Book Review: The Assassin’s Blade

Title: The Assassin’s Blade
Author: Sarah J. Maas
Genre: Fantasy, Romantasy, Romance

What It’s About:

The Assassin and The Pirate Lord

Celaena Sardothien is at the meeting of the Assassin Guild’s inner circle with Arobynn Hamel, her master. She notices that Ben is missing from Arobynn’s side, which is unusual as Ben is Arobynn’s second in command, and that Sam is sitting in the seat. She demands to know what is going on, and Arobynn tells her that one of their guild members have been caught by the Royal Guard, and Celaena correctly guesses that he has had something already slipped into that Assassin’s food so that he will not be alive when it is time to be questioned. He also adds that Ben showed up during that mission and that he was killed. Celaena asks why no one has gotten his body, and she gets angry when they all tell her that there is too many Royal Guards about to pick it up. She responds that they’re assassins, so they should know how to avoid all of these people and get his body back, which is the right thing to do. She walks out and tells them that she will get it back for them.

Two months and several days later, she is wearing a heavily cloaked outfit and a mask, obscuring her features—as Arobynn’s protege and heir of the guild, everyone has been sworn to secrecy into not revealing what she looks like. Sam is with her at the tavern, where they have been waiting for two hours for the Pirate Lord, Rolfe to show up and speak with them about the assassins that his men have killed. Celaena is annoyed, so she starts rifling through Rolfe’s stuff, and takes an item off the desk, just in case. Rolfe comes in, and after some back and forth where he claims that his men had nothing to do with the murder of the assassins, Celaena throws him the missives from Arobynn. Both she and Sam are surprised when Rolfe tells them that at least Arobynn has more common sense than they do, as he’s not holding Rolfe guilty for the assassins or requesting reparations. Instead, Arobynn wants to get into the slave trade with Rolfe, which furtherly surprises the both of them, but Sam and Celaena play it off as if they have known all along.

Later, Celaena asks Rolfe a lot of questions, having made up a plan in her mind about freeing these individuals. Rolfe tells her that she can come with him that evening to visit and see the slaves that they are holding in town for inspection, as well as meet with him at 4pm on the ship the following day to inspect the slaves that they will be taking for Arobynn. When Celaena returns to her room that she shares with Sam, he asks her what she is up to. She doesn’t divulge her plan, but he follows along with her when Rolfe takes them to the inspection facilities. Celaena gets upset seeing how the slaves are treated—these are mere people who have either fought for their freedom against the crown, or were close to the battle, or where stolen from their homes—and Sam gets upset when he hears Rolfe explain that although they do try to keep the children with their mothers, they can’t control what happens on the auction block and sometimes children are purchased for some type of jobs or for working in brothels/as courtesans. This particular point is a stickler for Sam, as his own mother had been a Courtesan, who had been sold into it, worked her way up to being a popular one, and then was brutally murdered. Sam and Celaena help each other stay their hand so that they don’t kill Rolfe and his men right away, but afterwards Celaena tells him the full plan.

They do have the meeting at 4pm with Rolfe aboard the ship that will take the slaves to Arobynn, and Celaena asks them if there is anyone who speaks the common tongue. Only one man stands up and tells them that he does, to which Celaena responds that he may fetch a higher price, hiding her true intentions. Sam asks a few questions of Rolfe as well—both are disgusted to have found out that 7 of the slaves had died en route to Skull’s Bay, and that many more may die on their journey to Rifthold. But this cements their desire to continue with the plan.

That evening, Celaena and Sam open up a tab for the pirates at the tavern, and they row to the two ships containing the slaves. Both of them incapacitate the guards on board, and the captain—Celaena threatens the captain onboard of her ship to take the slaves wherever they want to go—and then she goes down into the holding cells where the slaves are being kept. She realizes that they are kept so tightly together that it is no wonder that some of them died, and some may die on their voyage. She finds the man who spoke up earlier, Dia, and tells him to translate for her. She has a woman go around and unchain the slaves from their shackles, while she explains what she has done to the guards, and what the plan is. Specifically, she tells them to start rowing like hell at dawn, regardless of what is going on with the shipbreaker chain—a chain that has to be lowered at the entrance of the bay in order to let the ships through—as she will take care of that. Once she makes the plan clear, she asks Dia if he could come with her and go over to the other ship full of slaves, and explain the same thing all over again. They meet Sam at the row boats, and go their separate ways.

