Valia Wain has been given her mail, but she can't read it. She has asked for a copy of Acts - which she also can't read - and been laughed at. She wants Feliu back but she cannot have one of the most powerful paladins in Avistan guard her day and night until they get around to killing her, and it would be selfish to try to convince him to stay, so once Ser Cansellarion left she asked him to also.

She isn't really very scared of dying. She's very scared but she doesn't think it's of dying. It's of - everything being terrible for ever. It's of people being damned because of her. It's about spending the rest of forever staring into the glaring chasm of a mistake bigger than any good thing she'll ever do.

Well, would she like to speak to him?

- she cannot really ask the Archmage Cotonnet to read her mail, and she was mostly desperately wishing for a visitor who'd read her mail. But certainly she'll speak to him. She probably owes him an apology too but when she reaches for it none of the things that come out of her heart are an apology at all.

She stands and bows, deeply and decidedly ironically. She noticed the first time they met that he hated when the people of Pezzack grovelled.

"Archmage Cotonnet."

Yes, yes, yes, Chelish people like to play Chelish games. He doesn't care, he's done. 

"Select Wain. If you don't mind, I'd like to know what you wanted to accomplish yesterday, and if you feel you've done it."

"I wanted the people of Cheliax to stop being ruled by Evil men Abrogail Thrune appointed, and obviously not."

"I don't think it's obvious at all. You might have wanted the people of Cheliax to know that we can't actually stop a riot without major casualties. You might have wanted news of the riots in Westcrown to spread to Menador, where there are more holdover nobles and it would take us much longer to intervene – this wouldn't have worked, but I don't think you'd have known that at the time. You might have wanted to permanently disrupt the workings of the convention because you consider it unjustly constituted. You might have wanted the aristocracy to be afraid. You said that yesterday, didn't you? Fear is very powerful. You might have wanted them to think about the mob every time they order an execution, or raise taxes, or speak on the floor. I don't think this would improve the quality of their governance, in the main, but as we've already established, you don't think much of my judgement. You might have wanted to accomplish any number of things." 

"Oh, I also wanted them to be afraid. I think I - it's kind of hard to track what I was thinking, really, because once you know something it's hard to remember not knowing it, but I think I wanted them to be afraid, and to repent, and I figured that if they didn't do that then word would spread - yes, to Menador, slowly, but eventually - and people'd be rid of them. I didn't think there'd be riots in Westcrown yesterday. Westcrown isn't ruled by Evil people Abrogail Thrune appointed. I figured that if people took it seriously they'd - bring some copies with them, hidden, when they rode out somewhere that still is. 

But - I would not have told people that they should not be afraid, if I thought they'd die for nothing. I didn't want that. And - Feliu thought that I betrayed the Queen. I didn't mean to. She freed us from Hell. You freed us from Hell. I was not meaning to declare war on the people who freed us from Hell, but on the people they'd forgotten to free us from. So I failed."

" – Among my own mistakes here was the failure to produce some kind of remedial civics handbook. Let's start with this: you should betray the Queen, whatever she did in the past, if you think that her rule is incompatible with freeing Cheliax from the devil. The fact that the Queen and her allies have opposed Hell before should make you question your assessment of whether this course is necessary. And you should definitely understand that counselling people to engage in violent rebellion is betraying the Queen and her government, because, if you didn't think that that government was corrupt, simply reporting the diabolist nobles would always be a better option." 

" - of course I would betray the Queen if I thought she would get in the way of freeing Cheliax from the devil!" Ordinarily she'd be nervous to say that out loud but they're going to kill her regardless, it's sort of freeing. "No, the thing I thought was that the Queen didn't want those people in power but either didn't know of them - but the people they oppress do - or wasn't allowed to go after them. Maybe she'd - promised not to or didn't have an army."

"I imagine someone has already explained to you that that's not so. We – when I say we I mean the Queen and her adventuring companions, including myself – did replace almost all of the old nobility. The ones who remain are there deliberately. We certainly wouldn't need an army to replace them.

We actually did promise not to abolish the Hellknight orders. There's a reason for that. During the war, when it became clear that we might win but not yet certain that we would, the heads of the orders came to us and offered not to fight if we agreed to let them keep existing. We insisted that they replace their entire leadership, and they agreed. We insisted that they reform their rules under the direct supervision of paladins, and they agreed. Most of them do have some legitimate reason to exist, like fighting demon cults or tears in the fabric of reality or things like that, except the Order of the Rack which we really did get rid of. I'm still not entirely happy with this compromise. I would make it again in a heartbeat, because winning the war was much more important than eradicating every last collaborator from the face of Golarion. I suppose it wouldn't technically be a violation of our promise to let the Queen's subjects tear them all apart with impunity, but it does not, to me, seem quite like dealing with them lawfully.

