[continued from from cheliax with love]

The obvious person to send to Valia is the paladin Feilu Tauler, the only well-catechized Iomedaen he knows her to have ever spoken to. Unfortunately, he doesn't have the ability to find both of them without spending an hour on a scry or happening to notice one of them while flying over the city. Valia Wain could well be dead in an hour, so he doesn't do that.

Tauler's friend, the count of Gandisa, is, however, quite visible, flying alongside the Archduke of Sirmium, who is riding a gryphon that can be seen (and heard) from anywhere in the city. He flies in their direction, already casting a Discern Location (silent, so he can still carry on a conversation while doing it).

"Excuse me, gentlemen!" he shouts when he's close enough to be heard. His face won't be familiar to them, but he's visibly a very powerful wizard and he wears, openly now, the badge that identifies him as affiliated with Lastwall but not in their formal command structure. "I'm looking for Ser Tauler; have you seen him?"

"We left him an hour ago," says Xavier, who hasn't yet figured out who he is. 

Joan-Pau makes a lightning calculation related to Lastwall's number of wizards with Overland Flight who are Lastwall affiliated enough to be look for Feliu (he thinks four) and which of them would say 'gentlemen' and concludes that he is probably dealing with quite a big fish indeed. "He's trying to talk the rioters down."

"I'm from Lastwall," he clarifies, in case they don't recognize the badge. "I was warned that Select Wain is probably in danger, and I'm trying to get her off the streets for her own safety. I know she was acquainted with Ser Tauler, but if he's not available, I'd at least like someone with me who's—authorized to enforce the laws of Cheliax, if she doesn't come voluntarily. She's not in the Church hierarchy, so this is—messy, and I don't want to make it messier by taking unilateral action."

Yes, of course he recognized the badge, he can recognize the insignia of every country in Avistan and most of the ones outside it, and Lastwall's shield-pattern is clear. "I understand." Lastwall wants to put her under protective custody without breaking the laws. "Joan-Pau, can you -"

"At seventh."

So no impossible nonsense tricks today. Gotcha. "We can look." One man, in a city, is not going to be easy to find.

"I can cast spells at seventh, though if you're thinking of a Limited Wish I don't have the diamond and don't think it worth the cost of one in expectation," he says. "I do have a Sending prepared; I don't want to spend another ten minutes but it's not that likely she'll die in the span of them."

(The Discern Location completes.)

Valia Wain is in a nearby temple of Abadar, stabilizing the dying. She's not sure it's helping much because the Abadarans are arresting them all and it seems like they're more like bank robbers than freedom fighters and will probably hang - (the freedom fighters might too) - but she gets them all. Walks out of the temple and down the street, touching everyone crumpled or trampled or moaning in the gutters.

"I've located her, she's at the temple of Abadar in the Rego Laina." It's not far enough away to be worth a teleport when they can all fly and he needs to spend ten minutes casting a Sending anyway. "I'm starting the Sending now—Archduke, can you pick Ser Tauler up when we locate him?"

The rain is torrential now; it's not likely mobs will continue to be a problem much longer, but that doesn't rule out well-equipped survivors of the mobs deciding to go after Valia in spite of the weather.

The rain is slowing Valia down because she now needs to haul people out of the gutters or they'll drown. What awful awful luck, for it to storm like this just now. 

Skybreaker is very unhappy with this weather! "I'll need to find shelter for Skybreaker," he says. "Joan-Pau -"

"I'll talk to Valia."

He reconsiders a moment, then—"Actually, Archduke, if your mount can't fly in the rain then we probably ought to get her now and have Tauler meet us as soon as possible. You're in charge here, though." Officially, for all that, in practice, Jean is commanding this operation—he really shouldn't be.

Xavier really doesn't think he adds anything to Joan-Pau approaching as a friend of Feliu's, but he admits that he does look more paladinic.

"Let's go."

... Yeah, the odds that this is Lastwall's demiarchmage are just going up and up and up. He'll fly with Xavier.

