IN THE HAND OF THE GODDESS, CHAPTER FIVE: BY THE RIVER DRELL, OR, JON IS GAY AGAIN, SOME FIGHTING OCCURS, AND ALANNA MINGLES WITH COMMON FOLK WHO DON’T WANT TO STICK IT IN HER

The Tortallan army arrives at the Falls camp and settles in just in time for dinner.  Dinner, for Alanna, is a plate of meat and beans.  I’m hoping the meat is actually chopped up hot dogs in tomato sauce.  Just like Mom used to make!  She sits with the foot soldiers instead of the knights and other squires, presumably because all that time she spends at the Dancing Dove has rendered her more comfortable kickin’ it with the simple peasantfolk than murmuring about wine vintages and poetry with her fellow aristocrats.  (That’s what classy people talk about, right?  Wine and crap?)  One of said relatable peons is a very large, very friendly gentleman named Thor.  Yes, Thor.  Like the Norse God/Marvel hero.  He saves Alanna when she nearly chokes on her wieners and beans, thus ensuring that they will be BFFFL.

All the assorted foot soldiers assume that Alanna is twelve, because she is short and that never stops being funny.  When she corrects them, some bro saunters out of the crowd like an obnoxious dick to obnoxiously point out that Alanna fought and won a duel against a full-grown Tusaine knight.  Obnoxious Bro’s name is Jem Tanner, and everyone reacts to him like he smells like an open sewer and makes jokes about the mentally disabled, so you (the reader) get that he is really super super obnoxious.  He then hints (obnoxiously) that Alanna might be a spy sent into their ranks by the Tusaine army.  Silly Jemnoxious, spies can’t be short.  Alanna yells at him and he melts obnoxiously back into the crowd.  Everyone now likes Alanna the most because she yelled at this bro, and Thor likes her the most the most, which I think I can confidently say means he will be dead within a few pages.

We get a quick description of how Alanna spends her time in the army: grooming horses, learning history lessons from Myles, drilling and eating with the foot soldiers.  It’s pretty dull, and pretty blatantly set up to make us have the feels when Thor inevitably dies.  Because, y’know, their deep beans and wieners bond and such.  Jemnoxious is still hanging around being a jerk in a vague sort of ineffectual way.  That is apparently not interesting enough for our stalwart heroine, who asks Duke Baird if she can help out in the healers’ tent to stave off boredom.  Hanging out there totally harshes her buzz because everyone is dying all over the place, and she uses up pretty much all of her Gift either healing people or doing the Angel of Mercy bit.  Jonathan finds her there, pretty much asleep on her feet.  He quite rightly decides that it is time for his exhausted squire to go to bed.  He quite wrongly decides that the best way to take his exhausted squire to bed is by spooning her on horseback in the moonlight while he whispers sweet nothings in her ear.  Faithful meets them in the dark and is all yo, don’t kill yourself in the healers’ tent, dumbass, and also everyone who is looking at you right now thinks you are Tortall's biggest mo.

Cue Jem Tanner, oozing out of the night to accuse Alanna of “gadding about.”  I don’t know what that means but I’ll assume it’s a reference to covert homosexual shenanigans.* Alanna yells at him—I know! Our delicate little chrysanthemum!—and he disappears to finish guard duty.  Remember that later, kids, it may be on the test.  Faithful then tells Alanna that if she plans on falling in love with the prince she ought to be more subtle about it.  Alanna, predictably, is like “lolwut?”  When she tries to go to bed later she ends up tossing and turning and eventually throws up because apparently being in the healers’ tent was super gross.  Jonathan finds her vomming up a storm and tells her that he threw up after his first skirmish.  He then  tells her not to let the men know because it “wouldn’t do to let them think we’re sissies, would it?”

Bro, you just romantically dry-humped your male-presenting squire on the back of a goddamn horse.  Do you really think a little Technicolor yawn is going to make a difference?

Two nights later—yes, two nights, as in two nights since the scene in which Jon and Alanna played Ambiguously Gay Horseback Knifey-Spoony, AKA That Was Actually So Irrelevant, Tamora Pierce, I Can’t Even, Where Is Your Editor—Alanna is looking for Big Thor, because apparently his spear broke and Alanna’s got a new one for him.  She stole it from a dead dude.  Sweet girl, that Alanna.  Instead of finding Big Thor (who, coincidentally, was supposed to be on guard duty with Jemnoxious, because the Tortallan army only has two guards at a time, ever), she finds soldiers from Tusaine.  Surprise! The opposing army is crossing the river, and our favourite Mr. Tanner is nowhere in sight.

Maybe they killed him for being too obnoxious.

There is a battle, and it is as inevitably dull as all battle scenes in all fantasy literature ever.**Alanna kills some bros and saves Jonathan’s life, and then the enemy retreats for no apparent reason, and if that all sounds kind of wishy-washy and anti-climatic, you’ve probably read this book.

Once it's all over, Alanna decides to search for Thor on the battlefield, using her special purple tracking magic.  (Oh, yeah, apparently magic ain’t just for healing and killing demons anymore.)  She finds Thor, who has been violently blinded and says that Jem Tanner betrayed the Tortallans by knocking him out and then… I dunno, inviting the Tusaine army over to their side of the river?  Maybe for tea or something?  Whatever, the point is, Jemnoxious is a bad bad man and Thor is going to die from blindsies.  Alanna uses her magic to help ease his way into the afterlife so he doesn’t feel any pain, but forgets that she’s recently been using it to track the dude she just mercy-killed and starts to faint.  She sees a vision of the Black God reaching out to her and is like “sup bro, if I’m dying right now I don’t actually care because I’m hella tired and I just had to put the dude who was my best friend for ten seconds to sleep like an elderly poodle.”

Aaaaand then the chapter ends.  CLIFFHANGER.

Is Alanna seriously going to die?  (Nope, too much book left.)  Does anyone mention her and Jon’s awkward horse-spooning?  (Not to their faces, I’d wager.)  Is Jemnoxious really as obnoxious as all that?  (Dude, he has “noxious” right in his name.  RIGHT in there!)  Find out next time in CHAPTER SIX: CAPTURED!, OR, KIDNAPPED! WAS ALREADY TAKEN SO WE WENT WITH THIS

* Please note: This is untrue.  I know what “gadding about” means.  I just always assume covert homosexual shenanigans.

** Sometimes I think about the fact that I hate battle scenes and gushy descriptions of clothing and fucking HORSES OH MY GOD and wonder what the hell I’m doing in this genre.  Then I remember it has dragons in it and I feel better.  True story.

IN THE HAND OF THE GODDESS, CHAPTER FOUR: A CRY OF WAR, OR, ALANNA GOES ON A ROAD TRIP AND GETS FORCE-KISSED BY GEORGE AGAIN, JESUS, GEORGE, WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK?

[Sorry about the radio silence, guys!  I’ve been having computer troubles recently, some of which are ongoing and most of which stem from the fact that said computer is six years old and has had multiple litres of soda spilt on it.]

