"This man just confessed to burning children to death in their homes. Do you have any reason to accuse Victoria of that or are you just playing the stupid game that people seem to think is wisdom, where they insist that we're all equally bad and so can't survive expecting any better of our leadership?"

Was that what this whole business was about? If he had just asked about it she wouldn't have pushed back - she doubts anyone here would have - but now that he just wasted all of their time on stupid rhetorical tricks because he couldn't just ask for things like a normal person she just wants to roll her eyes at him, and only long practice lets her refrain from showing any of it. Fucking noble politics.

"Neither of those, Select, but if you think the check unnecessary then I will not insist on it now." (He'll try to arrange it later, though.) "My vote against removing Delegate Ibarra stands."

And now he's upset that they're not just going along with him after his posturing fell flat, though at least he's keeping it to gestures that won't effect the final result. She can already foresee he's going to be a nightmare to manage going forward, and reminds herself that she'd have been ecstatic about an archduke even this reasonable a year ago.

"I'm in favor of removing him, obviously."

"Fine." They don't need his vote anyway. 

That's - Ferrer, Wain, and Rivera for removing him, Blanxart opposed, and her and the pharasmins undecided. Fuck, her vote counts.

Why does Blanxart want him here? Why do any of them have to be here? Can she just leave? She told the count she had a principle and she ought to keep having it for longer than ten hours, but - Korva doesn't even know what this committee is doing, anymore. How are you supposed to have opinions on which way to take things if you don't feel like anyone in the room is being other than terrifying. Well, besides the Pharasmins, who haven't voted yet.

Abstaining is either the same as voting to remove or will devolve into her vote being the tiebreaker, which is the worst.

This is now the second most uncomfortable room of the last two days. Maybe number one.

There is no way any productive discussion is going to happen with all of these people in the room. Maybe that's the point. Maybe sitting in here yelling at each other and doing nothing is the best possible use of everyone's time, given they won't just dissolve this stupid committee. Fuck.

She can't actually keep him here anyway, though, the Pharasmins won't both vote to keep.

"Abstain."

"For removal."

"Shoo," says Ester, who has not followed everything that's going on because she's an old lady, damn it, but has gotten the picture that he's evil and burns down people's houses.

And he will give an ironic salute and depart.

"Right. Okay. ....really to be responsible we should talk to del Mar too about why she was using magic to conceal being Evil before we vote on kicking her out. Maybe that can wait until our scheduled meeting time this afternoon? Unless she's secretly here?"

"So now that he's gone, I was thinking, he gave this whole speech about how lots of people in the city knew he was Evil and could have told us. And I think most of the people we're trying to get rid of are really obviously Evil to everyone who knows them, but we don't know everyone, so we might not know what they've done. So I was thinking, we should have an easy way for people to tell us about all the people who are really obviously Evil that we don't already know about. For everyone to tell us, not just delegates who already know who we are, like maybe there's a nobleman who's playing nice here so people don't notice but his servants could tell you that he forces himself on them, or maybe there's more people like that Hell-priest where they're from Westcrown and lots of people around the city know what they've done but we don't. ...We shouldn't assume that everything people tell us is true, Evil people might make up lies to get us to go after innocent people, but I think it would be better than nothing. ...Also this can probably wait until we meet this afternoon, and definitely until we've handled del Mar. I just wanted to say it now so that I don't forget."

"I think that's a good idea. I also think...I want to give a speech to the convention. Because he said, and everyone keeps saying, oh, the people of Cheliax are mostly Evil, whatever you do they'll subvert it to Evil with their Evilness, and - I think that's not actually true. I think that most people have done some terrible things, but -

- but there's a reason the Asmodeans resorted to killing everyone in Pezzack, right. It's because they believed that Good is contagious, that once there were two dozen rebels the city was lost and you might as well kill everyone in it. It's not something you'd do if most people were awful through and through. You wouldn't have to. Most people wouldn't rebel.

And it seems like maybe a really important disagreement, whether Good is contagious, whether a city with two dozen rebels in it is lost to Hell forever. And the people here who aren't from Pezzack probably don't actually know how it happened."

Nod nod. 

"I think that would be really nice! I didn't know anything about what happened in Pezzack until I met you. —I think there are some things that are so awful that they still make you a bad person even if you also go and rebel against Asmodeus, like murdering innocent people or rape or burning down a house full of children, but I don't think most people have done those."

"Yeah, I don't think rebelling against Asmodeus makes up for all the things Ibarra did. But I think it's - most people might not even know about themselves, that they'd probably have rebelled against Asmodeus if they had the chance, but if they lived in Pezzack they would have. And - I think maybe they'd be less scared of what we're doing, if they knew...do you know how to write?"

"I do!!"

"Would you be willing to help me write it? I was reading the pamphlets - well, asking people to read me the pamphlets - and they're mostly stupid, but that's the way to make people really understand things." Right. They should wrap their unofficial meeting first; she's keeping people away from the important floor debates.

"Thank you all for detecting Evil this morning, and for helping with Delegate Ibarra. We'll meet in the afternoon like we did yesterday, I guess, and figure out del Mar then." She smiles at all of them even the Archduke, who shouldn't get less consideration than a normal person due to his crippling deficiency of being an archduke. 

"I'd be happy to! Sending it out as a pamphlet is a really good idea, I bet we can find a wizard to help once it's all written up. Or I can ask Calistria tomorrow but I'm not sure if it's a priest spell too or only a wizard one."