"Well, I've been staying at the Grey Stallion." It's an inn, seedy but not very seedy. "...But someone on Rights is getting his friend to summon an azata for me to talk to after everything wraps up today, so your school'd have to be after that."

"Oh, yeah, after dark like I said. I wouldn't want to disturb any kids at their lessons."

Nod nod. It hadn't occurred to her that there might be students inside but she suddenly feels very grateful that he's not planning on, say, murdering a school full of children.

"In that case... I don't actually know where his house is. It'd probably be fastest for me to meet you at the school?"

"Dead end of Fig Street. Nearest cross-avenue is Levaloch if they haven't changed the name. What's the azata for?"

"I think he's hoping it'll give me a lecture or something? He's been having the wildest takes over on the Rights Committee, he keeps trying to tell me that actually it would be Good to just let people get away with murdering innocent children— speaking of which, did you hear that the Queen pardoned people for everything they ever did before a few months ago?"

"Yeah. Slightly inconvenient for the project of finding a bigger guy to beat up a guy for you but useful if one happens to've ever committed any crimes oneself. Speaking of I'd be obliged if you didn't bring company to the school."

"Yeah, of course not."

"Oh good." The gesture he's looking for is a fistbump but he doesn't know what that is so he just smiles. "If you get there early I'll be visiting my mother at the Fig & Honey. You can get into the yard if you go around the back of the Peony St. laundress, but hopefully it'll be dark enough nobody'd see you even if you went in the front."

Oh, that explains what a guy is doing being a Calistrian priest. 

"Sounds great, see you then!"

"See you!"

When Victória makes it to Fig Street, Raimon is already at the school; she can hear his voice, Creating Water, over and over and over.

She's not sure exactly what time it is when she leaves Delegate Ardiaca's house, but she's pretty sure she's running late. She jogs halfway there before she has to slow down and walk, and is only a little late when she arrives. (It seems like there's some other groups of people out on the street, but none of them pass very close to her route.)

"Hi! So, uh, what's the plan?"

"I was starting to think you weren't coming! The plan is that we get everything around the school very wet. Then we break in, take a look around - I see in the dark, we don't need to be too obvious about this - steal any books anybody might want for themselves and get them out of harm's way, I'm thinking drop them off at the temple of Nethys later? He probably likes books? And then once there is nothing of value in danger we torch it and fuck off."

"Sorry!! Talking to the azata took longer than I expected, I hope I'm not too late to be helpful." 

(If you set fire to someone's house sometimes there's someone else living there who doesn't get out. Sometimes you set fire to someone's house and the fire spreads. Sometimes you get the wrong house.)

"The water is to make sure it doesn't set anything else on fire?"

"Yeah, my mom lives five doors down if nothing else. It's a residential neighborhood. I'll probably stick around for a while making sure it goes smoldery and not sparky."

And they're checking the inside before they light it on fire, and he's not going to get the wrong school. See, it's not that hard not to hurt innocent people, as long as you're trying not to.

"Alright! Where do you want me putting the water?"

"I've left all the spots on the ground and the walls that the streetlight hits for you, since you can't see the rest of it!"

"Oh! Thank you." And she starts creating water. It's the spell she's got the most practice with; the water mostly goes where she aims it.

Eventually Raimon calls, "I think that'll do the trick, or if it doesn't it'll fail at it in some way that'll be more obvious when there's sparks to watch. Come around back, shouldn't be anything to trip you on the way, the staff door's thinner than the front."

She follows him around back.

It takes him a few kicks, but the door comes down.

In they go.

"Six classrooms that might have books in 'em," he says, shouldering open an interior door that isn't locked at all. He offers Victòria a sack and starts sticking his hand into the desk compartments. "I haven't been here in so long but I remember all of it... Francesca used to sit right there every day.  It's got a view of her old apartment, out that window, sometimes her little brother would wave to her before he was in school all day too.  She gave me her geography notes for walking her home every day, because there's fences in the way of the direct route, it actually takes ten minutes to get all the way around to that building and it goes through some riskier spots.  She came in last at math a few times and one of them she got infected.  She lived but couldn't walk after that and they let her stop coming to school since she wouldn't be able to get in without help.  Her family moved out of the neighborhood at some point."