It’s April all of a sudden, and George has apparently been making good on his promise to spy on Tusaine.  The results are in, and a war is imminent.  Alanna is bummed about this not because of the encroaching death or destruction or even the simple monetary cost of killing lots and lots of people, but because the Drell River Valley is apparently a really shitty place to fight, due to all the mountains and hazardous terrain and such.  This scene is pretty dull—I think we all knew a war was coming—except for the part where George continues to be fucking creepy:

The thief’s fingers touched her chin gently, making her look up.  Alanna blushed.  He hadn’t kissed her since Jon’s birthday almost a year ago; but he let her know—with little touches, with softness in his eyes when he looked at her—that he was stalking her.  Jonathan looked at Delia in much the same way.  That Alanna got such attention from George terrified her.

My reaction, in list form:

1. Ordinarily I would say that “stalking” is just an unfortunate choice of words, but given that George routinely has Alanna followed and spied on, it is actually bang on.
2. What the actual FUCK, George???  Alanna has made it pretty clear that she doesn’t want you to fucking touch her.  Whether that discomfort is due to her having ~secret feelingz~ for you or not is fucking irrelevant, SHE DOES NOT WANT YOU TO TOUCH HER.  What the fuck is your problem?  You are one of the few people she can be herself with, why are you fucking it up by making her so goddamn uncomfortable?  Why are you being such a dick?  Ugh.  I used to ship this, people.
3. That semi-colon does not go there and it is making me angry.

Alanna brings the news to Myles, ensuring he won’t reveal her source by bringing up the fact that he has roughly ten thousand drinking buddies in the Lower City, most of them thieves and forgers and general scallywags.  Myles is understandably distressed—probably not even about the terrain—and comments that the King of Tusaine would never have come up with the idea without the input of his dastardly brother, Duke Hilam.  This is definitely just an offhand comment that will not prove to be integral to the plot at any point.

Talks are had, muster is called, and the troops assemble at the Palace. They are about to leave when Duke Gareth, who is supposed to be in command, is thrown from his horse and trampled to fuck.  While everyone is milling about and freaking out Alanna slips away to have a heart-to-heart with Stefan the Hostler, who is being mysteriously perceptive and accenty as per usual.  He says that none of the usual hostlers saddled the Duke’s horse, and that a burr was found caught in its blanket.  He also mentions that since Duke Gareth has caught an unfortunate case of both-legs-broken-by-a-goddamn-horse-neosis, Duke Roger has been given command of the army.

How special.

Before she leaves, Alanna is told by Stefan (who knows goddamn everything, apparently—we should ask TPierce to give him his own book) that she has a visitor waiting for her in the library.  Surprising approximately no one at all, it is George!  Dressed as a monk!  In the Royal Palace!  Where he could easily be recognized and executed!  Dude will go a long way to get his sexual harassment on, my stars.  They rehash Alanna’s conversation with Stefan and he asks her to be careful while she’s killing foreigners.  It’s actually kind of sweet, at first.  However, this is George Cooper we’re talking about, and all conversations are basically a set-up for fun Tortallan pickup lines like Nice Tunic, Alanna, It’d Look Great On My Bedroom Floor, and Is That A Magical Sword In Your Pocket Or Are You Just Happy To See Me?  (It is a sword, George, stop makin’ it weird.)  George says he might be giving up his life of crime to get married soon.  Alanna, oblivious as ever, is like “yeah, right, what are you going to do with your ear collection, store it in her hope chest?”  George responds with a tiresome “oh but the girl I want already KNOWS about my ear collection, wink wink nudge nudge.”

And then we get this gem of a conversation:

Alanna wiped sweating hands on her tunic.  She had a feeling she knew what he was leading up to, and she wished he would stop.  “Good luck, George.  I don’t think a woman like that exists.”
George stood.  Gripping her shoulders, he pulled her off the table.  “I’ve already found her, and you know it well.”
[blah blah blah stuff about rank Alanna can’t marry a commoner AND THEN]
“No husband at all will do me the most good.  I don’t plan to marry, and I certainly don’t plan to fall in love.”
“So you say now.  I’m a patient man, lass.  If need be, I’ll wait years.  And I’ll not speak of this to you again.  I only wanted you to know I’m yours to command.” He grinned.
Alanna tried to push away.  Her heart was thumping rapidly and she felt giddy.  She couldn’t let this go any further.  “We can go on being friends like before?”
“Friends, and good ones.  Confess it, lass, you’d miss me sorely, were I not about.”
Alanna made the mistake of looking up into his laughing eyes.  That was the problem, right there: she was not nearly ready for what she saw in his face.  She looked down, afraid.  “I—I won’t let it ruin our friendship, George,” she whispered.
“And I won’t speak of it again till you ask it.  Look at me, Alanna.”
Alanna looked up.  George kissed her, pulling her close.  His mouth was warm and comforting.  Alanna had not forgotten the last time, and she had discovered that she liked his kisses.

(There are going to be a few spoilers below, just a heads up.)

Here's the thing about Tamora Pierce's romantic subplots: they are usually creepy.  Not because they almost always involve older men and younger women (that's fairly standard for a medieval-style universe and not overly squicky for me anyway), but because they all seem to involve the protagonist being taken by surprise.  Tamora Pierce prides herself on writing determined, self-sufficient, motivated young women who excel in male-dominated fields and refuse to sell themselves short because of their sex, usually in settings where their sex makes them second class citizens.  And that's great, and she SHOULD pride herself on that—I know it was a big deal for me as a young reader to find fantasy novels starring young women who went out and did the whole rescuing-people finding-things saving-the-world-from-utter-destruction shtick that makes fantasy the ridiculous genre I love.  But very few of her heroines ever seem to make the first move in a romantic capacity- they are always taken by surprise, and sometimes described as struggling to get away before "relaxing" into the kissing, one of my least favourite romantic tropes.  Even Aly, who is meant to be very balls-out and flirtatious, never seems to actively pursue anyone.  The only exceptions I can think of right now are when Alanna eventually sleeps with George, a sexual encounter she suggests and initiates (and even then that's after he surprise-kisses her and she struggles), and when Daja kisses Rizu (and I don't know if Pierce approaches that differently because it's a same-sex relationship and she herself is presumably heterosexual).  Even Kel's relationship with Cleon, which is one of the better relationships in the novels—not in a "we are meant to be together forever" way but in a "this is a very pleasant first romance which will not end in death and/or mutual enmity" way—is one that begins when he surprise-kisses her.  She had never even considered having a relationship with him prior to that one kiss.  And it's not a creepy kiss, and it does not involve dubious consent (sit DOWN, George), but within the broader scope of all the other surprise-kissing that happens within the Pierce canon, it's all rather troubling.  This could be a your-kink-is-showing thing, in much the same way that all of Pierce’s romantic interests are older*, taller** gentlemen, but either way it would be nice to see it subverted in one of the newer books.  And it would be super to never see any of the oh-I-don’t-want-your-smooches-wait-you-have-pursued-me-long-enough-now-I-like-it crap again.  The Alanna books were and are pretty damn progressive in a lot of ways, but as an adult who has both witnessed and been subject to some pretty terrible predatory behavior in the name of “romance”, I am truly unnerved to reread the scenes I thought were so fucking romantic as an eleven-year-old and realize they are actually sketch as fuck.

