Llei remembers.

"This was the Westcrown base of House Charthagnion, which controlled the Longmarch before Archduke Shawil of Abadar. Archduke Narikopolus's by his sister's marriage, I believe, all the Charthagnions having been executed or removed."

"My wizard'll Mend the window once there's no more coming, if no one gets to it first," Aniol says, backing away from the windows.

That seems a little optimistic. "There are women and children here. Is there a - cellar, a safe room -"

He prepared two of Shield this morning; having something thrown at him was always a fairly predictable occurrence, though he expected rotten fruit before rocks. He casts one.

"Yes, of course." She runs off into the kitchens.

"Unfortunately not," he answers Ramirez. "I do have Communal Protection from Arrows, up to six people for an hour." He would normally have only prepared the single-target version, but he wanted to spend all his second-circle slots on Share Language.

Doesn't the man's bodyguard Teleport? He is unlikely to have forgotten that so presumably the bodyguard's not here. Which is too bad, because a fifth circle wizard can nonlethally make short work of a crowd.

Narikopolus hears the last bit of conversation as he returns. He takes in the broken window.

"I believe we're surrounded. Do we have any other way to signal? A scroll, a trained bird - "

"Dídac. My wizard. Sparrow familiar. Someone write something for it to carry, I'll find the man."

"Angry mob surrounding Charthagnion Manor, urgent," he writes, and then if the man hasn't been found yet, "there are civilians present and no routes of escape. we need law enforcement in force immediately." Lastwall has a shorthand but he can't assume anyone here would know it.

Dídac is hauled out of Aniol's suite and his familiar offers its leg for the message.

"Where do you want him to go?" Dídac asks. "The palace? Is there some garrison somewhere?"

"Palace. Can it find it?"

"We've been to the palace but not inside, he'll have a time finding someone to take the note. Do the windows to the interior courtyard open, to let him get up before he's in view of the crowd?"

"Okay," says the wizard, and he tosses his bird and it flies.

Good.

"We can defend the house from a mob of commoners, if it comes to that. What we can't do is defend it without a massacre. The only other thing I can think is - we could send Arn or Marit to talk to the crowd. I can't imagine them listening to anyone else present. But I can't very well imagine them listening to them, either."

"I will attempt it if our alternative is killing them all but I very much expect it to fail." Maybe if he were actually an empowered priest but honestly even then. 

"And should it fail, what would you say is the Iomedaean thing to do here?"

"The alternative is holding and hoping they don't storm the building before reinforcements get here. But if they do, it's certainly too late."

He hates this. 

"If you think the odds of talking them down will just get worse from here I should go now," he says.  There's no discussion between him and Arn about which should go; Marit's better at public speaking.

And to Aniol, "If you're asking if you're permitted to defend your families against an angry mob, of course you're permitted to do that. If you can talk them down, you should. If there's even a chance you can talk them down, you should, which is why I'm going to go try.

But while there are many principles in this world a man ought to be ready to die for, "angry mobs can burn down my house if it'd take lethal force to stop them" isn't one, and there are many fewer things a man is obliged to risk his family for. It's just a question of whether we can instead expect help soon enough no one need die."