There's a crowd downstairs, whispering anxiously, watching the torches dance outside. Some people are in the back garden, trying to figure out a way to get over the fence. 

Someone, out in the crowd, is giving a speech. He's not the world's greatest public speaker, but he's not terrible. "The queen, in her wisdom, has gathered up all that remains of the old nobility in this city and delivered them into our hands," et cetera et cetera. Some calls for moderation, a plea to not hurt any citizens. So far the crowd seems to be listening and haven't started sacking anything yet.

Is that what the Queen did? But why bother? It's not as if it'd have been any more effort to kill Eulàlia alongside her father and the priest and her father's friends ...anyway Eulàlia is a citizen, in this disguise, not a remnant of the old nobility. She looks desperately around, grabs a toddler, proceeds carefully to the front door -

       "What are you doing that's my son -"

Ugh. She gives the child back. "He said they won't kill innocent people, if we all go out together with the children I think they'll let us go - they're here for the nobles -"

       The woman reclaims her son. "Well, they all deserve to burn. But if the crowd changes their mind -"

"If they change their mind we're dead if we're still here. I know a place that's safe. Safer than here."

       "Where."

"It's a nobleman's house but he's nice. Has a paladin friend. If they see a child they won't hurt us."

        "Is that is why you were going to steal Tomás -"

"I wasn't stealing him, I thought no one was taking care of him and I wanted to get him to safety!"

         "What if they kill us."

"They might kill us. What do you want me to say, they won't kill us! They might. But - they haven't killed anyone yet. And they are saying they don't want to kill citizens, just nobles."

There's a knock at the door. 

The Queen's people knocked too, when they came to kill her whole family. She stands frozen in terror next to the woman whose son is named Tomás.

"Please don't kill us," the woman says to the door, but too quietly for anyone on the other side to possibly hear. 

    Eulàlia tries to think what Valia would say. "Do you come in the name of Good and justice, or diabolism and Evil?" she demands of the door.

"Good and justice, miss," says the man at the door. He has a rope slung over one shoulder and a shortsword in his hand. "We're just looking for the lords here and then we'll be on our way, won't be no trouble to any of you."

"Well then come in I suppose but be careful, there's little children here."

      "The nobles sleep upstairs," one of Eulàlia's maids says helpfully. That stings.

"We'll be careful, but if yous could hold your little ones, that'd keep them the most safe." He goes upstairs with two other armed men. Some more stay by the door.

Tomás's mother scoops him up. 

"My lord's appointed by the queen, not one of the evil ones," one of the errand boys says. His mother shushes him. Eulàlia feels sick and dizzy. 

From upstairs there is a sudden bang and then a shout and then angry men's voices and then a woman's scream -

- she shouldn't be here this isn't safe the terrible civility of it all doesn't make it safer - if she runs for the door will the men at the door stop her -

They stop her! "Hey, now. Just stay here, this'll be over quick." Their swords are out, in case she doesn't listen.

No she'll listen. 

(Upstairs: the crash of someone jumping from the window and landing in the backyard. Another woman's scream, this time cut off. A horrible gutteral yell, the sound of more swords -)

The first man comes back downstairs, wiping blood off his sword with a torn curtain. "There's still two more as should be here that weren't. Any of you good lady citizens seen them, or got other ideas where they might be hidin'?"

Someone, once there's a bit more light and reason to look around, is going to notice they don't recognize her. It would have happened already, probably, if not for the fact there are five different nobles renting part of this mansion for the convention and their five different staffs haven't met each other and no one's yet thought of lining people up by who they worked for -

Someone's pointing him out into the courtyard, after the man who jumped. Can she back into a poorly lit corner while they're distracted chasing him down - not that he's going anywhere, it looks like he hurt his knee -

Oh yeah nobody's watching her too closely.

The man with the sword chases down the fleeing noble, kicks his good leg out from under him, and forces a noose around his neck. Then he starts to drag him back toward the front of the mansion.

Invisibility. And she'll run past the guards at the door, and right outside the front door there's a crowd because of course there's a crowd, and she'll freeze and crouch and crawl sideways through the thorn bushes, carefully, so carefully, achingly aware Invisibility breaks easily. It doesn't break. She crawls the length of the whole building and rolls carefully out.

She doesn't know if what they're doing is wrong or not. She doesn't know if it's illegal or not. She doesn't know any of the rules, she hasn't for eighteen months since they were all kicked out from under her. 

She knows that the cute boy agreed to duel for her, and probably won't throw her to a crowd to hang her even if it's the right thing to do. And she knows where the houses are that the Molthuni nobles rented. Approximately. 

(She is barefoot and in a nightgown and in three minutes if she hasn't found them she's going to have a completely different category of problems but -)

Behind her, the last of the other nobles staying in that mansion chokes and dies on a makeshift gallows.

(Someone notices that that woman nobody recognized has vanished. The mob upends the house, checking under every bed and in every cabinet until they conclude that she must have gotten away. Ah, damn it. 4/5 isn't bad. Next house!)

High in the sky swooping above the houses, there's a gryphon. 

There's a wizard flying next to it.

She doesn't, as she'd expected, feel relieved to see them, just more scared. But she is Chelish and has her dignity and has her plan so she kicks the cobblestones and breaks invisibility and cries out "Ardiaca!"

And he swoops down, the gryphon following. "Lady Eulalia! Are there others here who need evacuation?"

That's not killing her at all. She is too Chelish to show relief. "There's a lynch mob going house to house - they killed everyone - back the way I came, I can show you -"

"Let's go."

She turns around and charges back towards the house. They were in the wrong, apparently, because the only fact of the matter about who is in the right or wrong is who lives or dies and her allies are with her and they will be the ones to die.

Does she need a ride?

Well they'll get there faster. 

"Archduke," she murmurs as she climbs onto the gryphon, but then she can't make herself find any more words. Luckily they're overtaking the house in practically no time; she didn't really run very far, barefoot and halfway naked, in two minutes - "there, that's the mob -"