Anyway.  Duke Roger is put in charge of the army, and Alanna ends up stationed with Jon by the Drell River Falls, an area of the Valley that’s not due to see much fighting.  Jon is pissed about this.  They are under strict commands by King Roald to avoid crossing the river to reclaim the right bank.  Alanna is pissed about this.  They ride out a day late and it takes them twelve days to reach the Drell River.  Presumably everybody is pissed about this, but not as pissed as Duke Gareth, who is left alone in the Palace to nurse his broken legs and sigh longingly over the hand-painted portrait of Coram he keeps tied to his belt at all times.

How long will it take Duke Roger to start trying to kill Jon and Alanna?  Will George try to invade the Tortallan Army dressed as an ice cream vendor just to give Alanna some more surprise sugar?  Is it just me or is “we want this totally sweet river back, brah” kind of a dumbfuck reason to go to war?  Find out next time in CHAPTER FIVE: BY THE RIVER DRELL, OR, JON IS GAY AGAIN, SOME FIGHTING OCCURS, AND ALANNA MINGLES WITH COMMON FOLK WHO DON’T WANT TO STICK IT IN HER.

* Except Nawat, who is FOUR.  Jesus.

** No exceptions to this rule so far.  I was holding out hope for Kel/Owen, but apparently he is married to one of Wyldon’s daughters.  Tamora Pierce: not a fan of short bros.

IN THE HAND OF THE GODDESS, CHAPTER THREE: THE PRINCE’S SQUIRE, OR, GEORGE GIVES AN UNEXPECTED PRESENT, JONATHAN HAS THE SEX, AND ALANNA IS NEARLY KILLED, AGAIN

It’s the night before Jonathan’s birthday, and the whole Lower City is celebrating.  Alanna (with Faithful) is there visiting George, and the thieves make fun of her for not drinking.  Silly thieves, this is a Tamora Pierce book.  You can only drink in Tamora Pierce books if you are a hilarious alcoholic!

George takes her up to his room and asks about her lessons with Duke Gareth, because he is still employing people at the Palace to watch her every move and for some reason that… isn’t creepy?  I guess?  Okay.  Instead of being disturbed and annoyed, like a reasonable person, Alanna laughs it off and says George should start working as a spy in Tusaine.  George, to her surprise, says he intends on doing just that, and warns her to conceal her source.  He then gives her a package send to him from Thom, which contains a jewel-studded silver mail shirt for Jonathan’s birthday and a letter for her.  In it Thom is his usual dickweed self and says that people have been making inquiries about the two of them in the City of the Gods.  She asks George about it and he says that she has twice been followed into the Lower City by Palace men.  They didn’t make it as far as the marketplace.  I guess that’s one upside to having a known criminal hire thugs to follow you around.

George changes tack suddenly and asks her how old she is.  When she replies that she’s nearly fifteen, he’s like, “Ohohoho, that is marrying age in the Lower City.”  He is really vying for the Tortall’s Creepiest Bachelor award today, isn’t he?  Alanna is suitably freaked out (FINALLY. GOD.) and is like “haha George, I’m not going to get married, please let go of me now!”  George complies and briefly acts like less of a weirdo… until he walks her home and force-kisses her when her hands are full.  She is, again, suitably freaked out and says she should have stabbed him, and he’s all “lol no.”  When he leaves Alanna asks Faithful why he didn’t stop him.  His reply?

I’m not here as a chaperone, the cat replied.  Besides, I didn’t want to interrupt.  You seemed to be enjoying yourself.

Wow.  This did not bother me enough when I was eleven.

The next day there is a big ol’ Court ball for Jonathan’s birthday.  Tortallans, man, any excuse for a party.  Alanna, being the World’s Tiniest Buzzkill, is sulking on a windowsill when Gary finds her and tells her to come meet the new resident hottie.  (Alanna’s automatic response: “I’m too young for girls.” jfc BE GAYER, ALANNA.)  Said hottie is named Delia of Eldorne, and we can immediately tell she is an eeeeevil slut because she has dark hair and is wearing a low-cut green dress instead of the customary white/pastel palette of good, virginal court maidens.

Jonathan is clearly infatuated with her, and she is just as clearly interested in making Alanna uncomfortable/Jon jealous by dancing with our favourite redheaded pipsqueak.  Alanna mentions that she feels “odd” whenever she compliments Jonathan, and Myles—who is, as usual, drunk—notices her jealousy.  He tries to sympathise by telling her that some women like to break up male friendships.  Jeez, if it wasn’t obvious that Myles knows about Alanna’s vagina issue this would sound so much like a kindly open-minded mentor giving his closeted homosexual protégé a pep talk.

The seasons turn, as they are wont to do, and the Tortallan winter is harsh as balls.  Alanna, who hates the cold even more than she hates spiders, remembers the Great Southern Desert in the wistful longing way you remember the best sex of your life.  Speaking of which: she also starts having the sexy thoughts about Jonathan.  Specifically, about crawling into be with him to “warm up,” and by “warm up” we mean “get some hot prince-on-squire action.”  The harsh winter means that Trebond is suffering, and Alanna gets some practice running a fief by sending food and warm clothing up north to relieve her people.  Thom, the actual heir of Trebond, is presumably too busy casting spells and being a dick to bother with that kind of earthly nonsense.

The squires are sent out for an impromptu camping trip in January, and Alanna deals with her hatred of the cold by digging a little snow burrow and warming herself with her Gift.  She takes Faithful with her—seriously? How are her training masters okay with this?—and the two of them chill (heh) for the night until Alanna is randomly attacked by a boar.  When she stabs it it squeals and vanishes.  Someone is definitely trying to kill her with magic, but Alanna refuses to tell anyone, because she has no proof.  Damn, girl, there must be a spell someone can cast to trace this sort of shit—then again, these books were written prior to TPierce’s interest in procedural crime dramas, so maybe not.  In any case, Alanna tells no one, because the Trebond knights are known for their intelligence.

So in addition to the cold, intrusive sexy thoughts, and murderous boar-illusions chasing her down in the forest, Alanna is all cranky about Delia of Eldorne, who is really hot-n-cold and gives Jonathan the boyband feelings.

No, not those.

That's more like it.

Sometimes they bone and sometimes she ignores him and it makes Jonathan impossible to live with.  (He even writes poems.  POEMS.  I’d really love to read one of derpy ol’ Jon’s poems—I’m imagining something like “Delia, oh Delia, you make my young heart feel-ia.”)  The situation is not improved by Delia trying to make Jonathan jealous by making Alanna pay special attention to her at parties.  At one point Jonathan accuses Alanna of “using” Delia to make her masquerade more believable, which, trust me, dude, everyone just thinks she’s gay.

One of the few squires at Court who is not infatuated with Delia is Alex, AKA Duke Roger’s former squire.  As a result Alanna starts hanging out with him more—probably the lack of poetry is a relief—and one day they decide to have a friendly duel.  You know, see which of them is better at killing people with pointed sticks.  Grand, that’ll end beautifully.

(Unrelated: Alanna refers to Alex as her “dark friend,” which both reminds me of The Wheel of Time and strikes me as a wee bit racist.  Damn, Alanna.)