Sam and Celaena are at a tavern with Rolfe, laughing and playing games, during which Sam pretends to be drunk even though he is not. At some point, Celaena discreetly trips a pirate, and a brawl breaks out, spilling out into the street. Both she and Sam leave the tavern, fighting their way through, and when they are out on the street, they hear someone yell enough. It momentarily causes all the pirates to stop fighting, salute, and then go back to fighting. So she and Sam make their way towards the plans, only to be intercepted by Rolfe, who had noticed Celaena trip the guy in the bar. She tells Sam to go on, while she faces off Rolfe, surprising him with her beauty—she had taken off her mask—and reveals that she is much younger than he thought, being 16 years of age. She fights him off and renders him unconscious, before running around the city to lose the men that had come out in chase of her. She watches as Sam races towards the tower with the pirates on his tail, and starts heading towards him. They both realize at the same time that there is no way that Sam will be able to disengage the humongous chain on his own, as it is a heavy one and requires at least two persons to disengage it. Sam hops onto one of the catapults, which is full, and fires onto the tower just as the pirates reach it, which causes the watchtower to fall apart, along with dropping the chains and freeing the ships. While she had been running, Rolfe caught up to her again, and threatens to torture her. She does take him out again, but this time she has him forcefully sign documents that state that he will not do the slave trade with Arobynn,thereby ending the relationship, and that he will not be a slave trader, but rather create Skull’s Bay as a safe haven for anyone running away from war. She tells him that she will find out if he doesn’t keep his word. Then she knocks him out again, this time for longer.

Celaena heads up to the watchtower, searching for Sam, and hoping that he is not dead. She does find him, hurt, and together they head back home to Rifthold.

The Assassin and the Healer

In Innish, a town in Melisande, a barmaid watches the woman in black, who sits with such stillness. When the woman in black had arrived to the inn, the White Pig, where the owner, Nolan had done anything and everything to get as much money out of the woman as he could, as she appeared to be rich. Yrene Towers had arrived to Innish after taking what money she had left from her years growing up with distant family, and leaving at 18. Her plan had been to make it to Antica, to Torre Cesme, where the Healers train, but she ran out of money and had convinced Nolan to give her a job. Except, Nolan takes the coin she earns from her for room and board, and food, and the remaining tips that Yrene makes are taken by the other barmaid who claims that she is the one that is making the tips. Additionally, they now have her do some of the jobs that would make others squeamish as she has an iron stomach, something that she had inherited from her mother, who was a Healer.

When the cloaked woman waves her gloved hand for more ale or alcohol, Yrene Towers pours more ale into the cup that she had been cleaning, and makes her way to the woman, avoiding all gripping hands. She drops the ale, water and some bread with her, and then makes her way back when the woman doesn’t reply beyond a thank you. Celaena watches the barmaid make deft work of avoiding hands and thinks it’s such a loss that this girl who is clearly intelligent, observant, very good on her feet, is in a bar in a no-good town. Celaena has been beaten by Arobynn for her role in breaking the agreement with Rolfe and freeing the two hundred slaves, which she still thinks was worth it, though she worries about Sam and what had come of him. She debates on whether or not she should get on the ship at dawn to go to the Mute Assassin, which is another part of her punishment from Arobynn for what she has done, or to run away and create her own Assassin’s guild.

Yrene thinks about her past, and her mom, who had taken up a dagger to fight against soldiers that surrounded them one day, telling her to run. While she is in this memory lane, two men come up to her at the bar, and one grabs her by the waist. She manages to extricate herself from their arms, telling them that she has a husband at home, and when they leave her alone, she reminds herself that she only has 40 minutes till closing time. She does, however, feel a shift in the air, just the same that Celaena has felt a shift in the air, and has been hoping that one of the thieves or other patrons would try to steal from her or get in a fight with her.

At closing, Celaena heads to her room, not happy with the fact that no one made a move on her, but then decides to head out to the city, against her better judgement, in order to see if she can find someone spoiling for a fight. Yrene cleans up, and throws out some of the food and water outside, glad that there wasn’t a brawl at the inn and that she wouldn’t have to clean up blood or vomit. Suddenly, she finds herself surrounded by four men—recognizing the mercenary that had been at the bar earlier talking to her. She tries to make a move for the door, but they are way faster than she is. Suddenly, out of the mist, a figure starts killing the men; the cloaked woman appearing with bloody blades, as she takes out the men. She lets the fourth one go, while she talks to Yrene about keeping herself safe and not being out at this hour. Yrene offers and then demands that she take care of the woman’s cut as she had been a healer. The cloaked woman says nothing, and follows her into her broom closet, where she takes off her cloak while Yrene gathers the items she needs to help tend to the cut. Yrene is completely surprised by the woman’s youth and beauty, though the woman does have bruises on her face. Celaena does not give her name to Yrene, but does asks for Yrene’s name.