She fishes out books and puts them in the sack. She absolutely cannot read the titles in the dark but probably once they've actually set the school on fire Raimon can check whether they're Asmodean propaganda.

She doesn't know Raimon's teacher but she's suddenly deeply upset on behalf of this little girl she never knew, this little girl who deserved better than this. (She hopes someone's tracked down the teacher and put them through a fraction of what their students suffered, but she doesn't have a good angle on that if they haven't.)

"I'm sorry," she says. It feels deeply inadequate but she doesn't know what wouldn't be.

"Tomorrow, some little girl like Francesca is going to wake up and drag herself to school, and - ta-da! It won't be there any more!" he says. "That's really - if someone had burned this place down when I was twelve it would have made my year... oh, they still have this desk with the carving in it... you probably can't see it? I don't know what it's like to not be able to see in the dark - it's got Abril's initials. Abril gave me half her lunch for a month, when Mother wasn't well enough to work and at the same time Abril's orphanage was in the habit of packing everybody's lunch pail with raw corn on the cob that made her sick to her stomach.  One night I was out for a ramble and I spotted a kobold making off with a bag of pears from some shop and I scared it off and took the pears.  I gave her most of them, and she tried to kiss me.  Didn't take rejection great.  I think it would've amounted to nothing, except then I turned in the worst essay and she had to hit me even if she'd never have come up with the idea on her own.  Got a bit too into it.  They marked her for a wizard a bit later.  Haven't seen her since.  I think she was proud."

"I can see that there's a desk there...? I can't see the carving."

She is not entirely sure how she feels about Abril. It's — upsetting, obviously, but the shape of it's more confusing than it was with Francesca.

"...My mom was a wizard. Or, half a wizard, she got kicked out before she managed anything but cantrips, ended up doing laundry and mending for a minor nobleman a ways north of here. She was hoping I'd be one too, she was so upset when I didn't make the cut."

"Did you want to be one?" he asks, confirming the room clear of books and moving on to the next.

"At the time, yeah. I don't wish I'd made it in now." She follows him into the next room.

"I cleaned this one a lot," he says. "Careful, they haven't fixed the sticking-up nail by the chalkboard... I have cleaned this room so many times, feels odd not to have a broom. Vicent convinced one of the teachers to make cleaning the classroom a punishment instead of whippings for a few things.  Less effort for the teacher, you see.  It lasted almost two months before somebody who'd object noticed.   Sometimes I'd stay after with him helping carry in water to scrub the floor and if we got done fast enough we had time to fool around before he was expected home.  He was a year older than me - and the Lord Mayor, nasty piece of work, pulled his name out of a hat or something.  Gave him a pike and a deployment.  I bumped into him six years ago drunk in a tavern in Hinji, not taking 'pay me' for an answer from the girl he was with, and when gentle encouragement to locate his money didn't pan out and neither did offering to fuck him for free, I beat the shit out of him.  I don't think he even recognized me.  Could be it wasn't him, but he answered to the name and I reckon it was.  He would've never - well."

She looks upset about this but is not particularly managing to say words about it!

"I guess in that particular case the army's more to blame than the school. But the school was giving that asshole the names for the hat, so." Books. In sacks. Raimon flips to the inside cover of one. "Huh, this was mine, I thought it looked familiar. Same geography primer after all this time."

"Huh, I'm surprised they haven't changed it! They were always changing things around in our books, one time I got whipped for accidentally forgetting and putting down last year's answer... we didn't do geography specifically, I always assumed it was the same everywhere but I guess maybe not."