They duel in one of the practice rooms, and in a crazy twist that no one could have seen coming, Alex tries to kill the shit out of Alanna and ends up breaking her collarbone.  The duel is stopped by Myles, which seems to snap Alex out of some kind of trance; he apologizes profusely to Alanna and then leaves.  Myles says that Faithful dragged him from his chambers to the room in which Alex was trying to make Trebond kebab.  Myles and Faithful are both like “yo he was trying to kill you, maybe you should do something about that?”  And Alanna, true to form, is like, “I have no proof.”

Um, okay, maybe you don’t have proof that Alex was put into a trance by Duke Roger and sent to kill you, or whatever, but he broke your collarbone.  And you have a witness (two if you count your talking cat, which maybe you shouldn’t because people might think you are on shrooms).  You definitely have proof that Alex tried to kill you.  Maybe you should, you know, do something about that?

Will Alanna keep being a dumbass?  (Yes.)  Will Jonathan keep channeling JC Chasez?  (Yes.)  Will more people try to kill our pigheaded heroine?  (Is that even a question?)  Find out next time in CHAPTER FOUR: A CRY OF WAR, OR, ALANNA GOES ON A ROAD TRIP AND GETS FORCE-KISSED BY GEORGE AGAIN, JESUS, GEORGE, WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK?

IN THE HAND OF THE GODDESS, CHAPTER TWO: DUKE ROGER OF CONTE, OR, IN WHICH DIPLOMACY IS VERY DIFFICULT, A DUEL IS HELD, AND SYMBOLIC CHESS IS SYMBOLIC

Aw, yeah, shit’s about to get political up in here.

Alanna’s bumping along very happily—Prince’s squire, Goddess-chosen, magical cat, basically living the anime dream—when suddenly a metric fuckton of delegates from neighboring kingdom Tusaine show up to cramp her style.  Apparently the king of Tusaine is considering retaking the Drell River Valley on the border between the two kingdoms, and King Roald hates war so much he is basically considering rolling over and taking it.  Or, like, not taking it.  Letting them do it.  Whatever.  As Jonathan’s squire, Alanna is in the thick of all the diplomatic fol-de-rol, which is why she happens to be at the party where one of the ambassador’s knights, Dain of Melor, pooh poohs Tortallan swordsmanship.  “Fencing!” he sneers.  “I’ve seen what you call ‘fencing.’  Back home we call it dancing!”

The Ambassador of Tusaine, Mikal, apologizes for Dain, but then ruins it by being all “lol you guys sure do suck wrt fencing tho.”  Diplomacy is just really hard, okay?  Everyone is very tense, and there’s this little moment in the background:

“Raoul, standing by the hearth, was shifting slowly into a fighting stance.  His coal-black eyes were snapping with fury, and he gripped his sword hilt with a white-knucled hand… Frantically she signaled Douglass to look at his knight-master.  Her friend hurried over to Raoul and shoved a wineglass into the big knight’s hand, talking softly and quickly.  After a second’s hesitation, Raoul released his hilt with a sigh.”

Given Raoul’s later admission of a drinking problem in his youth, this tidbit is kind of awkward and sad.  How do you stop Raoul from kicking up a stink?  Get him drunk!  A+ squire skills, Douglass.

Jonathan says that even Tortallan pages and squires know how to hold their own against a full knight, and proposes that Dain fence one to see for himself, volunteering Alanna.  Dain blusters a bit about all the duels he’s been in and all the bandits he’s killed and how SHORT Alanna is before finally throwing in the towel and agreeing.  They all retire to the fencing gallery, but not before Alanna turns to look at her good buddy Alex and notices a strange expression on his face—almost as though he's eager.  Could that be important?  Nah, he’s just Duke Roger’s former squire, it’s probably nothing.

Myles is freaked out about the fact that Alanna intends on dueling a man who’s a head taller than she is.  Alanna points out, quite logically, that if she refused to fight people who were taller than her there would be no point in trying for her shield at all.  Faithful advises her to let Dain be stupid and not to get herself killed.  (Oh, yeah, this is how we’re told that Faithful can talk, by the way.  It’s just kind of slipped in there.  I guess once the Goddess herself shows up to give you costume jewelry a talking cat ain’t that big a deal.)  Dain and Alanna stretch and bow, and the duel begins.

Dain is both taller and stronger than Alanna, and spends a lot of time taunting her in hopes that she’ll become unnerved and slip up.  She doesn’t, instead watching his body language and movements for feints and openings.  They both quickly become sweaty and gross, and Alanna tries to wipe her face while Dain recovers from a stumble, thereby giving him the opportunity to lunge at her arm.  He gets first blood, and she’s prepared to sheath her sword since he’s won by the rules, but instead he starts trying to stab her in the chest.  Sporting of him.  Everyone’s yelling “foul!” like it’s a goddamn soccer game and Duke Gareth comes toward them with a sword to try to end it, but Alanna shakes her head to call him off.  You don’t stop Alanna of Trebond from fighting a broski just because he’s trying to stab her in the chest, dude.  She disarms Dain, careful not to slip in her own blood, and tells him that he was stupid and that she’s only not killing him because she’s a better knight than him.  Okay, Alanna, 1) you are not a knight yet and 2) the dude may have tried to stab you in the chest, but before that?  According to the rules of first blood, he WON.  So you’ve basically proved both that Tusaine knights are better swordsmen than their Tortallan counterparts AND that Tortallan knights are too wussy to kill people.  Good show.

Myles comes to Alanna’s room while she’s cleaning up after the duel and asks why she didn’t kill him.  Her response:

“He was stupid.  If I killed everyone who was stupid, I wouldn’t have time to sleep.”

Snerk.  Myles says that the Ambassador would have understood if she’d killed him, and Alanna says that just because he (Dain) behaved badly is no reason for her (Alanna) to behave badly.  She then gets all teary and asks why Myles is picking on her.  He hugs her and tells her she’s a good lad.  It’s all very Degrassi.

In a very non-Degrassi scene not so very far away, Duke Roger is playing chess with himself and thinking about Alanna.  It’s all very wanky and exposition-y, so let me sum up: the Duke expected Alanna to be easy to control but she’s not; he doesn’t understand why she and Jonathan came back from the Black City; he thinks a god is protecting Jonathan, and possibly Alanna too; and now it turns out that Alanna is ace at waving pointy sticks around, dayum.  His conclusion: He has to find a natural-looking way to kill her before she waves a pointy stick at his face.  And also Jonathan, the King, the Queen, and anyone else who might get in his way.

How many more duels will Alanna have to fight?  Will the conflict with Tusaine escalate?  Why is Duke Roger playing chess by himself, doesn’t he have any friends?  Find out next time in CHAPTER THREE: THE PRINCE’S SQUIRE, OR, GEORGE GIVES AN UNEXPECTED PRESENT, JONATHAN HAS THE SEX, AND ALANNA IS NEARLY KILLED, AGAIN.