They talk, and Yrene does reveal her dream, to which the young woman responds about Antica and at least going to live in Antica even if it meant to be in the streets rather than at this inn in the middle of nowhere, where there is no future. Yrene does tell her that she wants to come back as a healer to the continent to heal people because there are many of them who do need it. Celaena does guess that Yrene is from Fenharrow, though she discreetly mentions the royal family that was murdered in Fenharrow for their abilities. After Yrene tends to the wound, Celaena takes her out back and teaches her moves to protect herself, explaining that men won’t go after women who they think will be a problem or a challenge, and they will try to move her—her goal is to not be moved, so she needs to make as much a ruckus as possible, and run when she gets free. Celaena teaches Yrene several moves without blades or weapons that she could use to get free of any hold that a man might have on her, and Yrene is a quick learner. As they finish up their session, and Celaena tells Yrene to teach these methods to any woman who is willing to learn to fight back, Celaena also tells Yrene to go back into the inn, as she senses men. There are at least five of them coming in—the fourth man who had run away, had brought his friends with him to avenge those that the cloaked woman had killed. Yrene listens in through the door, as bodies go thudding, though she worries about the young woman making it out alive—she had previously had surprise on her side. She peeks out and sees that Celaena has managed to keep them all off, but suddenly Yrene feels a blade at her throat. One mercenary had made it through the inn, and now forces her out to the alley, where he tells the cloaked woman to drop her blades or he will kill Yrene. Celaena seems to be pleading with Yrene to fight her way out of it, to use her knowledge that she had just learned, while she tells the man to come and get her blades. In a sudden fury—all sorts of anger flood Yrene—she gets out of the grip of the man by following the maneuvers that Celaena had taught her, and then Celaena shows up to kill the man, telling her that she’s a fast learner. Yrene is a little upset that Celaena let her be in that position, as she clearly was able to fight off all of the men and come save her, but Celaena tells her that she wanted her to try the moves in a controlled situation so that she could see that they work. Celaena then tells Yrene to get changed and wash her clothes out of blood, so that there aren’t any questions. Yrene goes in, after vomiting, changes into a new set of clothes, and washes her own clothes from the blood, which she then has to hang up in her closet so that people don’t ask too many questions about them. When Yrene returns to her room, she finds a bag along with a note—Money to go where ever she needs to go, and then some, as the world needs more healers. In the bag, she finds cash, but also the brooch that the cloaked woman had worn. She later leaves the Inn that same day for good.

Celaena had gotten changed, and while Yrene was washing her stuff, she decided to leave things behind for her. She left much of her gold coins and the brooch, a gift from Arobynn that she received on her 16th birthday that she hopes Yrene will sell to get money, on Yrene’s cot. Celaena hopes that Yrene will not tell anyone about the money, including the innkeeper, who she figured would dock Yrene’s pay for the supplies that Yrene used to tend to Celaena’s wound. Celaena makes her way to the dock, onto a ship, giving the captain a silver coin, and then goes to the stateroom as directed. She will have to be careful with her money going forward on her voyage now, but once she’s safe in her room, she promptly goes to sleep.

The Assassin and the Desert

Celaena is surrounded by dunes, and a nomad guide who tells her that she has to walk two miles in a particular direction, pointing out a dune. The guide is unwilling to take Celaena through to the home of the Silent Assassin, showing that many people fear them. She makes her way in that direction, and just as she is about to give up and set up tent, when she finds herself in the fortress owned by the Silent Assassins. She is taken to a room, where she meets the Mute Master, and he looks at her face, when she introduces herself. Then he snaps his fingers, and four men rush her, so Celaena fights them off, before she is deemed worthy of joining their training program. She is to be roommates with Ansel of Briarcliff, who over time reveals that she had hidden in a cupboard while her father and older sister were murdered by a Lord who took over their territory. Celaena slowly accustoms herself to life at the Silent Assassin’s fortress, first struggling with the morning exercises of running while carrying two buckets of water to a nearby oasis three miles away, but it becomes easier and easier, as she trains with them and goes through the weapons training. She also becomes friends with some of them. Still, she laments the fact that she isn’t training with the Mute Master, which was the requirement per Arobynn’s punishment, and she had to get a letter of approval from him; though, he will only train her when he sees fit to train her.

One evening, while the highest level assassins are out escorting their future clients, the fortress gets attacked, but Ansel, Celaena and the remaining assassins in training manage to fend them off, under Ilias’s command. Illias happens to be the son of the Mute Master, and knows his place in the fortress. The next day, Ansel receives a request from the Mute Master to go meet with Lord Berick, a man who is in charge of the nearby territory and who believes that this territory extends into the domain of the Silent Assassins. Ansel invites her to come along with her, and two days later they make their way to the city, where Ansel leaves Celaena alone telling her that this is a private matter and that they will meet at three pm by the fountain. Celaena wanders around the market, looking at different things, and struggling with her purchasing—she wants to buy a beautiful pair of shoes that have hand-embroidered elements on it, as well as a wonderful perfume that she loves. While she is browsing about, she comes across a man selling a fortune’s worth of spidersilk—something that can only be gotten from the Stygian Spiders. The man confirms to her that he had to give up twenty years of his life—he is twenty five but looks like he’s in his forties—in order to get this amount of spidersilk, and that he had gone to a witch who told him that the only way that he can get the years back is if the spider that took his life is killed. He mentions something about a spy in the assassin’s fort when he learns where Celaena is spending her time—though he never learns her name—but then he asks her if she would be able to kill the spider for him. She tells him that she is not free until after the summer, and he tells her that he will not be able to get back until the following year. She agrees to take on the challenge, and tells him to find Arobynn Hamel in Rifthold—he will know where to find her—before the man gives her a box with a small square of spidersilk.

