"Of course." There's a lovely parlor with a roaring fireplace and only the Unseen Servants that come with the manor. She closes the door. 

"It's not that I don't approve of your actions this morning," he says, "nor would I really have the right to tell you to do otherwise, but as your liege I'd like to better understand what you're hoping to accomplish."

"I am, to the best of my ability, participating in a constitutional convention. I acknowledge that the Axis conception of such, in which each vigorously but without any subterfuge pursues their own interests, works better if everyone is approximately equally well positioned to do it, but - someone was going to have to organize everything. And it would probably otherwise have been Cotonnet, and - I think it's better for Cheliax if our politics are homegrown, including in their homegrown idiocies.

If you mean what political agenda am I pursuing with such vigor...I'd like this over quickly, I'd like it to satisfy Cotonnet, I'd like it to not be an embarrassing farce - that's probably impossible, but still - and I'd like us to be a peaceably unified country with whoever we can peaceably unify with and I'd like the Queen to have no headaches that aren't unavoidable out of this."

"I don't know what to think of Cotonnet. There's a certain hypocrisy, I think, in preaching about the equal dignity of all reasoning beings when one is oneself the most unequal being resident on this planet, but I do think he has some vision, I just don't quite grasp it."

"I think this would go better if, rather than being a mass of people all shouting at one another, the various factions were—organized, and had a leader to do most of the speaking for them, while the president stays mostly neutral. You've clearly established yourself as the leader of some faction, I'm just not sure who else should be in it."

"I've been assuming a whole horde of people will reactively oppose any position they can identify me as having, and so it'd be unwise to affiliate too aggressively with any question I care deeply about or any allies who might be effective on their own. Those opinions which I intend to press, bearing that constraint in mind, are that we should coordinate better to handle bandits that  are presently taking advantage of the lords who don't know their neighbors or expect reciprocation if they help them, that we should abolish slavery except as a punishment for a crime and take the rollback of the legal code as an oppportunity to standardize it some and that we should delegate to the Good churches most of the land and power that was once Asmodeus's. A century ago I think I would be a perfectly normal Iomedaen royalist sort. In this age - I'm not sure that'll be a faction, and much less sure it should be."

"I basically share those opinions and I think most of the other old nobility will too, maybe the Molthuni as well if they haven't gone radical in their exile. But. On the subject of 'Iomedaen royalism'—"

"I tell you this expecting you not to spread it around, lest it have unintended consequences. But the Goddess told Lord Cansellarion that he should attempt to limit the Queen's power and influence."

Carlota is not particularly given to subterfuge; she schemes by the light of day, towards ends that do not embarrass her. Her expression is easy to read and quite shocked. "Do you mean - in that Iomedae was famously skeptical of the Empire even at its height, or - more than that -"

"I mean that he asked her what to do, I assume in a Commune, and that's what she said. I do have some idea of why, but it—touches on sensitive Church matters that I was involved in only by accident. I wasn't told to keep it secret, but I defer to Cansellarion's judgement on whether you should know. Ask him if you want. I'm only telling you this because your goal seems to be for all of us to go home and let the Queen rule as she likes, and I don't think that would be your goal, if you knew that's not what Iomedae apparently wants."

"She did also say not to overthrow the Queen, which is why we don't want this getting around to anyone who might take it as an excuse to do that."

"I won't do that," she says immediately and sincerely. "I will probably ask Lord Cansellarion for guidance, if he might have some. I - appreciate the warning."

"You should do that, if he's not too busy. Tell him, when you're done, that I wish to speak with him briefly also."

She makes her way over to Carthagnion Manor without much further delay - all of the other work she had planned for the night for her staff will be different in character if Iomedae has some different vision of their purpose here - but Lord Cansellarion, it transpires, has after the Menadorian nobility finished their own dinner and evening conversations gone and Teleported back to his county for the night.

She shouldn't even be surprised. He seems like exactly the kind of person who'd do that. She notifies the Archduke of the inconvenience and resolves to speak with Cansellarion in the morning, before the second day of the convention. "Though I indeed get the sense he's abominably busy," she tells the Archduke.

"It's a shame the Goddess hasn't been able to choose more clerics in Cheliax, though even if she had they'd be sorely lacking in theological education. Among the things I wanted to talk to Cansellarion about—maybe I should just do it myself—is asking Lastwall to send some people to try to give the peasants the archmages dragged here a rudimentary education in what being Good even means—and even more so the new Select, who aren't coming from too different a background. They don't even need to be empowered, they just need to have a clue—I guess they also need enough authority that people will listen to them. Today I had to deal with the young Select from Pezzack who's heading the committee on eradicating diabolism. Her opening proposal was that we execute every person in a position of power that detected Evil. I don't mean to impugn the wisdom of the Goddess in choosing her, but she was clearly chosen for a very different situation than the one she's in."