IN THE HAND OF THE GODDESS, CHAPTER ONE: THE LADY IN THE FOREST, OR, ALANNA REHASHES HER BACKSTORY, MEETS A DEITY, AND RECEIVES A MAGICAL CAT

I’ve got to just come out and say this: I have never, never liked In the Hand of the Goddess.  I know it’s a fan favourite, and I know it features the consummation of Jon and Alanna’s gay relationship, and stuff, but my God is it dull.  In a nutshell: “I think the Duke is evil but I have no proof.” “But what about all these evil things he’s done?” “NO PROOF I SAY. Also there’s a war or something, Iunno.”  DULL.  As well, it is the book that kicks off my hatred of Jonathan (although it’s The Woman Who Rides Like a Man and, later, First Test that really put on the finishing touches).  A note to all would-be writers: If you make a romance one of the central story arcs of your book, please make sure both parties are basically likable and do not dedicate about fifty percent of their page time to temper tantrums.

Right.  With that out of the way, let’s start the book!

When last we saw our heroine she had just defeated a tribe of immortal wizard-demon-things, showed a member of the royal family her unmentionables, and been named squire to a prince of the realm.  In the Hand of the Goddess opens with Squire Alanna riding through inclement weather in an unnamed forest with a three-hundred-year-old document for Sir Myles, because not rain nor sleet nor snow nor gloom of night will stay this vertically-challenged ginger androgyne from the swift completion of her appointed document-related duties.  (By the way, that document is not mentioned again.  Given Myles’s interest in the Old Ones’s cooking habits, I have to assume it is a centuries-old grocery list.)  As she rides she thinks about her past four years masquerading as a boy, conveniently summarizing the entire first book for any readers who skipped it.  If only Tamora Pierce had used that strategy for the Beka books.  At one point a spider lands on Alanna’s glove and she freaks out, because apparently she is terrified of spiders.  Funny, I don’t remember that being in the- ah, right, she goes into the Chamber of the Ordeal at the end of this book, need to get some extra fears up in hurr.  She spots a willow tree with very thick branches and decides to camp under it for the night; she’s just about to turn in when all of a sudden there is a tiny black kitten staggering out of the bushes to meet her.  A tiny black kitten with purple eyes.  She is momentarily concerned, thinking the cat is supernatural, but is pretty much immediately swept away in a sea of “d’awwww lookit his little pawsies.”  Which is valid.  Kittens are fucking precious.

Look at that shit.  Do you give a fuck about the supernatural right now?  I don’t.

She is about to fall asleep again (this time with a cat for company), when suddenly she starts sneezing, as she does when magical things happen.  (Dude, this is Tortall, magical things happen like every three pages.)  A tall woman in a cloak and hood has materialized by her campfire, asking if she can take shelter with her under the tree.  Alanna pretty quickly realizes that something’s up, because the chick sounds familiar and her face is “too perfect to be quite real.” I’m sure you’re supposed to imagine her as incredibly beautiful, but this just reads as Uncanny Valley territory to me.

This woman is watching you in the shower.

But yeah, turns out that Alanna's mysterious visitor is the Goddess, AKA the female head of the Tortallan pantheon and owner of that weird voice she's been hearing in her head for the past few years.  Just takin’a day off, comin’ to the woods to visit her Chosen One, ykhig.  Alanna is suitably unnerved, which prompts the Goddess to start a plot-propelling discussion of all the things she is afraid of.  The first one is the Chamber of the Ordeal, the room in which all Tortallan squires spend an overnight vigil prior to knighthood; Alanna mentions Jonathan’s face after his own Ordeal, saying he “looked like some part of him died in there.”  It was the nice part, Alanna, just so you know what happened when he starts yelling at you a book from now.

The mention of Jonathan leads in a totally natural and not at all asspully way to a discussion of Alanna’s second fear, her “fear of love.”  The Goddess is all “I don’t get why you hate the idea of boning so much, Alanna, boning is awesome.”  (She says this in a very floaty “warmth of a man’s touch” way, but she means boning.)  Alanna says that she doesn’t want to be distracted by love; she also mentions that her father was deeply in love with her mother, and when he died (oh yeah btw that happened, okay) he was still calling for her even though she’d been dead for years.  She says she doesn’t want to give any part of herself away, because her father did that and he never got himself back.  That's sad and stuff, but what I'm curious about is how did she handle reading he father's will?  Would anyone have noticed that it listed a son and a daughter, or would they just think Lord Trebond was a bit addled as usual?  Or did he stay true to his jerkass self and just not mention her?  Inquiring minds want to know.

Her third fear, according to the Goddess, is “Roger, Duke of Conte.”  What, not spiders?  She starts yelling about how the Duke caused the Sweating Sickness and told Jonathan to go to the Black City, and the Goddess nods along and is like “yes that is all true.”

… Wait.  You’re a central figure of the Tortallan pantheon, worshipped by pretty much everyone in the realm, you know this dude’s out to steal the Tortallan throne, and you are clearly able to take on a physical form and come into the mortal realm, and yet you use this power to harass a teenager about boning instead of appearing to, oh, I don’t know, SOMEONE IN CHARGE to give them a heads up about the evil sorcerer trying to kill the Crown Prince?  The fuck kind of goddess are you?

Anyway, the Goddess is like, “You’re dealing with your fear of the Duke by remaining vigilant and protecting your prince, and time will cure the other two fears.”  But not the fear of spiders, is what I’m getting from this.  She then takes a burning ember out of the fire and tells Alanna to take it from her hand.  She does, and finds that even though it’s burning, it’s cool to the touch.  And comes with a built-in loop so she can put it on a chain.  I can’t make this shit up.  The Goddess is handing out tokens from Claire’s.  She gives Alanna her hand to kiss, tells the wee kitten to take care of Alanna, and then disappears.

Back at the Palace, Alanna’s friends are besotted with Faithful, which is the name that Alanna gives her new totally-not-supernatural-because-lookit-his-little-punim kitten.  (Gary wants her to name the cat “Raoul.”  You’re weird, Gary.)  He starts following Alanna everywhere she goes—except Duke Roger’s classroom.  When Duke Roger eventually sees him, Faithful freaks out and tries to scratch his eyes out, only barely held back by Alanna.  Because that is very helpful, giving the crossdressing lawbreaker an animal companion that makes more people pay attention to her.

Jesus, Goddess, your gifts SUCK.

Will Faithful continue to be the World’s Worst Familiar?  Will Alanna get over her fear of boning?  How tacky does that ember thing really look?  (Like one of those light-up Christmas necklaces, presumably.) Find out next time in CHAPTER TWO: DUKE ROGER OF CONTE, OR, IN WHICH DIPLOMACY IS VERY DIFFICULT, A DUEL IS HELD, AND SYMBOLIC CHESS IS SYMBOLIC

ALANNA: THE FIRST ADVENTURE, CHAPTER SEVEN: THE BLACK CITY, OR, IN WHICH THEY GO TO THE DESERT AND ARE NEARLY DEAD FROM PLOT DEVICE

The ride into the Southern Desert, it turns out, is long.  REALLY long.  You just wouldn’t believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly long it is.   Alanna spends most of it waiting on Lord Martin and Sir Myles and roughly twenty gazillion other people, because she is a page and dammit if pages ain’t gonna do them some work on their Duke-sanctioned field trips.  As they ride towards Persepolis, the city of the Great Southern Desert, they encounter several tribes of the Bazhir, who are MYSTERIOUS and PROUD and make their women wear VEILS and spend their lives riding and fighting in the harsh desert sun and crap.  (I know Tamora Pierce has stated that she based the Bazhir on the Bedouin, but they always read more like she saw Aladdin one too many times and went from there.)  Through these encounters Alanna notices that Lord Martin really seems to hate the Bazhir, and Myles is like “yeah well he has his reasons though!”  The reasons, apparently, are that the Bazhir are “unusual” and that some “renegade” tribes do not accept King Roald as their sovereign, mostly because his father, the Old King, killed a whole lot of them.  But that’s water under the bridge, surely!  Myles adds that no matter how much Lord Martin hates the Bazhir, he’s a very fair man.  Yeah, I guess, fair except for the RACISM.