When Celaena meets with Ansel, the two rush out to the stable and steal two horses—Asterion Horses—that are super rare to have, but are some of the fastest horses in existence, having been reportedly created by the fae from all of the directions of the compass for different things. They rush out of the stables, and ride across the lands, jumping across a thirty foot chasm that the guards following them cannot cross on horseback with their regular horses. When they arrive at the fortress, they are in trouble with the Mute Master, and Celaena apologizes for the two of them, claiming that it was her idea, and sparing Ansel from any further trouble, though Ansel had gotten the Mute Master to make their punishment cleaning the stables. The Mute Master looks at Celaena and then lets her know that she will start training with him the following evening.

Celaena and Ansel do the cleaning of the stables, which does not include only the horses, but all of the other animals that they have, and then later that day she reports for training with the Mute Master, who puts a basket containing an Asp in front of her. At first she panics, but then she realizes that the Mute Master is telling her to observe and learn the Asp’s movements. So she begins learning that, and later learning the silence of the bats, and the other animals that they have around them. Then there is a festival that Celaena helps Ansel get ready for, and they all have fun dancing into the night—without any music. Celaena does head out of the party with Ilias, and for the first time wonders what it would be like to kiss, something that she has never done in all seventeen years of her life, but ultimately when it’s time to kiss, she stops them. The next morning, she is cleaning the stables when Ansel comes in, and the two girls get into a fight, with Celaena telling Ansel that she will never amount to anything and getting back her family’s lands if she just doesn’t take things seriously, while Ansel calls her a spoiled girl. That night, the words keep echoing in Celaena’s head while she is in her training with the Mute Master, and he asks her to tell him what is going on. She thinks that it would be silly to tell him about a squabble between two girls, and so they sit in silence, until nearly the dawn comes up and she tells him that she is afraid of leaving and going back to something that she doesn’t really want anymore.

When she returns to the room, she promptly falls asleep. Ansel comes in later, and the two apologize to each other, at which point Ansel pulls out the wine and they celebrate. Except the wine knocks Celaena out, and she finds herself in the dessert with her horse and a note from Ansel that says that the Mute Master has given his approval and that he wants her out of the Fortress but felt it would be rude to do it. It seems a bit off to Celaena because she only had a few days left, but since she got the approval, she heads back to town where she plans to catch a ship. Along the way, she encounters an army of 200 hundred of Lord Berick’s men, but she goes her own way, just giving them a nod, as she figures that the Mute Master probably doesn’t need her help. Once she arrives in the town, and spends a day there, she realizes that it is extremely deserted and there’s not a lot of people in the town. She decides to check the letter of approval and finds it empty, at which point she realizes that Ansel had knocked her unconscious with something in her wine to get her out of the fortress, while it’s being besieged, and remembers what the spidersilk trader had said about a spy in the assassin’s fortress, realizing that it is Ansel. She takes her Asterion Horse and rides all the way back to the fortress arriving after the battle had begun, and many are dead—though it seems like the Assassins are winning. She remembers what Ansel had said about Lord Berick wanting the Mute Master’s head to win a favor with Adarlan’s king, so she rushes up to the Mute Master’s chambers, where she finds Ansel’s lover dead, Ilias bleeding but wanting to get to his father, who is laying down beneath Ansel. The Mute Master is unable to get up as he too has been paralyzed via a drink that Ansel has brought for him, and Ansel holds her sword over him—the sword that once belonged to her father. Celaena fights with Ansel, and at one point Ansel has leverage over her. She notices the Mute Master making vague hand movements that seem to be implying that Celaena should move like the asp.

During this fight, Celaena finds out from Ansel that she had been working with Lord Berick to get him what he wants—the Mute Master’s head—so that he can give her an army to take back her lands. Ansel also reveals to Celaena that part of the deal with Berick was that she would leave the fort doors open for his men, and get rid of the night watch so that they can get in. Celaena gets leverage over Ansel using the new techniques she learned from the Mute Master, and tells Ansel that she is to get out of the fortress—she has exactly 20 minutes to get out on her horse with her stuff, and get beyond the range of an arrow, the one arrow that Celaena will shoot at her as she is riding away. She gives Ansel back her sword and the girl runs off, while Celaena tends to both Ilias and the Mute Master. Once the other Assassins come to help them, and bring the antidote to the Mute Master to the paralytic that started to wear off anyway, the Mute Master makes a sign to Celaena reminding her that her 20 minutes is almost up. She goes up to the fortress walls, watches Ansel ride off on her horse, and shoots the arrow, narrowly missing the horse—she had promised Ansel one arrow, and 20 minutes, but she waiting until 21 minutes had passed to shoot the arrow.