"I would frankly have replaced every lord in Chelam who meets that description if I had anyone to replace them with. There is a Church here in Westcrown that has some real foreign-educated priests, if Cansellarion's too busy to supervise his delegation maybe we can tell them to accompany the delegates - I really think the Queen should've let foreign born priests apply for eligibility as delegates if they're living and working here, it amounts to a significant kneecapping of the churches to oblige them to be represented only by very new inexperienced theologically ignorant clerics."

"Oh, I advocated myself for replacing them, now and in the future, once we have the people to replace them with. But as for executing them, the Queen has already issued a general amnesty for crimes committed under the old regime, and if you start killing that many people, it's hard to know it'll stop at just the diabolists. You know what happened in Galt."

"There's something to be said for having everyone be native-born Chelaxians, or at least their descendants, but then why have a foreigner chairing the thing—I do agree with you, that it kneecaps the churches. I'll go to the Cathedral tomorrow and ask about sponsoring evening classes for whichever of the delegates want to attend. The delegates who are specifically here as clerics of Iomedae warrant much better instruction than that, but I expect the Church will want to handle that itself. It might already be handling it. Just please do, when you see Lord Cansellarion, warn him that Select Wain has some concerning opinions and could badly use some catechesis as well as perhaps a lesson on the history of the Galtan Terror."

"I'll tell him when I see him. Do you think the Queen chose an approach that kneecaps the churches deliberately?"

"No, I think her Galtan friend did—actually, whether he meant to kneecap the churches or merely has strong opinions about citizenship, I can't say."

"He has a lot of strong opinions," she says tiredly. "I didn't think of myself as having strong opinions about citizenship but I actually find it quite distasteful having a foreign archmage run the thing - you can tell most people can't distinguish between 'the Queen has delegated him this authority' and 'he has it because he could kill us all' and can't fathom why anyone might even be invested in the distinction given that he can kill us all."

"I think the only reason we're having this convention at all is because he can kill the Queen, or at least make her life very difficult, and he's likely chairing it over his own objections about citizenship because he's the only one who understands what he wants well enough to even try to do it."

"It wouldn't be a terrible idea, in a totally different time or place. I doubt Axis has many monarchies."

“It also doesn’t have Republics! It has lords sworn to no one who will find themselves bereft of a tax base if they make bad laws. It’s lovely but it only works in a place where no one needs eat or sleep, commits crimes, or has nowhere better to go.”

"That sounds like a very Abadaran way to do government. I suppose whatever the citizens of Aroden's domain invented died with him, or else can't be revealed to anyone who might be resurrected."

"Republics in the usual sense do seem a terrible idea. The elected delegates to the convention strike me as predominantly worse than the ones chosen totally at random. But—and not just because of the Goddess's instruction—we would be wise to take this as an opportunity to try to establish—institutions that are robust to a few evil, lawless, or even just incompetent actors within them, even at the top. I don't think Cansellarion has any idea how to do this, because every institution he's ever been a part of has had the Goddess herself at the top, and I think she might be—too narrow—to guide a normal country that isn't Lastwall. I think the only reason the old Empire ever really worked at all was because of Aroden, and he's dead. Taldor never had Hell take it over, but without him it's even worse than it was in my day."

"Nonetheless—we are all commanded to surpass our fathers and our gods, and all that. Have you read the History and Future? I don't know how quickly it fell out of fashion, after—"

“I’ve seen excerpts. I don’t think Aroden had any clever ideas or Absalom wouldn’t be such a disaster.”

"I confess I don't know much about Absalom or why it's a disaster, but at any rate I wasn't referring to it, but to Azlant. It's only spoken of briefly—I think even Aroden had forgotten the details by the time he got to writing anything down—but they had representative government, alongside their Emperor, and it wasn't a disaster. Well, at least not until the end, and I don't think that can be blamed on their system of government."

"I don't think you could do it here, just the way they did. Unlike Cotonnet, I do think it requires commoners who are first of all not Asmodean and second of all can read. But it can be done, by mortals even."

“More of them can read than I expected. Hell’s schools weren’t entirely useless. 

I suppose if Iomedae wants us to figure out representative government then it’s not as if we can ask to just do it in ten years when we are less busy.”

"Unfortunately Hell's schools also seem to have convinced a great many people that all schooling is the work of the devil. Perhaps we ought to have a committee on education which, importantly, doesn't contain any of the people from the anti-diabolism committee."

“I can propose and populate it tomorrow. Unless Cansellarion advises I do something else. If he wants to create a strong set of archdukes who counterbalance the Queen I’ve set the convention up all wrong.”