After a week-long journey, they finally reach Persepolis. Alanna notices that the Bazhir are staring at her and Jonathan very intently.  She feels awkward about this, and continues to feel awkward through their arrival, their room assignation, and the beginning of the night’s formal banquet.  At that point Myles (who is already drunk) introduces Alanna to Ali Mukhtab, the governor of Persepolis Castle and the wearer of one very elegant vest.  He and Alanna have a weird conversation in which he compares her to a cat and she asks about the Bazhir.  Specifically, she asks why he, a Bazhir, is the governor of Persepolis Castle when Lord Martin hates the Bazhir.  (She’s even like “I know he’s fair and all” and he’s like “lol yeah fair my left TESTICLE”).  Apparently one of the few treaties the Old King drew up with the Bazhir before he decided to go the good old “kill ‘em all and let the gods sort ‘em out” route specified that the post of governor must always be held by a Bazhir.  He then leads Alanna and her friends to the Sunset Room, a room built specifically to watch the Black City.

The Sunset Room is missing an entire wall (for better watching purposes, one assumes), and faces west, hence its name.  They can just about see the Black City in the form of a tiiiiiiny speck on the horizon.  You’d think that someone would build a watchtower or something a few miles closer, you know, just to keep an eye on it properly.  Mukhtab tells the squires-and-one-page the story of the Black City: apparently when the Bazhir first came to the Eastern Lands from across the Inland Sea they were greeted by a clan of immortal demon… spirit… monster things called the Nameless Ones, who gave them arable land and cattle and took their souls as payment.  When the Bazhir realized that that was what they were doing they rebelled, burning the Nameless Ones in their own city.  Which… is still standing.  Of course.  Anyway, now the land the Nameless Ones gave them to farm is the Great Southern Desert and Bazhir youths still sometimes feel compelled to go to the City in the middle of the night, whereupon they are tied to their beds and starved to death, because apparently even that is better than facing the Nameless Ones.  Mukhtab then tells them that the Bazhir have another legend: that one day two gods, the Night One and the Burning-Brightly One, will come to the Black City and get rid of the Nameless Ones.  (The Bazhir are bad at names, apparently.)  Jonathan’s like “I wish there was a written history of the Bazhir and also please pay no attention to how intently I am staring at the Black City right now, thank you.”  When the boys go back to their rooms for the night Alanna wonders aloud who exactly the Nameless Ones were and Jonathan says that they are probably made up to scare children.  Alanna’s like, “By the pricking in my thumbs you are a fucking liar, Jonathan of Conte.”

Alanna wakes up in the middle of the night and speed-dresses, in a tremendous hurry for no particular reason.  She meets up with Jonathan, who seems to be in a similar hurry, in the corridor, and they ride out into the desert.  Towards the Black City.  Where people disappear forever.  Because they are CLEVER.

The Black City is, as advertised, quite black.  Once they are inside the gates Alanna suddenly remembers that pesky vision of the black city she’s been having since she was ten (really, Alanna? It took you this long?) and gets all antsy.  She tries to get Jonathan to leave, but he’s all “herp a derp busy looking at carvings.”  Because of their gay relationship she can’t just leave him alone and ride back to Persepolis, so they walk further into the city, towards an enormous temple at the top of a flight of stairs.  As soon as they reach the door Lightning starts humming, and Alanna tries to get Jonathan to leave once again, and he once again opts to stay and get his ass killed look around.  They approach the altar and suddenly ten tall, glowing, inhumanly beautiful men and women show up and start talking about eating them.  Yes, indeedy, it’s the Nameless Ones, who call themselves the Ysandir.  (And have names like Ylira and Ylon and Ylanda.  Presumably Yvette is on vacation.)  They are immortal and eat souls and plan to eat Jon and Alanna’s.

Luckily, they seem to be afraid of Lightning (and the Old Ones in general, as they refer to it as “one of their weapons”), which gives them time to raise walls of power and shoot purple lightning bolts and other Tortallan superhero crap.  Less luckily, the Ysandir are able to read minds, which means they quickly realize that Alanna is an Alanna instead of an Alan.  So they make her clothes disappear.  Jonathan gets a good eyeful of her naked (before lending her his tunic, because he is not yet Asshole Jon—best believe he wouldn’t have helped her cover up past book two) while the Ysandir lol themselves silly about a chick trying to defend a dude.  Which, okay, if we’ve learned anything about Alanna at this point it’s that she cannot stand people LAUGHING AT HER, the Ysandir are clearly doomed.  She holds Jonathan’s hand, and because of their mutual trust or the strength of their friendship or the purity of their gay relationship or something, they are able to raise a Wall of Power which spontaneously melts a couple of the Ysandir.  (They are immortal, but not the kind of immortal that can’t die.  Yeah, it’s never eally explained so don’t even bother trying to figure it out.)  Ylira tries to break their concentration in a way that I think is actually one of the most effective moments in the book:

“How long do you think she will last?” Ylira asked Jonathan, softly.  “Another few moments?  Not even that?  She is a girl.  She is weak.  She will give way, and then where will you be?”
It was the same small voice that taunted Alanna from within whenever she faced a taller, stronger opponent.

YES.  YES.  YES.  All those moments that Alanna’s had throughout this book when she feels inadequate because she’s a girl, all those moments when she thinks she’s a bad person, or a dirty fighter, or not worthy of such-and-such an honour, all those moments when she whines that she’s not good enough, not strong enough, not fast enough, and—when she has proven that she IS all of those things, and more—just not enough of a boy, they all lead up to this fucking moment, when she realizes that the person telling her that she’s worthless, she’s no good, she’s going to fail because she’s a girl and that’s terrible, is wrong.  And that maybe if that person who says she can’t do it is wrong, maybe the voice in her own head that tells her that she’s weak is wrong too.  Connecting your own internalized misogyny with the way you are treated by the world around you—or, rather, connecting that outside voice to the inside one—is a HUGE FUCKING DEAL and I am SO glad Tamora Pierce put that in.

Moving on.

 Jonathan and Alanna manage to kill a few more of the Ysandir before they properly retaliate.  A couple of them gather together and start to collect power, which is described as forming in a “small, evil ball.”