The next day the Mute Master calls Celaena over and he speaks to her for the first time. He tells her that he is glad that she saved Ansel’s life and gave back her father’s sword, and that he had known something was up with Ansel’s past when she never received any letters from her family. He had sent out an assassin to investigate and the man came back saying that the father and the older sister were murdered, while Ansel was missing. He wondered what type of future Ansel might choose or find here in the fortress. The Mute Master also tells Celaena that she is welcome to the fortress anytime she wants and that he’s sure that his own son would be happy to see her. He gives her the letter of approval, and tells her that she should tell her master that we do not abuse our own disciples, and that he is aware that she has a fortune due to her master, but that she will find more than enough in the coffers he gives her to pay that off and have a bunch left over for her own things, whatever it is that she wishes to do with it.

The Assassin and the Underworld

Upon Celaena’s return to the Assassin’s Keep in Rifthold, she wants to tell Arobynn that she is out and done; however, Arobynn asks her for forgiveness and apologizes to her for treating her the way that he had. He gives her a gift—a piece of jewelry and tells her about a contract that is being put out by Leighfer Bardingale, a lady from Melisande, who is here in Rifthold to make an agreement with the king. He tells her that Leighfer wants her ex-husband killed because Doneval wants to use the new road that they are trying to make to sell slaves to Rifthold, and he has a list of documents that would reveal the existence of people who are helping slaves escape that he intends to use to pressure them into agreeing with him and working with him. Celaena tells him that she will think about the contract, and then she heads out into the Keep, where she runs into Lysandra, the Courtesan in training, and Sam Courtland. She gets a bit upset by the fact that Sam spent all summer with Lysandra, and seemed to have gotten cozy with her.

The next day, Celaena gets fitted for a suit that has blades everywhere. When Arobynn is out of earshot, she asks the trader if he would be able to incorporate spidersilk into the suit, and the man tells her that he will. Then, Celaena gets her hair, nails and face made up in her favorite salon, and on her way back, she sees the caravans from Melisande. She also runs into Sam and Lysandra, and she decides to go take the contract on Doneval. That night, Arobynn takes the three of them out to the theater so that they can enjoy the show and also so that Celaena can see Doneval, who visits the theater. Celaena sees him, observes him, but then once the show starts she gets entranced by the show, and eventually starts crying as a result of the music. When the show ends, Lysandra makes a comment that she didn’t think that Celaena was capable of emotion, but that the show wasn’t all that amazing. She is the last to leave the theater, and makes her way back to the Keep deciding to forego following Doneval. There, she tries to play the music on the piano—something that she had learned to do as part of her training in the Keep—but isn’t able to get it quite right. When she leaves the piano room, she runs into Sam who comments that it doesn’t feel the same. They walk together to her room, and she tells him that she had a summer fling, which gets Sam a bit upset.

The next day, Celaena finds the music sheet from the theater on her bed, knowing that Sam had gotten it for her. She eventually starts following Doneval and observing his house, with Sam’s help on the mission. They watch Doneval come and go, and observe the house from the outside, figuring out that there is a second study on the upper floors. They end up following one of Doneval’s guards to a bar but find that he just sits there, so their intel is not beneficial. They still do not know when the meeting will take place in the study, which is important to them for the mission as Celaena needs to kill not just Doneval but whoever he is meeting with.

Arobynn takes Celaena and Sam to a party thrown by Leighfer, and Celaena manages to get some time to speak with Doneval, telling him that she is the niece of a trader, and that she would like to set dinner up with him or take him to the theater. Doneval is definitely interested in the meeting and he tells them that he can only set up something either before or after the dinner, which he reveals he has at 7:30pm. Celaena sees Leighfer look sadly at her at some point during the party after that, but doesn’t understand why. She ends up partying a bit and having a good time, when some new men—nobles, based on their clothes and wearing masks that covered their faces—come and one of them, with blue eyes tries to dance with her. Sam steps in and she tells him off that she’s having fun, and that she is capable of taking care of herself. After that discussion, Sam walks off on his own.

Another day, another argument with Sam about him helping Lysandra, leads to Celaena taking matters into her own hands and going to Doneval’s house. She uses the new suit that Arobynn had made for her, with boots, to climb up into the house’s second floor in secret. She barely makes it into the room, when she is attacked and knocked out by two guards. When she comes to, she is in the sewers, and the guard, whose name is Philip, tells her that she hasn’t been as discreet as she had thought, and that he will leave the flooding of the sewers to take care of her and kill her. He then leaves the sewers, locking the door behind him, as the sewers start flooding. Celaena uses the blades in her suit to cut herself free from the chair, and then she swims through the sewers to a wall, where she finds respite from the flood, but she is unable to get the grill open from the inside to get out. She starts screaming for help, and Sam shows up. Together, they try to get the gate out, but are unable to do so, and the water keeps getting higher and higher. At some point, the water gets high enough and Celaena tells Sam to take her body to Terrasen, because she knows that she won’t have a chance at surviving it—perhaps the river had saved her nine years ago, but now it was claiming her.