"What do you mean by that?"

“If you want a weak monarch the most important thing is an absurd number of things she has to ask you to vote on, and practically no Crown support for infrastructure with all that negotiated locally, and if we can swing it no standing army beyond what she has from her own lands, and you want to starve Isger and allow dukes to issue their own currency given the crisis and leave the forests alone and probably let Molthune go… I’d have to work on it. I don’t know if I will. Some things there feel like they’d amount to betraying my country. But that’s the sort of things you’d be contemplating.”

"I think Cansellarion would probably vote to weaken the country for the good of the world. I won't. So if we want to weaken the Queen but not the country I think we want a lot of voting—I would have favored votes of approval on new taxes and wars outside the borders of the empire even without what the Goddess said—but we don't want to weaken the army, or to give the dukes so much independence that they might decide to start fighting each other. Maybe we start with something like the constitution of Andoran, which as far as I can tell is a disaster for reasons mostly unrelated to its system of government, except with fewer elections. Their elections seem to result in more drama than good governance even with a Good population."

"I noticed that. I suspect there are all kinds of ways to strengthen the nobles and churches against the state...." she's smiling to herself now. "I'll look into it. Thank you."

"You're welcome. That was all, I think."

"I had one thing for you, I think my secretary would have brought you a note of it this afternoon - Excising Diabolism ought to get the Hellknights dissolved. Unlike most of what I imagine that committee's contemplating it's actually a good idea. I wasn't planning to pick the fight but they opened Safe Roads by siding with a bandit lord to get me removed as chair, so I think they must have come here squared up already for a dispute with the resurrected nobility."

"Sorry, could you please explain to me why there's an institution called the 'Hellknights' that hasn't been dissolved already? I've heard mention of them before, but I assumed they were an innovation of the diabolists and, thus, obviously not to continue."

"They were in fact an innovation that preceded diabolical rule of Cheliax, an anti-Arodenite order that started before my time, was unwisely tolerated because they had the backing of a very powerful lord and Aroden was going to return soon anyway and fix everything - the name started out as mockery - and then became a major fixture in the new regime. They are Lawful Evil military orders in service of various objectives within Cheliax, like running a prison for wizards or serving as the secret police for the Thrunes...the Godclaw served at the Worldwound, so a lot of people want to give them a pass, but they're also heretical Iomedaeans who worship Her along Asmodeus.

 The people in the obviously evil black armor are their convention delegates."

"I...see. And the Goddess has not, you know, clarified to everyone that her worship is entirely incompatible with that of Asmodeus, or do they just not care?"

"Perhaps more importantly, why are they here?—I suppose that's rather a question for the Queen. I don't imagine Cotonnet was in favor of their presence."

"The Goddess has absolutely clarified that. They don't care. I understand each order to have been invited to send a delegate but I don't know on what grounds, or whose the decision was, or why the Queen hasn't abolished them. It seems entirely possible that she intended that the convention do it so at least one bit of common sense good policy could be attributed to it. It also seems possible she and her allies made deals with them during the war, though I don't think we're bound by those, if so. 

There are capable men in the orders, but they're mostly Evil for a reason, and I think tolerating Hellknights would send the wrong message even if they were mostly neutral - though if they were maybe we could settle for a renaming. They aren't, in any event."

"Are they just warriors who've joined an order, or do they have—special abilities that suggest they're divinely empowered? Abolishing the orders may not be enough, in that case."

They seem like an obvious devilish plot even if not necessarily the same devilish plot that conquered Cheliax.

"Honestly I haven't had time to look into it. It does seem like someone ought to."

"I'm sure Cansellarion knows. Unfortunately Cansellarion is a count and a delegate and on top of that the most powerful paladin in the world, and it really isn't fair to ask him to be my confessor just because I'm in one of those capacities his superior. I don't know why the Hell there isn't literally one other person—"

"I know why the Church isn't really set up to advise nobility, why there isn't a bishop in every county and archbishops who can Commune—because that was the Church of Aroden's job. Or, at least, I knew why. Because Aroden's fucking dead, you know, and here we all are trying to rebuild a country in Iomedae's name when as far as I can tell there isn't a single Commune-capable priest of hers in the entire forsaken place. If the Queen" can't get over a breakup from nine hundred years ago "doesn't want her advice, that's her business. But an archduke should have a dedicated advisor on religious matters who isn't just the fourth-circle paladin who happens to be his vassal."

He sighs. "Sorry. Tomorrow I'll go to the temple and make this speech to the people who actually need to hear it. Until then—anything else?"

"That's all from me. Let me know if you need my help getting the Hellknights disbanded."

"I will. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm afraid I have several other matters to attend to before I retire for the evening. Good night, Duchess."