"Then the fools can be removed as well! I agree that making peace takes longer than winning a war, but in the case of Molthune province I cannot imagine it will take much longer. If it is as Count Ardiaca says, we will be greeted as liberators by the greater part of the populace."

"Of course," he says to Jilia. "'A swift peace in accordance with the desires of the good and godly people of Molthune Province', perhaps? 'The heroic people of Molthuni Province?' He's tasting words."

To Alfons-Valenti, "the Lord Protector's armies will swiftly surrender once he's defeated, as you say. Their loyalty is to the chain of command or to his person or to their pay, not to any cause; offer them lenient terms and continued employment and they'll back down." And the Lord Protector, once beaten, will negotiate a surrender and then run off with his embezzled money, assuming he doesn't spend the rest of his life as a rabbit.

"I'm sorry to say this," says Berenguer-Aspex, who doesn't want to be challenged to a duel and so needs to tread a line, "but I think Count Ardiaca's mistaken. There's people with us, no doubt. Every Molthuni you talk to, in Westcrown - I bet there's dozens or hundreds of people who came down here with the Count of Gandisa* and the Duke of Sirmium**" - he nods to them "- who'll tell you that they're here because of how the Lord Protector sold them out. Because all the others are up in Molthune. And as we just saw, Molthune talks a good game about being part of Cheliax, but its its own country just as much as Andoran is. Two, if you ask the Nirmathi, which most people don't because they're a bunch of druids and woodsmen having a logging protest."

(*: Joan-Pau)

(**: Xavier)

"Just?" Joan-Pau says in the voice of someone who thinks he actually does have an opportunity to challenge Berenguer-Aspex to a duel. "Do you mean to claim that thousands of Nirmathi, including many of my own friends, did not rise to the Chelish colors when war was declared, and stream south to join us all in a war to liberate their homeland from Hell, or that more did not try and only failed because of the Lord Protector's soldiers standing between them and this very spot and wielding arms to prevent them from fighting the Asmodean soldiers?"

"Yes they did, Count Ardiaca. They quit the Nirmathi and came here. The Nirmathi who are left, I should've said." 

"Such as Genis Clavell i Fabregas?"

"Working with the Nirmathi, not one of them."

"Surely people don't cease to deserve a say in the fate of their homeland because they left its borders temporarily to march out on campaign against Hell."

"When a man abandons his post against orders in time of war or rebellion to go off and fight someone else, we call that treason and mutiny and desertion, in Molthune. I don't know what Asmodean Cheliax called it."

"Oh, the same things. Because it is the same thing - fighting Hell."

He raised an eyebrow at Alfons-Valenti and Higini Cua. "- If you haven't been following events closely enough, the war started when the Lord Protector made a deal with the Thrunes to abandon his alliances and not join the Four Day War, the High Priest of the Archangel Ragathiel denounced the Lord Protector as an ally of Hell and the Lord Protector had guards try to drag him off to prison in the middle of his sermon. That's when Canorate rose."

Can he look attentive in a way that does NOT make people study him in any further detail somehow. Maybe if he just furrows his brow thoughtfully and then ducks back into his handout.

"I think if you had land on the Varisian border and the people you'd sent off to keep the hobgoblins off your back ran off on crusade against orders with all the weapons you gave them, you'd be annoyed, too."

"Oh yes, I certainly would. But are you saying that General Clavell is not a patriotic citizen of Cheliax loyal to Her Majesty the Queen fighting the Lord Protector among - or, if you prefer, alongside - the Nirmathi? Because if so, you've yielded my point."

"You've found one man your point's true of." But everyone who knows anything about Molthune knows the Nirmathi aren't patriots, they're tax rebels, druids and secessionists.

"And I can find a thousand more." I can continue saying true but misrepresentative things longer than you can call bullshit on me, you need to be more polite than I do because I can beat you in a duel, and I think the audience is on my side.

“Surely we should give people who rebelled against an Evil government the benefit of the doubt and the opportunity to demonstrate that they were motivated not by disloyalty but by loyalty to the higher cause. If they rebel again once Her Majesty appoints a Good and respected archduke then I’ll be ready to condemn them, but not until we’ve given reconciliation a real attempt.”

Jilia isn't exactly neglecting the back and forth, but it's predictable; Count Ardiaca is better-prepared and a better speaker, and Jilia's the only one listening who will get anything from his motion failing, so the outcome is fairly set. She can think about other things.

So: What does de Seguer want out of this committee? She's not proving her ex-Asmodean credentials terribly well, and it doesn't seem like the typical mistakes Asmodeans make when trying not to be.

...Oh, right. She's a young woman. Flattering the undeniably handsome slightly-less-young man.

Well, wanting him carnally probably isn't exploitable by anyone but him. Makes predicting the votes simpler, at least.

(She doesn't just want to sleep with him! She wants to marry him and have his Molthune-conquering handsome adventurer children! She's not a teenager who has silly crushes, now, she's a countess who forges alliances! With hot guys!)