Celaena wakes up on the cobblestone, and coughs up everything she can. Upon her return to the Keep, she takes several baths—and cleanses herself with alcohol as well to get as much of the vile water out of her. Sam checks in on her, to see if she’s all right, and tells her that he had shown up at Doneval’s house after Lysandra’s party but couldn’t find her. He only heard some of the guards chuckling about something that went down, so he went searching for her in the surrounding areas, and heard her screaming. Celaena tells him about Ansel and what happened in the Silent Assassin’s fortress, with Sam only asking questions when he needed to. She asks him for help on the contract because her list has just gone up by one name.

Celaena goes to Arobynn, and gives him the three trunks of gold from the Mute Master, telling him that this is going to pay off her debt and then some. She tells him that she still wants to work with him, but that she’s going to work as a free person. Arobynn accepts the gold without a fight, and Celaena decides that she will not be moving out right away to give Arobynn time to get used to it. Sam and Celaena then go down into the sewers, now much cleaner from the rains and the flooding than they previously were. Sam is wearing the suit that he had to buy himself, which is similar to Celaena’s suit, though hers was a gift. They have a conversation in the sewers, where he reveals that he’s been thinking of leaving Rifthold and starting his own Assassin’s keep in Banjali, with approval from Arobynn of course, because there is nothing left here for him. Celaena pushes him about nothing being left here for him, and he reveals that he has loved her for years, and that Arobynn has known that as well and used that against him. At the same time, Celaena has not cared about his thoughts, feelings or input, so what does he exactly have to stay for? Celaena asks him to stay, and then kisses him, revealing that she too has feelings for him. They come up with a plan with the sewers and the cellar to access Doneval’s house, and then leave the sewers way later, with swollen mouths.

The next day they put their plan into motion—Celaena gets into the cellar first, unlocks the doors, and then when seven rolls around, she makes her way to the office on the second floor. Sam’s job is to create a fire and a distraction in the cellar that will take all of Doneval’s guards away from him. She makes her way to the office, and searches it but at first she is unable to find any of the documents that they are looking for, until she finds them under a floorboard. She hears Doneval and another male coming towards the office, so she hides and listens in on the two men talk about the documents. The newcomer refuses to hand any information to Doneval until the man shows him what he has. When Doneval tries to find the documents in the loose floorboard, she jumps them, and kills Doneval, but the other man escapes. Celaena tries to follow him, but gets intercepted by Phillips on the stairs, whom she kills but who also tells her that she knows nothing about any of this. She then follows the other man, and when she has him cornered, she watches as he lights the papers he had on fire and downs poison before she can kill him. She saves the pieces of paper from the fire and then realizes that maybe Phillips had been right—there was more to the story than she knew. She decides to light these papers from this second man on fire, and then heads back to find Sam, who is sitting hidden away from the house in shock. He reveals that he had not been hurt, but an arrow had pierced him where the heart is. He looks down at the cut, and realizes that there is spidersilk there, after which he chuckles that this is why the suit was expensive. Celaena does not choose to explain to him what she’d done.

The next day, Celaena meets with Arobynn, who tells her that he received the papers from her and passed it onto Leighfer, who at the moment won’t do anything with them. He reveals to her that he’d actually lied to her—it is Leighfer who wants to make a slave agreement with the Adarlan Crown, and Doneval who had been the one who loved his country and wanted to have all of the safe houses to save these slaves. Arobynn tells her that he taught her better than that, but it seems that she hadn’t taken all the lessons if she hadn’t noticed that throughout her mission. He also adds that he used all of the three trunks of gold that she had given him for her freedom to purchase Lysandra, which hurts Celaena a bit but is exactly what she needs to tell him that she is moving out. She also tells Arobynn that she sold her Asterion Horse and that the money is coming his way—this money is for Sam’s freedom. She then walks out of the office, and when Lysandra makes a comment to Celaena about breaking a record, Celaena throws a dagger narrowly missing Lysandra’s face before walking out of the Keep. She spends the rest of the day having servants move her belongings from the Keep to her apartment in the city, and Sam later joins her telling her that he knows why she loves this place, and that he’s heard all that had happened. She tells him that they’ll figure out where his stuff goes later.

The Assassin and the Empire

Celaena lays inside the prison wagon in complete silence, ignoring everything and everyone around her as the prison wagon moves on its way north.

Eleven days earlier, she was listening to music over the theater, watching as Arobynn brought Lysandra to the theater for the autumnal orchestra, something that he had always done with Celaena and knew that it was their tradition. Celaena walks out of the door in the dome, and heads home, where she sees a note from Sam telling her not to wait up. She knows exactly where he is, and she heads there—to the Vaults—a location where different things happen, including the fighting ring, where Sam is toying with his opponent. Anyone that they put in the pits against Sam will not stand a chance, because he has been trained as an Assassin along Celaena for years. Sm, however, is willing to put up a show and plays with his opponents to make it look like they have a chance, even though they don’t really. When he wins, people cheer, and when he notices Celaena hidden, he is not happy, but he understands her body language enough to meet up with her after he picks up his winnings. They do have a disagreement in which Sam tells her that he’s doing it because their savings have been going down, as they haven’t even been able to receive any contracts since leaving Arobynn, and they need to make money. He suggests to her that they leave Rifthold and find a place somewhere away from here that they could live out in peace. Celaena is not convinced because she realizes that they would have to get Arobynn’s approval to leave anywhere else, and also they would have to make plans to get out of the Assassin’s Guild in order to be truly free. Otherwise, they will be looking behind their shoulders for the rest of their lives. Sam eventually comes around to this idea, realizing that she would be right.