"Huh. I found the geography useful but probably could have worked out what I needed with the book and a motivation." He picks up the next one. "And this one used to be Nicolau's! Nicolau was an asshole but he was terribly pretty.  And who knows if he'd have been an asshole if he'd been born anywhere else?  I know, I know they have assholes everywhere.  He was so pretty, though, I like to think what it would've been like if he'd been brought up gentle."

"I think probably it depends on what kind of asshole he was? Like, most places have people who'll hurt people if they think they can get away with it, most places don't have people who'll torture innocent people for not liking Asmodeus, you know?"

"He wasn't especially religious, Nicolau, just liked making cutting remarks and tripping people and things like that. Absolutely gorgeous jawline though. I have no idea where he wound up. The religious kids you always knew where they wound up, they made a point of making sure it was clear. There was Marcel.  Only boy who'd come over to my place to fuck; I only had a bunk with a curtain by way of privacy but he didn't mind.  Avoiding his father, see, he had one of those and didn't recommend it.  He was very serious.  I think the teacher one year was under pressure to come up with more cleric candidates and I swear she'd name anybody who didn't laugh when someone farted.  He went to the big temple, one of the ones Abadar has now, for after-school and weekend seminary classes, and didn't talk about it, but he kept coming over at first, and every week that went by he - touched me a little differently, and when I told him not to come back again he started hitting me till the madam threw him out.  I saw him walking around in Chosen's robes not long after that.  Don't know what became of him after the war."

...she thinks maybe she'd been imagining that Asmodean priests had just always been awful people going around praising Asmodeus and insisting that everyone follow everything they say and treat them with nothing but the utmost respect lest someone injure their pride by suggesting they were people too. Not — normal people, who just got twisted into being something awful.

Probably this shouldn't be upsetting. It's not like they didn't choose to go along with it. It's not like they didn't hurt enough people to deserve what they got a thousand times over.

"I'm sorry. That — he shouldn't have — they shouldn't have — I'm sorry that happened."

"I'm glad I invited you along," he says softly. The second classroom is clear of books. On to the next.

"My cohort were in this room when Queralt joined the class. Queralt was funny.  She'd tell shaggy dog stories, ramble on for ten minutes about nonsense and end it on the stupidest worst puns you ever heard with a perfectly straight face.  Pretty, too.  The cleric who came in for religious studies seminars got her pregnant the year we were twelve, or at least she thought it was most likely him, and my mother helped her abort.  Queralt's mother kicked her out of the house.  She tried for a while to get a job that would let her sleep somewhere other than the orphanage, which had that same cleric working at it, and couldn't make it work on top of school.  Last I heard from her she was planning to disguise herself as a boy and run away to sea.  I cut off her hair for her, sold most of it to a dollmaker and kept a bit of it in a locket till I got mugged on the road some ten years back.  No idea if she made it."

Her chest is burning again, sharp and hot and angry. She hopes that when Westcrown fell all the girls he hurt who were still around personally strung him up from a lamppost. She hopes he spends a thousand years aflame in the fires of Hell. If Queralt had somehow come back to Westcrown and personally flayed him alive she absolutely could not fault her in the slightest, and any god who'd damn Queralt for that isn't worth serving.

"Do you know what happened to the cleric," she says. Her voice is low and icy and it barely comes out as a question at all. 

"Oh, yes.  Beatriu kept her baby.  Same cleric, I believe.  She moved out of her mother's place and in with a grandfather who choked her for looking at him sideways, to do it - her mother couldn't stand the crying when she was trying to sleep but the grandfather was deaf enough that when the daycare was closed for the night she could bring it home.  I saw her eating grass a couple times.  She sold her textbooks for bread so she could make enough milk to feed the thing and slept with Nicolau to borrow his copies so she wouldn't fail.  She moved in to the Fig and Honey when it was obvious there wasn't anything else that would work.  She's still there now.  But the baby got pox and died, and after that she didn't bother trying to keep them.  She doesn't talk.  Just nods and shakes her head and mimes a little.  When they strung up that cleric, though, I wasn't in town but I hear she was there with them.  I hope it took the edge off."