I believe that you didn't know these things. I think you probably could have figured them out, if you'd tried." 

"I don't really see the justification for having any nobles at all. Less so for keeping any of the evil ones. I should have learned it was deliberate before deciding what to do about it."

"We thought about that! I should say, I thought about that. That's what we did in Galt. What happened was that a truly astonishing number of innocent people died, especially in the north, because in most places in Avistan people rely on their local nobility to defend their villages from monsters. 

I know that's not how it is in Pezzack, to the great credit of Pezzack. But your way of doing things has costs. How many adult men would you say there are in a typical Hellcoast village, to every adult woman?"

"About half as many." The men fish and the ocean's very dangerous. It's all right for a man to have two families, if he's a good fisherman and can feed both of them. It had not particularly occurred to Valia that this was unique to Pezzack; surely everywhere is dangerous.

"Right. In most places, the numbers are about equal. Farming is relatively safe, unless something comes out of the woods and goes after you. When it does, their lords are supposed to come and kill it for them. That's why they're there. Twice as many men live; in exchange, they live less freely." 

"There are a lot of things worse than dying young, and nobles are one of them."

"It's been a long time since I've been accused of being a friend to the aristocracy, but I have to say that it depends on the noble. If they do their job, if they have just laws and follow them, if they're not unchecked and arbitrary tyrants – well, life is very good. People will put up with a great deal if it means they get to see their children grow up. 

Of course, those aren't the only options. Let's go back to Galt: Cyprian is experimenting with restoring some of the nobility, but most of the actual defending people from monsters is carried out by a civil defense force composed of veterans of his wars. As far as I can tell, this works. Soldiers are more likely to survive and become strong than peasants in fishing villages, because they have more resources and more training. They know how to obey orders, and they're loyal to the government. If they start using their power to rape and pillage the people they're meant to protect, Cyprian can reassign them or have them court-martialed, and they'll go. Lastwall actually does something similar – every adult man serves or has served in the army, and those veterans do most of the local defense work. The consequence, of course, is that if the king or the emperor or the ruling council is itself tyrannical, it becomes much harder to do something about it."

Valia is so tired. This is - interesting, and it matters, only it doesn't matter to her any more, because she's going to die, and probably the whole situation made it less likely that the people of Cheliax will ever be free in any of these ways. "You can do that, and teach the soldiers to be loyal to Good, not to the Queen. Or at least I'd think you could."

"You could, with time. I think it's a better system than having an aristocracy and one day I'd like Cheliax to get around to implementing something like it. 

Right now the problem is much closer to convincing the soldiers and guardsmen we already have that rape and pillage constitute disloyalty to the Queen and more importantly that they can hang for it."

"That's what I'd expect if you didn't replace all the Evil Asmodeans in power, yes."

"Oh, it's actually much better in Menador than most of the rest of the country."  

"The things you are saying seem inconsistent with the claim that you and the Queen replaced almost everyone terrible."

"Even if we wanted to, it's not actually in our power to replace most of the population of Cheliax."

"Most of the people of Cheliax aren't Evil. Asmodeus liked saying that, but He's the god of lies. The people of Cheliax love their families, and tell secret stories of when things were better, and feed their neighbors when their nets come up empty even though you have to pretend you traded it for a favor. Hell told women to fear men but most of them if they come across you hiding in the hills will be proud they know how to make you a fire. Hell told men to fear each other but the only thing we ever really had to fear was Hell."

"I don't think it's very useful to think about people as good or evil. Mostly, they're just people. They love their families, they'll feed their neighbors when the crops don't come in, and they'll report them to the secret police for worshipping Erastil a little too fervently, and they'll beat their children, and they'll beat their wives, and if they're a soldier far from home and nobody knows them and their commander doesn't care, then, yes, they will steal and rape. That's a problem for every army in the world, not just Asmodean Cheliax, though it's worse here than almost anywhere else. 

I believe that every reasoning being has the capacity for good. In this country, at this time, it is in most of them rusted with disuse. Pretending otherwise does them no favors." 

"I think people are - substantially what you expect of them. Expect Goodness, and get it; expect Evil, and get that. Everyone's pretending, a little bit, but pretending to be Good is not that different from the real thing. 

Did anyone ask the people of Menador, if they'd rather have to fight monsters themselves but be ruled by the Thrune's appointed lords no longer? Or did you just decide what was best for them?"