"Of course." He doesn't particularly expect Valia to be beaten or raped in Her Majesty's prisons, but there's good enough odds someone is angry enough at her to try to kill her that he's stayed here the night. He's a paladin, it's what he's for.

He says that like he doesn't, actually, understand the question. "I mean, for spells. Blai and I aren't caught up on everything but he was explaining to me that they cost the Goddess something. And they took my holy symbol and they're not going to let me cast them so -"

"I think the odds you will go the rest of your life without getting a chance to cast the spells you pray for this morning are very low. - If someone breaks in to try to murder you, borrow my dagger, it's a holy symbol too."

That is oddly soothing. She beams at him, and closes her eyes, and prays for her spells. And Iomedae grants them. This doesn't settle all of the uncertainty seething miserably in her heart but it does make it more bearable. 

Feliu also prays for spells at dawn; he used a few of them (though not most, because most of his spells are for killing extremely powerful Evil things and there weren't any on the streets last night) but mostly he is just happy about getting his Lay On Hands effects back. He can really use channels.

But he doesn't need to say anything. If Valia wants to talk, she can talk.

Valia wants to ask him questions but she doesn't have questions, just the massive cloud of confusion draped closely over everything, making it impossible to guess which things she ought to do in order to guess which other things -

- no, actually, that's fixable. "Is there anything that you think that I should do, today."

"Offer to channel if you see someone you can offer it to? They may still be short today, I'm not sure. Beyond that - your fate is in the hands of other people and I don't know what actions you can initiate will contribute to things going well."

So it doesn't matter, the deep miserable blanket of confusion. Maybe she will be unconfused in Heaven someday. She stands up and ties her hair back again where it's all mussed up from her terrible sleeping position, and she paces until not asking any of her questions is actually unbearable. "Am I bothering you if I ask things?"

"No."

"Did they kill the evil nobles last night?"

"Probably some of them. I wasn't tracking that."

But it seems pretty important to track, if one is deciding how to feel about the whole thing! It was awful regardless, of course, war always is, but - 'a lot of people died successfully deposing all the old Asmodean nobility' and 'a lot of people died failing to depose all the old Asmodean nobility' and 'a lot of people died doing some other worse thing' are really importantly different! "What were you...tracking."

"Where the fighting was, how many people were dead, how many channels I had, where I could cut them off, whether they looked like I could talk to them - the nobles can buy resurrections, Valia." 

This is a fact about the world Valia didn't know, or didn't really know all the way through. When you killed nobles in Pezzack they stayed dead. "Are they ...wealthier than under Hell? Or are resurrections like channels and cheaper from the Good gods?"

"If they're minor nobility, they might die and stay dead. But if they're counts or dukes or archdukes, who are the people in town for the convention, they can leave instructions with the Church of Abadar to resurrect them and they'll pay the Church back over the next twenty years with a share of the income from their lands. I suspect that Asmodean Cheliax didn't have that because Asmodeus wanted nobles killing their parents for power and there wasn't anyone as trustworthy as the Church of Abadar to go to."

"But people still tried to kill them, knowing that? Or did they not know that like in Pezzack no one knows that?"

"Hard to tell. They did try to also kill all the Abadarans, though I think that was wanting to rob the banks more than it was a plan to stop resurrections. I'd guess they didn't know, or at least weren't thinking about it?"

"Do you think that they were - wrong? That they were risking their lives for something they would not have risked it for, if they'd known the whole picture?"

"Yes."

"That's my fault."

"Mostly. This wasn't the first riot this year and it won't be the last."

"Do you think that the people who died in the riots will be all right?"

"Some but not most, I think?"

"Most people aren't bad. Most people are brave and good, when they can be. It was Asmodeus's lie, that everyone was evil and damned."

"It was something he worked very hard to make true, and the closer to his puppet's capital he was, the better at it he was."

"If you are a bad person," says Valia, "there is no cause at all to risk your life to kill an evil man who oppresses people far away. To risk your life to kill your own oppressor, maybe, because even bad men are self-interested. To rob a bank, maybe. But to rise up with your friends to kill an Asmodean noble from far away - Asmodeus, where He succeeded, would teach not to do it. He would teach that you are too weak, and that caring for other people - or trusting them to fight alongside you - is contemptible. The riots in Westcrown may have been a very bad thing - probably were a very bad thing, if you are right - because they did not stand enough chance of success, and because we owed it to the Queen to check first if she's trying, but I do not think it is Evil that inspires people to risk everything when they learn that the convention is full of Evil nobles."