It looks pretty much nothing like that, I imagine, but wouldn’t it be cute if it did?  Alanna and Jonathan set a load of them on fire, until only two (Ylon and Ylanda) are left.  They say special nonsense words to collapse the Wall of Power.  (Really, guys?  YOU COULDN’T HAVE DONE THAT BEFORE?)  Alanna and Jonathan aren’t strong enough to fight them, even with their special gay relationship powers, so Jonathan asks Alanna to become what she was the night she saved him from the fever.  Which she does.  They start speaking to the Goddess in their grownup lady and dude voices, and the Goddess answers them, basically telling Alanna to USE THE SWORD YOU GREASY HIPPIE.  Alanna does, swinging Lightning in their faces while Jonathan chants and crap, and together they blow up the last two Ysandir.  And promptly pass out.

Jon and Alanna wake up a few hours later, sore as balls and itching to get out of the Black City. They ride out to an oasis a few miles away, where they can rest and talk.  Specifically, talk about that whole Alanna-has-a-vagina issue.  Alanna explains about the switcharoo she pulled with Thom, and he is duly impressed.  She asks if he is going to tell anyone, and he’s like “dumbass, we just blew up demon-thingies together, you vagina is not that big of a deal.”  She is so grateful she cries, which freaks Jon out a little.  They have a beautiful time together in the oasis, except one awkward moment when Alanna’s like “isn’t it weird that Duke Roger seemed so eager to send you to certain death?” and Jon’s like “TAKE IT BACK,” but everything is fixed a few minutes later when, as they’re falling asleep, Jon asks who she thinks he should choose as a squire come Midwinter.

Alanna sat up on her elbow.  A week ago she would have told him to pick Geoffrey or Douglass.  But she had not been to the Black City then.  She had not proved to the Ysandir that a girl could be one of the worst enemies they would ever face.
But what if she had not gone to the Black City?  Duke Gareth had mentioned that, with a deal more practice, she could become one of the finest swordsmen at Court.  In archery she hit the target every time.  The masters who taught her tactics and logic told her she was sometimes brilliant—Myles said she was far more intelligent than many adults.  She had bested Ralon of Malven, and in some strange way she had won her sword.
All at once she felt different inside her own skin.
“Me,” she said at last.  “You should pick me.”

It’s quite a nice moment—not quite as FUCK YEAH as the one earlier with the Ysandir, but equally important to Alanna, who suddenly realizes that she’s not just not weak, she’s fucking badass.  To her surprise, Jonathan completely agrees, and they have the book’s final gay moment when she kisses his hand and pledges her fealty.  They go to sleep under the stars, and will presumably awake to find they have a lot of ‘splainin’ to do to the people they’ve left behind in Persepolis.  The book ends with the words “The Beginning.”  ‘Cause it’s the FIRST adventure, get it?  Oh, Tamora Pierce, you so clever.

Will Alanna and Jon’s gay relationship continue into squiredom?  Will Duke Roger continue his poor-concealed attempts to seize the throne?  Is Alanna going to eventually fake puberty to disguise her lady voice or what?  Find out next time in the first chapter of In the Hand of the Goddess!  Which as of yet does not have a snappy make-believe title, but I bet when it does it’ll be really funny.  No, seriously.

ALANNA: THE FIRST ADVENTURE, CHAPTER SIX: WOMANHOOD, OR, IN WHICH ALANNA TELLS GEORGE A SECRET, NEARLY DIES, GETS A LETTER, WINS A DUEL, AND IS INVITED ON YET ANOTHER SPECIAL PAGE FIELD TRIP. IT IS AN ACTION-PACKED ADVENTURE THRILL RIDE, BASICALLY.

“Womanhood” is the longest chapter of Alanna: The First Adventure, and it would have been a lot shorter had Alanna ever read Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret.  Just sayin’.

So Alanna’s doing her sword fighting thing, learning to not be shitty at life, and she wakes up one morning and realizes that there are things happening in her special region.  Mysterious, bloody things.  She freaks out—shockingly—and quickly realizes that she can’t tell any of the Palace healers.  So she decides to ride out into the Lower City to find George, because if there’s one person to whom you can confide your secret double life as a lawbreaking vagina-owner, it’s the King of Thieves.  Rather than actually go inside the Dancing Dove and talk to anyone, she breaks into George’s rooms via the roof.  George hears her coming and nearly slits her throat.  Apparently people who break into his rooms don’t get the one-ear warning.  Alanna tells him that she needs to see a female healer, and George is all “you’ll need to give me a little more than that, brosef.”  And so she tells him.

Alanna swallowed hard.  “I’m not a boy.”  It was incredibly hard to say.  “I’m a girl.”
“You’re a—you’re a what!” George yelled.
“Hush!  D’you want everyone to hear?”  She scuffed her foot against the floor.  “I thought you’d guess.  You have the Gift.”
“And your Gift shields you.  Alan, if this is a jest, it’s a poor time for one.”
She glared at him.  “D’you want me to take my clothes off?”

NO, ALANNA.  And then it comes out that she’s apparently seen George naked like ten thousand times before.  Apparently either Tortall has no nudity taboo or the Dancing Dove is like the Shortbus of imaginary medieval countries.

George takes a moment to absorb this new information, then tells Alanna that he is going to take her to see his mother, a trained healer who used to be a priestess of the Goddess.  She takes Alanna into her study and asks her what’s wrong, and then just about kills herself laughing when Alanna tells her that she’s bleeding from her bikini area.  She tells Alanna that this is not a medical emergency and is just something that happens when you own a vagina for the correct amount of time, and Alanna—guess what!—freaks out.  She’s all I HAVE THE GIFT I CAN MAKE MY VAGINA NOT DO STUFF and Mistress Cooper’s like NO YOU CAN’T DERPYHOOVES, because apparently that pisses the gods off or something.  She gives Alanna an anti-pregnancy charm (even though Alanna insists that she doesn’t intend to have sex at any point, ever—oho, my dear, just wait until your fake homosexual liaison is finally consummated), and then takes her hand to read her future and is all “aw, shit, you’re chosen by the Goddess, SUCKS TO BE YOU.”

And it does suck to be her, because when she gets back to the Palace Duke Gareth grounds her for riding into the Lower City without permission.

She doesn’t get out again until after her thirteenth birthday, when Sir Myles asks her to ride out with him to his estates for a sleepover field trip excursion.  He tempts her by telling her that there is a ruin near his castle that dates back to the Old Ones, the people who founded Tortall.  Duke Gareth gives his permission (in a dressing gown fit for Chrestomanci himself) and within a few days Alanna and Sir Myles are trit-trotting out to Olau, a barony nearly due south of Trebond.  Alanna briefly gets a little homsesick because Olau reminds her of home, except it’s full of orchards and fields instead of bloodthirsty Scanran raiders and the castle has windows that don’t let in the wind.  That seems like a great reason to NOT be homesick, tbh, but okay.

