Plot holes (spoilers included) in RotE

[redchild]

these beings discovered an interesting plot hole in "assassin's apprentice"...

about 3/4 of the way through the book they saw this:

It was in Piche, an ancient native tongue of Chalced, the southernmost Duchy

If that isnt a hole torn in how the plot evolves, then there's not much that can be such...

That's either a pretty major plot hole or an editing error.

I am not sure Galen tried to *kill* Verity? Fitz says he wanted to 'drain him dry'.
I think he wanted to drain his Skill strength to augment his own, and that was his main aim.

I don't quite understand how he would be able to hold the "surplus" Skill strength in reserve. Verity's stamina is already known to be very substantial, and Galen's Skill ability is probably not as good as Verity's as his training was not complete. Wouldn't it be like trying to make a bucket bigger by siphoning water off an Olympic sized swimming pool?

I suppose that's why Galen trained his coterie so that they would help him by pooling together. If you have enough buckets, you can empty out a swimming pool.

Possibly it is easier to intentionally kill with the Skill after the person's Skill strength has been drained to a low level? He may have intended to follow up by killing him.

Probably because he knew Verity's Skill ability far surpassed his own, so he adopted the "draining" approach, tiring Verity out so that his every effort in using the Skill would be too focused on watching out for Red Ships to realize that Galen's coterie was siphoning his Skill.