d always niggled at me, that Black’s favourite executioner would have a signature. His little ironic deaths. Wasn’t half the point of having a skilled assassin that the enemy never knew you’d killed one of their own at all? The point of a signature, I grasped, was that people recognized it. Watched out for it. It’s like the Eyes of the Empire, I thought. The deadly hidden in the obvious. How many people has Assassin killed over the years that had perfectly natural accidents no one ever thought to question?
I always interpreted this realisation Catherine has as cutting both ways: Assassin is perfectly capable of killing people and not signing their work, and some things that look like Assassin signing their work are just weird accidents that happen sometimes. Akua thinks Assassin was in Procer recently enough they can't have made it to Liesse, but she is wrong, it wasn't them.
Later on, we meet the new Princess of Orne, sister of the 'assassinated' prince:
Adeline had ruled Orne for less than a year now, ascending to the throne after the assassination of her brother at the hands of what was speculated to be the Assassin himself.
The point of view for this chapter is Rozala Malanza, so her believing it really was Assassin doesn't prove anything. But then:
Princess Adeline of Orne, whose brother and predecessor had been killed at Black’s orders.
That's Cat's PoV! she apparently believes he was assassinated!
Am I reading the first bit wrong? Are we meant to only draw the conclusion that Assassin can kill without signing their work, not that things that seem to be Assassinations are genuine accidents on occasion? And if so, what is the significance of Akua saying Assassin is in Procer, if apparently they were in Procer yet still made it to Liesse in time?
Miezan numerals had been branded between their shoulder blades. A man in his late fifties had a one, he glimpsed a pair of twos and the rest were threes. Officer rankings. He’d heard Stygian slavemasters gave sets of enchanted irons to burn away the numbers and brand new ones when the purchase was made, to accommodate field promotions.
The Miezan empire is the very obvious pgte stand in for Rome, so I always imagine Miezan numerals as, well, Roman numerals. There is no reason to assume this actually corresponds to what Miezan numerals look like, but in this situation it has the fascinating implication that instead of making III the highest and I the lowest, thus allowing a very straightforward 'add one more I for promotions' system, the Stygians decided they'd much rather have magical branding irons that remove brands as a system.
(though the idea that a slaver society uses brands to mark slaves, whose main advantage is being hard to remove, and also simultaneously leaves magical-brand-removers around camp is still there no matter what Miezan numerals look like, so)
A Practical Guide To Evil is really damn good wow
I've had my eye on it for a while and I recently had a gap in my reading material and oops i have had a lot of reading time lately and all of it dedicated to that
(gee, I enjoy a webserial about a teenage girl coming into superhuman abilities and becoming a villain despite wanting to change the world for the better, where have I heard that one before...)
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
branchandroot
