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 -"

The mob has moved down to the next house, mostly in a crowd out front. Two men and a woman are hanging on nooses from the front windows, though from all the blood, one of the men was clearly dead or nearly so before he was hanged. Inside on the upper level, four members of the mob are forcing another noose around the neck of a second screaming woman while a fifth ties the other end of the rope around a bed post.

They're wrong, they're wrong, they're wrong because they're going to die, and she's alive.

They swoop above them, gryphon over the group, and Skybreaker shrieks. Gryphons were apex predators before bronze was forged, and their cry is a cry that humans were bred to fear.

"In the name of Iomedae, disperse!" says Xavier, and his voice is a trumpet to match any archon. His shield has a silver sword on red on it, and the pennon streaming from his lance and the pennon streaming from his armor are blue. "The pamphlets that spoke of Asmodeanism among the lords were damnable lies, forgeries of Geryon! The Queen slew the Tarrasque, the Queen triumphed over Asmodeus, the Queen is chosen of Iomedae! It is the will of Iomedae and of Her Majesty that you return peacefully to your homes and do no more evil to those under Her Majesty's protection!"

Skybreaker shrieks again.

Joan-Pau swoops down, standard-issue army sword in hand, and slashes the ropes, ready to dart upwards and start throwing webs if the crowd is disinclined to run.

"Who are you, to speak the will of Iomedae? Iomedae and the queen have delivered the devil-lovers into our hands. Justice demands that they die! See for yourselves!" The speaker gestures at the hanged victims. "We have only hung the guilty. The innocent have no cause for fear."

But the people at the edges of the crowd are starting to shuffle away and drop their weapons.

(Up in the mansion, one of the men cuts the woman's throat and then all five run for cover)

The guy who wielded the knife gets a survivable three Magic Missiles to the back, unless he looks like an army veteran in which case he gets a full five, and everyone who doesn't throw down their weapons Real Soon Now is gonna start getting Webbed. 

diediediediediedie

"Give me the names of every man and the crimes they are charged with and the witnesses who laid the charge or be known to all as a foe of Iomedae, paladin-goddess of Law and Good! I am Archduke Xavier of Sirmium, and I descended behind Alexaera Cansellarion at the head of a thousand men to drive the tyranny of the Henderthanes from Sirmium and restore the will of Iomedae to Cheliax! I see that I should have found you first - what is your name, man? Who are you to claim leadership of this bandit troop?"

Some of the men in the crowd start to draw their bows.

"STOP!" yells the leader. "We will not spill the blood of the agents of the queen or the goddess, mistaken though they may be. I am Riu d'Argent, and I have fought the devils' servants in Andoran, in Kintargo, in Sargava and in New Cheliax. In the forests the alleys, upon the mountaintops and upon the seas, I have fought and killed them the world round, and I tell you now: Every man strung up there is a villain, a thief enriched by stealing bread out of the mouths of better men, a servant of Hell and all its tyrannies."

If he won it would be true but she's on a gryphon so it's false, false, false, false -

"Give me their names, Rui d'Argent! Give me their names and their crimes and the witnesses to these crimes or be known a liar and a traitor!" He points at a random member of the crowd. "You! What crimes did you witness?" And another. "You, woman! What crimes did you see these hanged here commit? Will you testify before a magistrate?"

He picks up the injured, hauls them over to a rooftop without any visible non-ladder access, taps them with a wand, repeats.

"The lord and lady of Castellblanc, there! The count of Pedrafina, there! From that house there, the lords of Solpont and Altamar and Seguer, or at least most of them, one slipped away. Need I list every crime, Archduke? They were lords beneath the whip-hand of Asmodeus. In such a place, no man can rule another with clean conscience." In any place, really, but it seems unwise to say that.

(Around its edges, the crowd continues to fray and disperse.  If they're not going to fight the newcomers, then they're not going to kill any more evil nobles today, and if that's not happening why are they even here?)

"Liar! These men turned from the darkness to the light, and every one of them has been forgiven by the Queen herself, Chosen of Iomedae! A thousand heads rolled when she took the worst of the old nobility, and all those who have not knelt and swore to serve Her forever, and she judged their hearts and found those worthy, while the rest she condemned to the Blade. You, Rui d'Argent, you make a mockery of Her word, and forswear Our holy queen with a blade of steel and a coil of rope!"

"Solpont was a new noble. Queen's appointment." Eulàlia offers.

"And now you do not even restrict yourselves to killing those Her Majesty spared, but turn to those She chose to guide you? Look me in the eye, you rogues, and tell me you have done right!"

Oh that's awkward.

"If I have done wrong, here, then let me hang from a gallows myself." (Rui d'Argent can probably break out of prison before they actually hang him, he's been in worse scrapes.) "But let these men go free, who have done nothing but at my urging."

(The knot of men around d'Argent continues to shrink. Better to definitely get out now than only maybe get out later! And besides, it's starting to rain.)

"Return to your homes," he tells them. "Rui, come with me and I will take you to a magistrate, and I will say that you did what you did in the belief it was the Queen's will. Those who foolishly trusted you should return to their homes, and give up this evil madness."

The men return to their homes. Rui follows the archduke to the magistrate, already plotting both how he'll escape from the gaol and how he'll spin this into an appropriately dramatic tale of heroism. The rains come down.

Eulàlia is practically naked and freezing and it is beneath her dignity to shiver. She is pulling herself together and she is not going to require any more assistance until the crisis is completely over, as that would be contemptible.

And Xavier and Joan-Pau can take the injured and Eulalia (who can borrow his Hat of Disguise and have an Endure Elements spell) and the guilty over to the palace and hand the injured over to the guard, with distinctions on which are two criminals one of whom committed murder before the Archduke of Sirmium's eyes and one merely confessed it, and which are innocent victims, and which is the Countess de Seguer.

And then they can go back to looking for trouble, not that there will be any left, considering how hard it's raining.

She is among the injured and not among the guilty and everything is all right. 

Well. She needs to hang that maid who betrayed her to the mob. But everything else is all right.