She nods vehemently.

Next room, Raimon finds a whip. He has a dagger on him and slices it up into little caterpillar-sized shreds.

Good. She can't really see it but even the sound of it getting cut to pieces is satisfying.

"There were two," he says. "At least when I attended. In case anything needed to be done in parallel. They're going to be tinder." He throws the books into the sack with particular vehemence and finds the next whip in the next room. "Miquel would've done anything to avoid getting whipped.  He could've been the teacher's pet, he would hop to so quick whenever they told him to do anything, only you could tell much too easily that he was just terrified, liable to start crying any moment.  He'd only hang out with other kids if we were helping him study.  It was like every time he bled it took some of his soul with it.  When we were thirteen he jumped off the bridge.  He survived that - his mother was looking for him, found him quicker than he expected, brought him in for healing when he washed up unconscious even though they really couldn't afford it - and what I heard was that he woke up and just went crazy attacking the cleric trying to claw the asshole's face off.  Some people thought he'd hit his head and the Cure didn't fix it but I think he got exactly what he wanted when the cleric snapped his neck.  Still charged his mother for the spell though.  I heard somebody say suicide was Evil the other day and I think it might be the worst thing I ever heard.  If devils're still hurting Miquel now when all he wanted ever in his life was for it to stop."

"The only people I've ever heard say suicide was Evil were Asmodeans trying to say people'd be damned no matter what they did."

"I heard it from that little old lady Erastilian with the stupid hat full of dried flowers."

"There's an Erastilian on one of my committees and — I don't think he's wrong about everything, but I get the sense he doesn't realize just how bad things can get. Different Erastilian, this one's a guy. I don't know if that's your lady's issue but I can't imagine it helping."

"I didn't call her on it. Not like she's personally damning people for jumping off bridges." His sack is full. He opens a window and heaves it out onto the wet ground outside and hands Victòria more books for her own bag, in the last room.

She can put books in her bag. She will probably need some help getting it out the window, she's not that strong.

"- oh, not that one. The Nethysians, I think, won't want it. Looks like they missed a copy of the Disciplines." He plucks a book back out of her bag and then chucks the other books out the window with the first batch. "I'm ready to see this place fucking burn starting with that book, how about you?"

"Gods, yes. —I've, uh, never burned down a building before. I have the spell for setting things on fire today but I assume it's not actually as simple as just casting it a couple times and hoping the building catches...?"

"Yeah, I don't think it'll work on the building, but it'll work on the book, and if we smash up a couple chairs and desks and arrange 'em right the smaller pieces will catch from that, and from there it's a good shot of spreading to the floor and the walls. I think. I know campfires better than arson."

Nod nod. She is not great at the smashing but she can follow directions about how to arrange them.

Once they have a pile of kindling around the Asmodean Disciplines they can start throwing Sparks at it, in the central hall right near a wooden wall with a cork board above it. And then they can exit the building to watch from a safe distance and grab the sacks.

Spark. Spark. Spark.

It's nice being able to do something concretely Good.

It's not that the convention doesn't matter. Obviously it matters. But at the end of the day, there's a difference between sitting in a fancy room having abstract arguments about the nature of justice, and taking the destruction of the remnants of the Asmodean regime into your own hands. 

For the first time since the convention started, her head feels totally clear. Let the works of Asmodeus crumble into dust and ashes. Let the people of Cheliax rise up against tyranny wherever they find it. Let us usher in a new age of justice, by words or by force.

Dozens of kids are going to get the day, maybe the month, off school. Some heinous teachers are going to need to find a new job. And the next time Raimon has one of those nightmares, the kind where you're late to math class and didn't do your homework and can't remember how to convert coppers to dollars and your teacher has been replaced with Asmodeus Himself with a whip made of fire who sentences you to read your composition book aloud to the class while he counts up the number of lashes for every stammer and every use of the informal "you", Raimon's going to wake up, and remember: it's gone now. It's smoke in the sky. It's a bad memory, and only that.