"I will grant you the wisdom of that reservation. Perhaps tomorrow we can ask some Asmodean Chelish people what would go wrong and I'm sure find the answer very sobering. Actually - Issa."

       Her secretary startles where she is walking by with a bundle of pamphlets. 

"What would go wrong if some of the clever speakers of the convention were to turn themselves to calling for the women of Westcrown to go on a sex strike?"

      "- well, your grace, the men wouldn't listen."

"- rape's a crime, and Her Majesty's government would prosecute it."

      "I don't mean a boy'd hold a knife to his girl's throat, your grace, just he wouldn't listen to her."

Xavier suddenly feels an astonishing amount of sympathy for the evil Calistrian causing him so much trouble recently.

"That is still a crime."

       "As you say, your Grace."

"What do you expect would happen if you took it to a magistrate?"

      "Well, your Grace, he'd say you were foolish, and be angry you wasted his time."

"I see. Thank you. You can put those on my desk."

"You know," he says, "I hadn't actually noticed that the practically the entire civil administration is unreformed Asmodeans, but in retrospect I should have."

"I should probably write home and check on this. I absolutely don't have anyone to replace them with, though."

"My lords, ladies. I apologize for my lateness, I had another obligation."

"You owe us no apologies but let me catch you up on our conversation!" And she'll explain what goes wrong if your country full of Asmodeans tries to address its marriage deficiency.

"The committee on education was a mix of wizards who want to continue the Asmodean system with fewer whippings, funded - one presumes - by the hope that one of the ten thousand prestidigitators will invent a philosopher's stone - and commoners who very reasonably want the whole thing dismantled. But instead of debating that, they spent the whole time arguing about whether it is evil to strike a disobedient child, and whether we might, instead of having schools, give a book composed almost entirely of illustrations to every family in the county. I suppose that has the benefit of not being evil, even if it's completely ineffective, much more expensive than schools, and doesn't even have the slightest hope of producing philosopher's stones to fund it. I am disappointed but not surprised to learn that the men and women there were not uniquely mad."

"Had I been in the Queen's position before the war I too would have accepted Cotonnet's aid at this price but I do hope he's soon satisfied. Today felt very Galtan, really. Mad social reform proposals, calls for mob violence, the close vote on whether to exempt the delegates forever from taxes..."

"I really would not have expected support for that from a paladin of all people."

"It's hard to comprehend."

"One gets the sense that the Goddess put far more of Her strength into planning the war than the peace. In which She wasn't in error, of course, but - when one of a war's great victors practically abdicates..." you usually have an immediate additional war. Carlota doesn't want to make that observation; one shouldn't mention things that are made more true by saying them. "...it's challenging."

"I had adjusted, I thought, to the idea that Iomedae was not planning to invest in making this Her country. But that was in a spiritual sense; if we cannot rely on her paladins and armies from the reconquest for temporal support... that would be much worse. I hope Ser Cansellarion thinks better of... whatever his plan was today... quickly."

"I'm planning to talk to him in the morning. I do not consider it all likely that the Glorious Reclamation will withdraw its support. But I'd also like to negotiate the Church's backing for other matters, and - we'll see tomorrow.

One thing I find nervewracking about Republicanism is that, if the archdukes and Cansellarion are all agreed, votes go the right way; but without that they seem practically random, influenced by whoever gave the most recent speech. So we need total unity to achieve anything or more importantly to block anything."

"It settles down eventually", the other Duchess says, "There will be a group of the expansionists, and a group for peace and trade, and a group of conservatives who want no change and low taxes, and when they know which groups they are in, those without an idea will look to those leaders rather than directly at the great and the good. I doubt it will help at all for a few weeks, and unless this convention lasts a year like Galt, it won't settle down properly before it ends."

"Galt found itself settling into groups as well, until they became factions and then it unsettled itself out of them." Every time it was down to two, one of them had the other's people murdered. "May all the gods and our gracious queen prevent that happening here." And the archmages Cotonnet, of course.

"Andoran escaped it."

"I always heard that Galt started out listening to no one but the loudest, because they kicked out the nobility early, which doesn't seem like it would have helped. And then Andoran didn't, and we didn't, so if that was really what mattered... Well. If."

"Another optimistic account is that what matters is whether there is an archmage hovering, in which case like Andoran we pass though I do think that the entire concept of Republicanism is undermined somewhat."

"Rather a bit."

"The great test will be whether it can maintain itself when the archmage has moved on."

"The Queen is a good woman, and a very dangerous one. I have faith in her, and in the powers that have guided her this far. I ...do think that so far the convention has mostly served to make a difficult job more difficult. I spent most of this evening working on abolition, and - I do think we ought to do abolition. I'd have timed it for when the economy was a bit more stable or at minimum for after the harvest, but I'd have done it. But the - publicity - makes it impossible to do any plan that requires subtlety, and the mob rule makes it unwise to do any plan that requires followthrough."

"I agree with you that delaying whatever solution was implemented until after the harvest would have been wise, Duchess, but I believe swift abolition is very diplomatically useful. It is one of the clearest messages we can send to our neighbors that we are not Asmodeus."

"That is the line that this convention adopted today, and far be it from me to gainsay the will of the people and the motion I myself introduced." But she thinks it's nonsense. Taldor has slavery, Absalom has slavery.

"If we do abolish it, I believe we will be the third country in the Inner Sea to do so," he says, which is what Carlota left unsaid.