"Duchess! Thank you for having me for dinner."

(His wife is also here, of course.)

"My pleasure!" That's in fact sincere; she hasn't met them yet and really ought to. "It's so good to finally meet you both properly. How are you finding the convention?"

"Taxing, of course. But so far the committee, at least, has stayed manageable."

"I actually wanted to ask you all about it! I have the notes but I frankly found them confusing. Are we likely to see the radical proposals to ban bastardry on the floor, or was that more, uh, exploratory?"

"Exploratory. Like most of it so far, really. It's a definite problem that needs sensible solutions, but I'm not expecting quick answers from any of the committees. Gods know Almas doesn't get them."

Archduke Xavier will arrive on time, if not first! "Duchess. Duke. I take it the family committee is the topic of conversation?"

"Indeed! Where do you stand on banning bastardry, Archduke?"

"Opposed," he says, "for all the obvious reasons, of which its inability to pass the house ought to be sufficient. Is that what the family committee is discussing?"

"I had not fully understood the degree to which in the cities the church successfully abolished commoner marriage. And no one has the faintest idea how to fix it. I'm just going off the notes, though, Duke, perhaps I am too pessimistic."

"The Erastilian and Calistrian have common ground, the orphanage worker Tallandria is shockingly sensible, and they've been listening to me and the Count-Regent when we point out concerns about the nobility. It could go badly but I don't think it will. But I do tend toward optimism."

"Tallandria is the one who made the speech calling for an end to lay inquisitions* the first day, I believe?"

(*: Trans: Witch hunts.**)

(**: Credit to YumAntimatter.)

Tallandria's the one who made the passionate speech in defense of the Erecuran, yes. It showed good instincts but she's still a little reluctant to give her that much credit for it. 

"I missed that morning's session, I'm afraid, and I don't remember the name from the notes."

Fine. "Yes, she gave the speech defending the Erecuran. I thought at the time that was taking things a bit far - Cheliax used to frown on the priesthoods of any power of Hell - but I will acknowledge that today's events suggest the convention has rather too little of that spirit."

"Oh, the Erecuran should indeed be disqualified on those grounds, though aside from that he seems a decent enough man. But the first to sound the warning will rarely be the soberest, and yet is still useful if you want to know when you're under attack."

And then Joan-Pau will arrive slightly late!

"My apologies, Duchess, Your Grace, Xavier - the expected delays -"

"You had to steal a ship, I'm sure, and then there were all kinds of complications." She's smiling. "Come sit down! We are puzzling over the committee on the family."

"I had to summon an azata," he says, smiling. "Oh? What's it been doing?"

"Where do you stand on banning bastardry?" She found Count-Regent Napaciza's enthusiasm for how to implement it slightly surprising. Not because he's a holdover Asmodean noble and a tiefling. Just because it's an extreme policy position.

"... The same place everyone else does, I suppose. Opposed. I suppose you could fine it without too many problems?" He is fundamentally confused.

Molthune probably didn't quite succeed at Petrifying their culture for seventy years so that it'd reemerge as pre-war Cheliax but they did a pretty good job! Their people make a lot of sense to Carlota! "The committee on the family was grappling with how to encourage marriage and discourage, uh, the current state of affairs, which sounds quite bad. Apparently where the church held sway commoners just don't marry and women raise all the children alone. The problem is that I'm not sure it's the kind of thing you can fix with a law at all - did it improve over time naturally in Andoran?" she asks the Duke.

"Somewhat, but marriage among commoners is still fairly weak in the towns and cities. Mothers raising children alone is still very common."

"I don't think you can fix it with laws at all. What you need is those awful pamphlets, and some priest whose stirring speeches are to the effect - women, no man will ever marry if he doesn't have to, and nearly every one will to get what he wants. If the women of Westcrown refuse to sleep with men until marriage, they'll all give in and settle down inside six months. It doesn't even face the ordinary difficulty of collective action, because being abandoned with a child isn't much of a prize and so it's hardly in one's selfish interests not to participate."