Valia is not particularly strong and hauling men out of the gutters requires slipping underneath them and then using her whole body to pull them up. It feels indecent and it's exhausting. She's only bothering with the ones that are still breathing and that's still quite a few of them.

They spot Valia from the air and land a block away. He hangs back and continues casting the Sending.

Joan-Pau drops down, lends her a hand. He's as strong as the average man who got a full meal every day of his life. "Delegate Wain?"

Xavier is also going to hop off Skybreaker's back with a quick apology and start helping.

"Yes - thank you- " They'll be so much faster at it. She can go back to stabilizing people.

"Delegate Wain, I'm a friend of Feliu's. Joan-Pau Ardiaca." He thinks mentioning being a count is currently irrelevant; she isn't the sort of person who cares much about that.

Why are we doing introductions. Is it really the time for that. She's just going to keep walking down the street pointing out the people who are breathing to the men who are competent to get them out of the gutters. "Nice to meet you," she says, which is truthful only because they are stronger than she is.

- You know what, Xavier is making an executive decision. "Joan-Pau, handle this. I'm getting help." He gets back on Skybreaker and takes off, demonstrating that a gryphon may not be as fast on the ground as in the air but they sure are fast.

"We're here to get you safety," he says, 

Valia blinks disbelievingly at him. "- lot of these people aren't dead yet. I'm a priest. I'm out of channels but I can - they'll hold on until help comes. Or - are Asmodeans coming instead?" She looks around the street, though she can no longer see very far because of the pouring rain. 

"Keep working," he says. He is. "We'll keep working until you freeze or someone else comes to take it over and we'll take you in then."

Freeze? Is she cold? Oh, she is, and hasn't noticed. She thinks she'll try to go back to not noticing, it's not as if noticing was doing anything useful. She keeps working. 

Five minutes later Xavier will come back from the Temple of Abadar with six men with strong backs, two of whom are going to go ahead and get people out of gutters so Valia just has to tap and four of whom are going to start transporting them back to the temple to get them warm and under cover.

Great. Tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap whenever she comes to a street corner she picks the direction with more visible bodies, if there is one. 

Joan-Pau sees no reason to believe he should stop this, though the conscripts will get annoyed eventually.

The Sending finishes.

"Ardiaca and the Archduke are talking to Valia. You should be present—" and he gives their current location.

He's been walking a few paces behind Xavier and Joan-Pau, now, watching but not saying anything. "I Sent for Ser Tauler to meet us here," he says now. "We should wait near this location."

Oh the conscripts getting annoyed is a problem Valia's qualified to solve! She'll walk over to them and give them Guidance and a tired smile. "Every man you pull out of these ditches lives when he would otherwise have died. I know you're tired, I know the weather is horrendous, but - you could spend the whole rest of your life trying to do the right thing and not do as much of it as you do right here. You are heroes, and I am grateful, and so are a hundred men whose names we don't know, and so is Heaven.

The man telling her to wait here she's going to ignore! They've helped everyone here! There are places to be!

They can follow the trail of men hauling bodies. Xavier is managing the hauling; he sends a hand whenever one is short but mostly he's trying to cajole or charm or overwhelm everyone he encounters into joining the rescue mission.

Joan-Pau will raise an apologetic eyebrow to Riudaure. He's following Valia around, watching for people trying to murder her.

Valia has tracked none of this and is just glad that people are helping now. 

Before that long Feliu will drop off a rooftop* near Jean and give him an inquiring look.

(*: It was faster.)

"I was advised that I should, quote, 'pick her up before someone less Good does it'. Ardiaca and the Archduke are guarding her while she Stabilizes people, right now—they went that way, you should be able to follow the trail of men carrying bodies. You should probably take over from the Archduke, I expect he's busy."

"—I don't speak for the Church, obviously, and she's not even in the Church so I don't know what they could even do. But obviously—if she just shows up at the temple for the morning channel people are going to think the Church approves of what happened tonight. I won't tell you what to say to her, but—in your place I'd encourage her to go to Vigil and seek guidance. I can do the Teleport in the morning, if you need one—I'm likely headed there anyway."