"No. It's emotion. It's fear and rage and hate. It's the thought their enemies will escape justice. It's not a reasoned decision.

"I suppose for a few - it's a lifeline thrown to men afraid of Hell that it will save their souls, if they're evil, and make it so they don't need to be afraid of Hell any more. That's what a some people were thinking when I talked to them, when they calmed down enough to look for reasons. But mostly they just went home when they did that."

"It's not - fear and rage and hate - I guess it is scary. But it's mostly - that someone has to do it and you're someone, and you feel very small and very big at the same time. You don't have to hate people to wish they didn't have the power to do whatever they want to thousands of other people."

"When they calmed down, they stopped and went home. When they didn't, they usually died, if they fought a lord. And they stole and killed and raped wherever they saw a target, some of them. It wasn't a calculated plan. It was that they'd been afraid their whole lives and they saw a way to get out of it by hurting the people they'd always hated and they took it."

"Will the Church of Abadar raise people from the dead, or only nobles?"

"They can't afford to raise most from the dead. They'll do it for the wealthy, who can pay them, but not the poor. Archmage Naima raises two people from Hell every day but I don't think she can do more than that."

Valia is still not crying but she's very, very pale. None of the things spinning around in her head now are questions. "I don't want them to be in trouble," she says eventually. "If they did these things because I told them to. That's on me, not on them."

"Pharasma gives them partial responsibility, not full. But if they were already evil -"

Then they'll be damned. Valia wants to wither away into a gust of wind on the distant seas. The room is suddenly too bright and too loud and it feels like all of the pieces are piling up in top of her, unbearable.

Except the greatest and most terrible secret of the world is that nothing is ever unbearable. You just - keep going.

Until the Queen has you executed for murdering hundreds of people. 

She does not generate any more questions. Or comments.

Feliu is going to quietly sing. He sings very well, and it's a song from the Acts and older than the Acts. Aroden wrote it, he thinks. About failure.

For they, all of them, worship a god who has failed, and knows what it is to fail.

Alexeara Cansellarion enters the prison.

"Feliu. Select Wain. Do you know anything about what's going to happen to you? I only just got to the city."

Valia did start crying, just a bit, during the song. She thinks she disguised it successfully. Her voice is steady now, at any rate. "Presumably the Queen is going to kill me because I got hundreds of people killed but she has not actually said anything yet. Feliu's friends thought I should come here, uh, in advance."

"Nothing but speculation, sir."

"I'm going to talk to the queen. She may feel that she has to execute you to restore order," or because she enjoys killing Iomedans "but I am going to try to convince her to be lenient. What would your plans be if you were pardoned?"

Valia blinks at him, baffled. 

"No - you should try to convince her not to kill the other people. Since they were only listening to me."

"I will try to convince her to not kill the people who were rioting, either, or at least not the ones who were genuinely inspired and not looking for an excuse... But I heard someone reprinted and edited your speech to make it more inflammatory. So it wasn't exactly you they were listening to."

"Oh. I didn't know that." Valia thinks she might actually be very angry about that, if there were space for any feelings.

...She looks awful. He reaches out and puts a hand on her shoulder and cures her of a lot of things that aren't applicable here, and also tiredness which is.

"What would you plan to do if pardoned?"

"...I don't know. I don't - I can't talk to people, there are so many things I don't know and some things I do know that are - different here - is there somewhere where it wouldn't matter, that I don't know how things work except in Pezzack - or I guess I could go home -" except she probably can't and she feels abruptly resentful of being made to even think about it. She'd been doing so well at not showing distress.

"Lastwall," he says immediately, "where they are right now slightly short on empowered clerics, and nobody is going to look to you as the sole source of the goddess' wisdom, and where you will find more experienced teachers... It would mean one fewer Iomedan at the convention, but I think it would be good for you... You might not be able to come back. Assuming I can even talk the queen down as far as exile."

"I don't really understand why this is your priority when I got hundreds of people killed but that sounds - good. I didn't want - I wasn't trying to - I thought that if there were still Asmodeans in power the Queen didn't want that -"

"The men you accused are not Asmodeans. Not anymore. I haven't known any of them long, but when I've met with them they seemed no more evil than a typical person raised in this country. One of the first things that the Archduke Narikopolus did after the war was to ask the church of Iomedae in Lastwall to send them priests who could teach them how to be good. If you don't trust my admittedly limited assessment of their characters, two of those lay priests came with to the convention and volunteered to spend their time advising you and Select Artigas, since neither of you have any formal instruction in Iomedae's teachings... I don't know if they'll be allowed to come speak to you here. Presumably if you're allowed to remain in Cheliax."