So they go to meet with Arobynn, who tells them that they’re free to leave Rifthold and go anywhere; however, he requests a high sum for them to leave the Assassin’s Guild—one that would nearly wipe out Celaena’s savings, but she agrees to the payment. When they leave, Sam and Celaena get into an argument because he did not like the fact that she agreed to Arobynn’s terms without additional negotiation and without conferring with him. She reminds him again that they’re wouldn’t have been able to negotiate and this is worth it for their freedom. Sam tells her that he needs to take a walk and disappears for the remainder of the day.

When he returns to their apartment, he tells her that he had found a contract—someone wants to have Ioan Jayne and Rourke Farran, the Crime Lord of Rifthold and his second in command respectively, killed. They have a disagreement over that, but the following morning Celaena agrees to do it as it will be a contract that gets them a lot of money—enough that they will be able to leave and live comfortably enough. They begin to scope out Jayne’s house and follow Farran’s footsteps throughout the day, going everywhere that he has been going, including to the Vault which apparently Jayne owns. They get drinks there to look inconspicuous, but watch in horror as Farran takes a man down into the dungeons and the man starts to scream. They agree to make Farran pay for it, and Sam is adamant that he will kill Farran himself, alone. Celaena is against it at first, but ultimately agrees to let him do it, realizing that he’d always played second fiddle to her, and that she should let him have some glory, especially if she is going to take down Jayne. At some point, they go separate ways and Celaena returns to the apartment on her own, where she finds Arobynn in a chair. Arobynn tries to ask her if she’s insane that they’re going after Farran and Jayne, because even he, a master assassin, would not dare go after them. Celaena tells him that she does not believe him because he’d lied to her before about her missions—twice already—so why would she believe him now not to be trying to get them to do something else. Arobynn asks her if she trusts Sam, and if she told him the truth about how she was found in the river at nine. She tells Arobynn to get out, and when Sam returns home, she does not tell him about Arobynn’s visit.

Once they have made their plans on how to kill Farran and Jayne, along with Sam’s exit routes, Sam tells her to pack because he has a ship ready to take them to the Southern Continent away from Rifthold after the mission is done. Another argument ensues as this isn’t what they had agreed to, and at some point, Sam confronts her about Arobynn’s visit to their home, because Arobynn had also approached him in public and told him about the visit, and asked him if he knows what happened to Celaena when she was found in the river. Sam tells her that he has no problem with waiting and finding out the truth, because she will share it with him when she’s ready. But that Arobynn will continue to try to play them against each other, and the only way this will stop is if they are far away enough from him. If they don’t like the Southern Continent, then they will find a way to another location, and will keep going until they feel like it’s the right place.

The day of Sam’s mission arrives, and he leaves to take care of Farran. Celaena cannot concentrate and focus on her book, and she has been struggling with packing too, because she doesn’t know what to pack. Eventually, at midnight, she goes searching for Sam because he usually would have been done and back long before then, even though they had agreed that she would only start looking for him at 1am. She checks everything that she can think of and goes back to her apartment when she does not find him. Hours pass by and she has either spent that time searching for him, or taking a nap, but she hasn’t found Sam. She returns to her apartment at noon, only to find the door slightly ajar, with Arobynn inside. Arobynn tells her that he’s sorry, and reveals that Farran’s men had dumped Sam at the Assassin’s Keep, thinking that he still lived there.

Celaena demands to see his body, and heads out to the Keep, ignoring Arobynn’s pleas that she does not look at it. She sees Sam’s body badly broken and bruised, and ends up laying down next to him, crying. She later wakes up in her old room at the Keep, dressed in nothing but a nightgown, but she continues between wakefulness and sleep choosing to be numb to a world without Sam. The next time she wakes up again, she overhears two Assassins talking outside of her door in anger, where they reveal that they want to go to Jayne’s home and kill both Jayne and Farran, who they claim will be in their beds at the time when they go in three hours. One of the Assassins mentions a window on the second floor that they could jump into, but the one that could do it says that it’s too far, even for him. Arobynn comes up and tells them that they will only go when he says so, but that they plan to attack in three hours. He then comes into Celaena’s bedroom, checks on her, and walks back out, locking the door behind him. Even in the dark, Celaena can see that the lock has been changed so that it can be locked from the outside, and she knows that she will not be able to get out that way after checking the door. She looks through the belongings in there—her Assassins’ suit is missing, having been taken off of her at some point, but the room has some black outfits, so she puts those on, and then she opens up the floorboards and other hidden spaces in the room that she had grown up in. In these spaces she had left daggers and swords that she did find worthy of moving with her, but now they will serve her well. She makes her way out of the window, and sneaks around the keep, when she is intercepted by Wesley, Arobynn’s guard. Wesley calls her by her name for the first time, and there’s anger in his eyes and face that seems to be at someone else. He tries to tell her something, but Celaena knocks him out with her dagger’s hilt, using the moves she learned from the Mute Master.