On their second day at the Barony, Myles and Alanna hike out to the ruin and Myles tells her about the super awesome paper he is writing about the way the Old Ones lived.  He is apparently particularly interested in the way they… cooked.  He is like that Sociology graduate student who spends long hours at the grad bar, drinking scotch and talking about his thesis and totally killing your buzz.  Myles also lets slip that he was compelled to bring her out to Olau via prophetic dream.  (Those pop up a lot in Tortall, no big.)  Alanna is weirded out, which is odd, as everyone who meets her can’t seem to stop talking about her special ~destiny.  They reach the ruin, and Alanna’s ~destiny directs her to a big black door in what used to be the armoury.  She promptly moves it using special touched-by-the-Goddess strength.  It opens onto a dark, forbidding tunnel, which Alanna naturally bounds joyfully into, using her Gift to light the way.  She finds a neat-looking sword with a crystal on the pommel and examines it while Myles bellows outside about a sudden storm on the rise, which he says is some kind of supernatural god-storm or some bullshit.  Alanna’s all “yeah, whatevs, lookin’ at this sword I found,” and then the dark tries to strangle her.

Yep.

Suddenly the light of Alanna’s magic went completely out.  Darkness swirled around her in long tentacles that tightened on her body.  She opened her mouth to scream for Myles, and no sound emerged.  She fought to breathe and fought to throw her magic into the stifling blackness, but nothing happened.  She tried to shove it away with her arms and legs and found the blackness had bound her tight.  It was squeezing her ribs, forcing the air from her lungs… She was dying, and she knew it.

Alanna accepts her own death—dude, like two pages ago you couldn’t even accept that you were bleeding from the twat, suddenly you’re accepting your own death?—and then the crystal on the pretty sword she found lights up and, like, sucker punches the darkness off of her.  Or something.  Anyway, she doesn’t die, and Myles is like, “Keep that, I was probably compelled to bring you here because of that life-saving sword with the crystal on the butt.”  Alanna does keep it, and names it Lightning.

Back in Corus, people notice Alanna’s new sword, and she tells them all that she picked it out of Myles’s armoury, instead of telling them that she found it while barreling into a tunnel and getting into a wrestling match with the dark.  (She tells George the truth, and his only reaction is “lol you accepted something?”)  Duke Roger asks to inspect the blade, and when he does he freezes up and twitches and has some kind of crazy evil sorcerer reaction to it.  He’s like “WHERE THE FUCK DID YOU GET THIS IT IS MAGIC AS BALLS” and Alanna plays dumb.  She also realizes that she really, really hates Duke Roger, because apparently the way to get on Alanna of Trebond’s bad side is to mess with her stuff.  SHE JUST DOESN’T LIKE OTHER PEOPLE TOUCHING HER THINGS.

Shortly after this, Stefan the Hostler brings Alanna a secret letter from Thom, who sends them via George.  Thom tells her about having moved from the Convent to the Mithran cloisters, and warns Alanna not to trust Duke Roger.  Yes, Thom, that is certainly something that could conceivably happen.  Thom also mentions that Duke Roger is one of the few living sorcerers powerful enough to send the Sweating Sickness to Tortall, and that he is next in line for the throne should Jonathan die.  George mentions this to Alanna as well, and Alanna pooh-poohs them both.  However, she finds herself working stronger, more complicated spells in her free time, almost as though she actually believes them and isn’t a complete tool.  Almost.

While Alanna works spells and pretends not to hate the Duke, Jonathan keeps going down to the Lower City to drink with the riffraff.  I’m sure that what Pierce was trying to set up here is that Jonathan is a king who cares about the common man, but the Dancing Dove is full of con artists, thieves, swindlers, cutthroats, and ladies* of negotiable affection.  I feel like sending the privileged, sheltered heir to a vast and wealthy kingdom to a den of iniquity as his first exposure to the working class gives him a slightly crooked** idea of what the poor are actually like.  Jonathan is going to be knighted soon and everyone wants to be his squire.  (Note: it is also revealed at this point that Alex was chosen to be Duke Roger’s squire, which makes Alanna side eye at him a lot.)  Everyone wants to be Jonathan’s squire, especially Alanna, but she’s all I’M A GIRL ANGST ANGST I’M NO GOOD AT SHIT ANGST ANGST HE’LL NEVER WANT ME AS HIS SQUIRE ANGST ANSGT FOREVERRRR.  Kid, you have a magical sword and you’re destined as fuck, I think you’re gonna be okay.

In April—this is in Alanna’s fourth year, for those of you keeping score at home—Lord Martin of Meron arrives at Court.  (Fief Meron, by the way, is apparently better known as the Great Southern Desert, a land that was already populated by an indigenous people, the Bazhir, before Tortall conquered it.  And now it’s a “fief” that just happens to be roughly as big as the northern half of the kingdom and home to a number of nations and tribes.  Good show, Tortall.)  He’s come North to propose a trip for all the soon-to-be knights, so they can meet the Bazhir and learn their ways before they inevitably kill them as adults.  Which is all kinds of horrifying.  Lord Martin was an expert swordsman in his youth, and Captain Sklaw takes his arrival as a sign from the gods that it’s Humiliate Alanna Time once again.  He pits her against Lord Martin’s son, Geoffrey, in a free-style practice duel, and she kicks his ass, proving that all those late nights with Coram’s sword have started to pay off.*** It’s a BFD and everybody claps.

Later that night, Jonathan goes to see Duke Gareth to ask him if he can take Alanna on the trip to the Great Southern Desert.  His explanation for why he wants to do this:

“Because he’s my friend.  Because I always know where he stands, and where I stand with him.  Because I think he’d die for me, and—and I think I’d die for him.  Is that enough?”

Before the squires (and one page) leave on yet another Tortallan field trip, Duke Roger calls them all into the Great Library for a special man-to-man talk.  There is, apparently, a place called the Black City in the middle of the desert which is totally evil and from which nobody leaves alive.  He hints that since he is the best and even HE doesn’t dare to go anywhere near it, a bunch of pansy-ass babies like THEM don’t stand a chance.  He is wearing a very pretty sapphire necklace, which he fiddles with as he talks to them, and which makes Alanna sleepy and dopey when she looks directly at it.  He closes his lecture with “I know when a sword is too heavy for me to lift,” almost as though he is challenging them (or rather Jonathan, who he is looking directly at).  This disturbs Alanna deeply, because sure, he’s next in line for the throne, and yeah, he’s been repeatedly named one of the few sorcerers in the Eastern Lands who would actually be able to send the Sweating Sickness from a great distance, and okay, she’s been having weird awkward hostile feelings toward him and his moustache since they both arrived on the scene, but that doesn’t mean anything, right?  Right?  Right?

Will Alanna’s newfound fencing skills come in handy in the desert?  What’s the dealio with this Black City crap?  Will anyone ever stop being derpy about Roger’s repeated attempts to kill Jonathan? (Nope.)  Find out next time in CHAPTER SEVEN: THE BLACK CITY, OR, IN WHICH THEY GO TO THE DESERT AND ARE NEARLY DEAD FROM PLOT DEVICE

* There may also be men, although they are never mentioned.  In the Beka novels there are certainly a few male sex workers kicking around, although they seem to be an exception to the rule, but perhaps that’s one of those kooky Tortallan customs that died out between King Roger and King Roald, like lady knights or not killing LBGTQ people.

** See what I did there?  Ah, this is why I make the big blogging bucks.

*** This could be a euphemism.  But it’s not.