"They're all Evil - we did check that -"

"One who has done much evil in their life will usually take some time to recover from it spiritually, even after they have decided to do good instead. And I do not think it's likely that they have avoided any evil deeds since the end of the war. But they've renounced Asmodeus, or the queen would have removed them, and they are trying to do the right thing, or the church of Iomedae would not be helping them."

"Every person I've seen shine Evil was a priest of Asmodeus or a general in His service or Ibarra who is a Norgorber cultist who - wanted this to happen because it'd be funny - and so when I saw that all the same people the Thrunes put in charge were in charge and they were all still evil I thought that meant they were - all still people it was bad to have in power. I thought that was what evil meant, more or less.

I'm sorry. I know that fixes - none of it."

"I know. It was - terribly unjust of us, to put you in the position you were in, without any help or advice, without anyone who would know that sometimes a man who is trying to do good, who is succeeding in doing good, may still shine with the evils of their past, without anyone who's seen the world outside of Asmodean Cheliax - I'm sorry. It was my mistake, among others."

"You - didn't put me in the position? Did you? The summons said the Queen did. If it was you I - would've asked you for advice, probably, if I'd known that -"

"It was the queen and her companions who decided that the convention should seat ten Chelish Iomedan Select, if they could be found, but it was the church's decision - and my decision, and the decision of all the individual Iomedans who knew about the situation - not to prioritize getting you advice and advisors."

There've never been advisors, is the thing. There's never been anyone who has the answer. There's just the problems, and you can try to fix them or not. If you wait to be sure you'll wait too long and be dead and - 

- and if you don't wait and move while you missed something important then hundreds of people will be dead. Apparently. 

"I am confused about why, if the Evil Thrune-appointed nobles are actually suited to rule over people and everybody checked already and knew that, no one said that in response to the speech instead of saying that it is wrong to rebel against Asmodeus."

"Archduchess Bainilus spoke from her own experience, which was different from yours but still quite limited. Many people in the room knew as little or less about the Menadorians as you did. Some were probably afraid to contradict a Select of Iomedae. And I - was caught off-guard and was too slow to the podium."

And then Valia's conversation with the Archduchess got heated and someone suggested everyone discuss tax policy to calm down and -

"Oh. 

I don't really think that making lots of people come to Westcrown and then telling them to give speeches and then making who responds to the speeches depend on how fast they are to get to the front of the room and then killing them if the speeches are wrong is a very good way to do government but I don't actually know what the other options are." 

"It's one of the things the Archmage Cotonnet and I disagree on! I do hope that we'll be able to avoid you being executed. In Andoran members of the People's Council can't be prosecuted for anything they say on the floor, which seems like an important innovation that has done them good."

"I followed all the laws about what you're allowed to say. I consulted -" she doesn't want to name them - "some people who could read all the royal decrees for it and we changed some things so it was more clearly allowed. It just - doesn't matter, because when you say something that causes a big stir and makes a very important person really angry they change the rules and kill you. It's what happened in Pezzack, too."

"Oh. That's really good to know. That you followed all the laws, that is - It does matter. It matters to me and to the church and probably to the queen and the archmages."

"I think it usually only matters most of the time and not if there's a rebellion. And - I don't even think that's unfair, really. A lot of people are dead. It doesn't help those people any if we were careful to make sure the speech didn't have any lists of names and didn't say that people should commit crimes just that they probably would if their rulers were Evil."

"It doesn't help those people, no. It also wouldn't help them to have you executed for what you said."

"....governments like killing people to scare all of the other people, not just to make them stop whatever they're doing. They'll kill people even if it'd be easy to make them stop, because they'd rather scare them."

"That's - true more often than I would like, but it's not true everywhere. And Cheliax under Hell was far more eager to kill its people than most governments."

"Even Lastwall would kill someone if they got hundreds of other people killed, though, right, because it's very important to make people not do that."

"It depends on how and why they got hundreds of other people killed, and what they thought about it afterward. I've known men in Lastwall who have made mistakes that bad, and none of them were executed for it."

"Well, I don't wish I was born in Lastwall, because it doesn't sound like its government needed any rebelling against." Her moods have swung around again to land on 'strangely deflated'. "I think I don't want to think about this, unless you think it's important, as it's easier to be all right with being about to die than with not being sure. Feliu didn't think there was anything I could do that was useful."

"I understand. I'm going to try to talk to the queen now. I will let you know if you should be expecting execution or something else once I know that with more certainty."

Goddess go with you, she wants to say, but it kind of feels like she shouldn't. She nods.