She then runs through the city all the way to Jayne’s home, coming at it from the rooftops. She finds it strange that Jayne doesn’t have any security on the rooftops around his house, but she makes the run towards the 2nd story window, which has drapes and looks dark. She makes the jump, lands in the window, and finds herself surrounded. Farran, Jayne are there in the space, along with guards. She manages to kill many of the guards, and Jayne, but before she is able to kill Farran, more guards show up, including men that seem familiar to her, and they gas the place with gloriella that renders her paralyzed. She wakes up later, tied to the chair, where Farran tells her that it’s a pleasure to make her acquaintance and that she is a lot younger than he expected. He also reveals to her that he had an agreement that he would not hurt her at all, and reveals that the agreement consisted of him killing Sam and her taking out Jayne, while he took Jayne’s throne as the Crime Lord in Rifthold. He tells her that he wishes that he had time to break her as she would have been sweet to break, but alas he has a promise that he has to keep, and that he has to be somewhere. He knocks her out after that.

Celaena wakes up shackled to the floor in a prison cell. She realizes that it’s been six hours as the gloriella has worn off, and remembers that Sam is dead, and that she had failed. She was certain that Arobynn would come for her, but he hasn’t yet, and she also quickly realizes that she has no way out as the guards do not have weapons with them nor do they get close to her cell when they give her food. She refuses to respond to them, and to anyone else, though she hears their whispers. Eventually, she is brought to trial, where the King of Adarlan is present. At first she ignores him and looking up at him, and when he starts to speak, asking her questions that she refuses to answer, the voice grates on him. He finally comes up close to her to ask her some additional questions, and she looks at him, feeling fear and dread—he had come to Terrasen, her home, nine years ago and destroyed everything in his path. He asks her if she has any last words, and at first she doesn’t respond. When she does, she poses a challenge to him: Make it Quick. The King refuses to do so, and tells her that he plans to give her as much pain as possible for the people that she had killed. Instead, he sentences her to 9 years of hard labor at the Salt Mines of Endovier, with the intention of keeping her alive for as long as possible so that she can be tortured. She realizes that none of the other members of the council even thought that this would be on the table, and also that no one who has been in Endovier made it out alive. She gets taken out of the trial in shackles, and eventually loaded on a prisoner wagon that will take two weeks to get to the Salt Mines of Endovier.

As the wagon leaves the city of Rifthold, Farran and Arobynn stand on a rooftop talking. Farran tells Arobynn that it looks like she will be going to Endovier, and asks Arobynn if he will try to break Celaena out now as he had planned to do that when she was being executed. Arobynn tells him that no, and reminds him that he was the one who had Farran crowned as the Crime Lord due to Jayne’s assassination. Farran asks Arobynn what was the point of this all, and Arobynn tells him that he doesn’t like someone else taking what is his.

As the wagon rides through one of the forests, Celaena notices a White Stag—the animal of Terrasen, and remembers that the Lord of the North is there to remind citizens of Terrasen how to find their way home, and that Terrasen is with them no matter what. The soldiers try shooting at the White Stag, which is staring at her, until she screams at it to run away, and then it does. As they arrive at Endovier, she uses Sam’s reminder to himself when he got scared to steel herself for what is to come.. I am Celaena Sardothien and I am not afraid.

My Thoughts: It’s been a long time since I’ve read The Assassin’s Blade, and I think that re-reading these from the beginning with the novellas is going to be very interesting and different. I really loved the story building and the character building of Celaena Sardothien as well as the world. I enjoyed these simultaneous short stories that kind of connected to each other in one way or another, and how we find out her feelings for Sam developed. That said, I am very much devastated that Arobynn took Sam away from Celaena and they never got to explore their relationship, as imperfect as it was considering that they were having disagreements all the time. They never even actually got to spend a night together in the sexual sense because Celaena was waiting for a time when they’d have peace and time, which we know never happened. But this book really made me dislike Arobynn so strongly for how manipulative he was and is, though I truly understand that Celaena has her own ghosts to face and was looking up to him as sort of a father figure, something that he used against her as a naive teenager. I feel sorry for her through it all, and even though I know the outcome of the series, having read them previously, I feel for this girl who had so much life, so much hope, and so much to give of herself to the world of people who could love her freely, because she is about to endure some hell. But she is really made of steel to continuously put herself at risk, and kill some people to save others, or to avenge her loved ones. She is totally awesome in that way, and I cannot wait to see her story develop.