"... That might work," Joan-Pau says... "Duchess, I feel as though this is one of these plans that works in a sane, normal society, and might fail in modern Cheliax, because everyone is far more horribly influenced by Asmodeanism than anyone either of us had ever met, before, and the reason is too horrible to imagine until it happens."

"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.

"There are no slaves in Hermea," Joan-Pau says straight-faced.

"Cheliax's greatness is, I think, not founded on the careful selection of its citizenry for obedience and wisdom. In this Cheliax's greatness could in principle even exceed Axis."

"- More seriously, Your Grace, the Church of Abadar has been telling us that inherited slavery is an inefficient means of allocating personnel for centuries, and I don't see why we shouldn't believe them? Andoran and Galt have serious problems, but the problems aren't famine. It will cause problems now, and I do appreciate your heroic work reducing them, but I expect our grandchildren will be thanking us."

Sergi nods. This Count Ardiaca is a clever man.

"I'm in favor of abolition. I'm undecided on all the arguments about efficiency but I don't think it could possibly be so great a good to the empire to justify all the evils it plainly entails for everyone involved. I do expect our grandchildren will thank us, and certainly the halflings' grandchildren. I just notice we're declaring a whole lot of the ordinary functioning of all civilization Asmodean. I worry some committee's going to pop out with the take that having nobility at all is Asmodean, or that having an Empire is."

Joan-Pau frowns. He can't deny that.

(No one asked her but Issa kind of thinks the nobility are an Asmodean institution. The pamphlet she most recently picked up certainly seems to argue it's still full of Asmodeans.)

" - oh, were any of the pamphlets inflammatory, Issa?"

"Your grace, they're saying that the Archduke of the Heartlands is a Thrune, though I know it isn't so, and they have a speech by a priest that I think's probably banned. Though I didn't pick it up. Because it's probably banned."

"Saying that the people of Cheliax will rise up against the evil nobles?"

"Saying, ma'am, that, uh, that the Queen and the archmage have betrayed the revolution, and that the convention's full of Evil Asmodeans and they caught one just this morning, and that we should all rise up and tear them to shreds and hang them from the lampposts and every man who dies will die a martyr and go to Heaven - is that true -"

"No," he says, looking very grim. "Murder on suspicion is a damnable* sin."

(*: Abyssable, technically.)

Oh, that's going to go badly. He immediately rises to his feet.

That was not in select Wain's speech! "That's going to be a disaster. Is there anything - what should we do?" Alfons-Valenti has only fought one real battle personally in either of his lives, and he lost it. He doubts he can talk down an angry mob, either, but -

"Where are you living? How many servants do you have? Are they out on business?"

“If you’ll excuse me, gentlemen - here should be safe. It’s a rare mob that prepared a Dispel Magic that’d take this mansion down - but I need to contact some people.”

"Yes, Duchess, please excuse us - "

She heads to a private room where some wands are stored.

"North of the city, where it's a little less crowded - I have two dozen servants with me, most of them are there as far as I know, it's just my secretary and a pair of coachmen and four of the guards who are here."

"- Good." He glances to Xavier "- you coming -"

"Of course. Teleports?"

He does something very complex with his scaffold. "Two left, now."

They're heading out of the house already. "Get me back to Skyrender, combine our households -"

"I can trade one for Overland Flight, I have a scroll on me."

"Haste, Haste, Fly," he says, raising a rueful eyebrow. "Your phantom steeds don't fly, I take it?"

"Oh, when they do, you'll be the first to know."

(Continued in there's no such word as can't)

"We're similar to the Conde de Sanaüja but on the east shore."

Feliu will emerge from the entrancehall. "Excuse me, I need to borrow this," he says, and picks up a butterknife.

Issa nods, dumbfounded. (Carlota has not emerged from her study.)

And he will depart.

"I suppose we don't really need to know why, he's a paladin," Gisella mutters.