"Got it," he says, and takes off after Valia.

(The thing about Law is that he will listen to this, take it seriously, and then, and this is crucial, decide what to do. He is actually genuinely not in Riudaure's chain of command, and Valia is actually genuinely not in his chain of command, and this matters to Lastwall's ability to say that it doesn't run everything.)

When he shows up Valia is doing the same work she's been doing for the last hour. It's raining hard enough she doesn't immediately recognize him except as another strong man who can lift people.

Well, first he's going to go for a wrist-grip with Joan-Pau. 

Feliu not being around stopped feeling like missing a limb while he was off in Lastwall, but it's still very good to have him back.

And then he'll get back to helping.

Once the immediate screaming emergency is over, though, which may take a while - "Valia? Valia?"

She's exhausted and they haven't found a living person in a while and there are other people helping now and -

"Feliu. ...Blai's dead."

"Oh. I'm sorry."

He pauses for a moment. "I expect he'll be back in a few days."

Valia is vaguely aware of the existence of resurrection but it has never been relevant to anything in her life. "You think? The archmages will fix it? ...can they fix everyone?"

"I don't think they can resurrect more than a few people a day," he says. "But he's a delegate and a cleric of Iomedae so I expect they'll make a point of him."

His phrasing is - careful in the way it was when he was first trying to argue she had made a mistake. She tries to guess where he's pointed with it but everything is too confusing for her to make any headway. "You were right. You said that if people heard the speech they would riot tonight and -"

"Yes. I'm sorry."

He pauses.

"These gentlemen are here to arrest you for the riot." The ones who have been helping you move people for a few hours.

"Oh.

I - didn't riot. For the speech?"

"Yes. They're calling it protective custody, which means they are worried someone will try to assassinate you to get revenge for the riot, but you'll probably be charged tomorrow for the speech."

"Oh." 

She was careful of the law, when writing the speech. She asked Alicia and Victoria to consult the decrees about pamphlets, and the things Elie had said about not calling for duels or for delegates to be expelled, and they didn't do any of the things that weren't allowed.

The censors initially approved Abrogail I, the play. But when they saw how people reacted -

"I understand."

"- It's because inciting people to kill other people is illegal," he says. "The trial will be about whether you did that."

"...is there something that I really need to understand, that you're trying to say to me? 

Because I'm very tired, and I will try very hard to understand if it matters but if you are just trying to be kind by ensuring I know what's going on - I have lived in Cheliax for eighteen years. I am not an idiot, as much as it must seem that way. If I did something like this under the old government they would try to catch me and kill me, and I would live in the hills and meet people in secret. And you think - the government is just - and I should not try that, and anyway it is too late, and anyway wizards can still find you." In Pezzack they killed the wizards first, for this among other reasons. "So they'll kill me, and I don't really need to understand."

"- You might get executed or you might get exiled to Lastwall or you might get released on a pledge not to do it again. All that is undecided, and you should come with us, and I will make sure nobody kills you before your case is decided, and then you should sleep."

He's probably not lying. They say paladins don't lie. Valia, despite not being a paladin, doesn't lie, because Iomedae was a paladin and so presumably doesn't approve of it. "All right," she says very tiredly, and goes with him.

The Church will intervene somehow, if it looks like they're actually going to execute her. Executing her might be the only thing that would be worse for public order than doing nothing.

Alfirin probably won't do it. By his best guess at her motives she's perfectly content to stand back and let the Church make the greatest possible fool of itself, which would indicate underreacting rather than overreacting to the riots. (He'd suspect her of having cursed Cansellarion's wisdom if he didn't know just how the man had done it to himself.) Even if that's not her plan, Élie Cotonnet might insist that delegates' speeches in the convention hall not be policed in any way whatsoever. She might, however, leave the decision to her friend the Lord Inquisitor, who—probably won't enforce the law any differently on a delegate or a cleric of Iomedae than he would on anyone else.

At the very least, they can send her a good lawyer.

He leaves her with Tauler and the Archduke's men, and Teleports back to Vigil for a long and unpleasant debrief.