He waves a hand, conjures a second chair, sits down. Takes a deliberate sip of his coffee. 

"Fine. We can be serious. If I was here to arrest you, I would have. I think you have good instincts and will make for a fine citizen of Cheliax. And you have to stop writing those pamphlets." 

"Because people might go hang someone who isn't a diabolist. Oh no. A much worse outcome than every single one of them getting away with it forever."

He sounds very mild. He doesn't look it. 

"Would you call what happens to them getting away with it forever? I wouldn't."

"Oh, I don't believe in the afterlives. Bunch of nonsense made up to manipulate us. You're going to say you can do a scry and I'm going to say you can also do a major illusion, spare yourself the mirror."

"A very sensible way of looking at things. I suppose you studied magic?"

He can't actually think of any benefit of denying that but he is silent on general principle.

" – It doesn't matter. We will confine our discussion to the Prime Material. Tell me, what happens if all of them get away with it forever?"

"They live out happy lives sleeping well at night never thinking about what they did to people and - raise children to be like them and be secret diabolists for hundreds of years until the opportunity strikes -" but emotionally it's mostly the first thing, clearly -

"I'm sure they'll be much more thoughtful hanging from lamp-posts."

"No one will have to be afraid of them ever again."

"That's a worthy goal, but not very practical. Do you think you'll get all of them?"

"No. Or - I won't kill them all. But they're all scared. They're all running around thinking to themselves, who sold me out, who else might have things to say about me, what was I hoping was dead and buried which isn't. I already got them all to feel sorry they did it for the first time in their lives."

"Do you think they felt sorry for what they did during the riots last summer?"

"I don't know. I hope so. There wasn't an announcement, we're going after you because you did this and we know it. I think that helps, with them feeling sorry. The ones who got the Blade looked sorry."

He settles back into his chair and takes another sip of his coffee. 

"That's a philosophical question. I'm sure they regretted what they'd done, in that found they disliked the consequences. I doubt they were overcome with moral horror at the magnitude of their crimes."

“Well, if you’ve got a spell for making them overcome in horror at the magnitude of their crimes, I’ll take it. But in its absence I’ll settle for disliking the consequences.”

"I have hopes for time and good example, though admittedly not high ones. But if all you want is for your enemies – really anyone a stranger told you might at one point have been your enemy – to live in fear, I don't have much more to say. I suppose I could offer some advice  from one pamphleteer to another. You really want to be more specific in your denunciations. Times, places, victims – sympathetic without being pathetic,  if you can manage it, since the Chelish reader is reasonably likely to decide they had it coming. A little blood never goes amiss, but really only a little or you'll risk sounding common. And wit! It's much too easy to make your diabolists merciless or brutal, but hardly calculated to inspire their enemies. Making them appear ridiculous takes skill, but it's more useful – and, besides, it's true." 

That gets him a bit of a smile. "Are denunciations not to be banned, then?"

"Oh, certainly they will be, at least until the convention can come up with laws protecting them. Do you care?"

"I would never dream of disobeying the law," he lies very seriously.

"I didn't come here meaning to encourage you. I'm not very used to being on this side of these sorts of conversations. I think the pamphlet was an artless piece of work. I think it speaks well of you that you wrote it, at great personal risk. I'm afraid that if you keep going with it you'll get what you want. And I know that if you do, you'll regret it." 

"It is important to me not to get it wrong. We do real journalism for them, you know, we talk to several people and see if the stories line up."

He's ignoring that "we." What is he, an interrogator? 

"Oh, I'm sure they're all guilty. Almost all of them. If you were trying, oh, I don't know, raise public awareness, that would be one thing. You're not, though – you're trying to incite a mob. Now, I'm not saying there's no place for mobs. Far from it. When there's no hope of justice – no mercy – when you want anything, absolutely anything at all, just so long as it's not this – why, a mob can be just the thing. A mob's a tool. But – " he leans forward – 

"If you are going into the business of popular violence, you absolutely must not convince yourself, ever, under any circumstances, that they are a tool you can control. You can just – set them off. They don't care about your list. Most of them won't have read it. A mob is where people go when they want to forsake the use of reason and engage in a good old-fashioned cleansing orgy of violence. You can't move it, and you can't stop it. All you can do is live with it."

"The Galtan Revolution was good and it should've happened here too."

"The Galtan Revolution is the best thing anyone has ever done. Is Galt free?"