"I think that it would be worth it, if hundreds of people died and it drove diabolism out of Cheliax forever. But that's not what happened. I don't even think there was a chance of that happening, not really, not from this. Probably things got worse."

It -" and now she's crying, and of course deeply contemptuous of herself for it, "it is... very hard to think about the idea that the people they killed in Pezzack might also be in Hell for having lived under Asmodeans before being murdered by them. It feels like - one of those things that nothing that happens, even if we do beat Asmodeus, will ever make the universe acceptable, ever. But - there are a lot of things like that. I can live with one more, for as long as I live. And if the people trying to kill evildoers in fact go to Hell for it then they should know that so they can make their choices."

The proper Chelish thing would be to ignore this.

“l’m not a paladin, but I can make you a little braver for the next while, if you want me too.”

Braver? Is it cowardice, that's clouding her mind so badly? But she nods.

Greater Heroism.

He didn’t prepare the spell - doesn’t have it, in fact - but if he’s going to be perfectly honest he’s half having this conversation with Valia and half with himself age nineteen, and he remembers what it felt like the first time a friend was maledicted because of a mistake he made. 

Oh. 

Yeah, it was cowardice that was clouding her mind so badly. Apparently. She'll process that later. She looks back up at him. She's crying more now but no longer minds it; what's he going to do, think less of her? 

"I don't know what I'd have decided to think if Feliu and Lord Cansellarion weren't here. But - I don't think it's that I was right about everything. Because I can still tell whether I win or lose, and I lost this one. Even if they are Asmodeans, they're still in power."

"Whether you won or lost matters much less than whether, in expectation, you were right to pick the fight. Sometimes the deck is stacked against us, and a hundred or a thousand people have to try and fail for one of them to succeed. 

...A lot of people have gone to Hell because of choices that I've made. They'e all stayed with me, but the thing I find truly hard to bear is when I look back and know that I wasn't thinking clearly about what I was trying to accomplish and wasn't prepared to pay the price. Even then – in the end, you do learn to bear it."

"I wasn't thinking clearly. I was trying to solve one problem - people being confused about whether the excising diabolism committee was going after everyone who'd ever done a bad thing or what, and I wanted to be clear that I considered the diabolists and Norgorber cultists and the evil nobles a problem and not everyone else - but I wasn't just thinking about how best to do that, and I wasn't really expecting this price, and - if I'd been trying to cause a riot last night I'd have planned it, you know, I'd have known who was a good fighter and what our target was and what we'd be doing in the chaos. I stayed late asking the scribe to read me back the judiciary committee notes."

"That would be a good thing to say at the trial. Not the bit about how you'd have planned it, maybe – 

– but I probably shouldn't be giving you advice on your defense. I'm don't want to secure the best outcome for you personally, and anyway you'll have a lawyer for that. I'm thinking about the city and the rest of the convention. But in either case, establishing that you neither predicted nor intended the riots will help."

"I wasn't really planning to have a defense, the people are dead. Lord Cansellarion thought it'd matter that the speech was legal but - he's not Chelish. I do - want people to know that I got it wrong and didn't want this. I am sure I will not be allowed to give another speech but I think I could explain."

"The point of a trial isn't to determine whether people died, it's about whether you broke the law. I admit we haven't yet secured a right for the accused to speak in their own defense – and if you do that might move the convention against it, which is something to consider – but the Queen certainly isn't obligated to forbid it." 

He's Chelish and has no excuse. "It does not matter to the Queen or to anyone in Westcrown whether I broke the law. Or rather, it matters to them that I broke the law, and if someone insists I didn't they'll lose faith in the law."

"I flatter myself that I know a bit more about what matters to the Queen than you do. I don't think it matters to very many people, but for the moment, those of us who care are going to make most of the important decisions over the next few days." 

"Well, if I am given a chance to speak, either at a trial or to correct the old speech, I will check with sensible people first that I am not getting anything horribly wrong and then I will explain how my first speech was a terrible mistake. They won't believe me but I ought to anyway."

"I'm hopeful that if enough people manage to say true things in public for a long enough time, someone will eventually believe them. It won't be this time, but one does have to start somewhere." 

"I'm very convincing." She smiles very slightly. "If you think it might matter, then I would appreciate it if you would arrange for me to be allowed to speak. ...ideally not at a trial, actually, because at a trial I think I'm supposed to be addressing the legal side of things and that's not what I most want to tell people. ...I would also appreciate it if there were someone who could read my correspondence and take dictation. Everyone who has come to visit has been far too important to waste their time on that."

"I can't promise you'll be allowed to speak before the trial, but if you can write up a draft of a speech I'll see it's taken to the Queen. Have your lawyer write it, once we've found one – it would be so much more convenient if Comprehend Languages imparted literacy and it really doesn't seem like it would be very difficult to modify, but I hardly have the time – Herru might be able to do it, if she's not too horribly busy – and for now I suppose I should have a secretary sent up. I'll see it's done. 

Is there anything else you'd like to say to me?"

There are many things. None of them would be wise to say. 

"The people of Pezzack think very highly of you." They'll stop when Valia doesn't come home.

"I'm glad to hear it. I hadn't imagined they thought of me at all. 

There is one more thing I would like to say to you. I'm worried that the lesson you're going to take away from this is that your error was acting at all, when you were ignorant. This is not true. It may matter more to you that it is also a kind of weakness. It's easy to convince yourself that you couldn't have known better, because it's a way of saying you weren't really responsible for what you did. I'm sure you're about to object that you are taking responsibility for your actions. What you are doing is accepting blame, and that's a different thing entirely. Whether you should feel guilty for what happened last night concerns no one but you and the final Judge. If you can't accept that you have control over your choices and could have acted differently, it is going to be a very serious problem for a great many people. 

For what it's worth, I think the real underlying problem here is that you chose not to treat Lawfully with your allies. I'm certainly the last person in any position to blame you for it, but by virtue of your position, I recommend that you think very hard about whether you were right to do so. I can't answer that for you, and I don't think you'd thank me if I tried. 

I cannot promise that your correspondence here is private, but I will do my best to see that it is not in any way altered, and if it is obstructed, you'll be told. If you're mistreated, write to me – actually, write to Cansellarion, he's better equipped to do something about it."  

Valia is so profoundly sick of the archmage. She thinks that Élie's diagnosis of her errors is stupid and missing the point. He seems persistently convinced that she's having trouble observing that she has control over her choices and should have acted differently, when this is both blatantly obvious and the reason she thinks it would have been wise to skip his stupid convention. She cares about whether she did right by the people who risked their lives for her words; she isn't sure that that's a matter of Law, because she's still not really clear what Law is, but it obviously matters. She cares about whether she wronged people who were trying to be Good because she misinterpreted the fact they were still Evil. But by 'allies' she doesn't think Élie means either of those; she thinks he means the powerful people who Valia inconvenienced, not the powerless ones she got killed. 

She cannot see what would possibly be gained by arguing the point further. 

"I will to the best of my abilities write if I am mistreated," she says icily. She doesn't care whether he misses her meaning or not.

Yeah. He's met a lot of Iomedeans in his time – either they grow out of the unshakeable conviction that only they understand the true meaning of right and good and trying to understand why anyone else might do something they disagree is enough to make one a dirty collaborator, or they die, or presumably live quiet lives in Lastwall and never come to his attention.

"Good luck to you."

It is in no sense productive to anger the archmage. "Thank you for coming."

" – One last thing. Would you prefer a secretary from the palace or one of my own people? The advantage of a palace secretary is that I can have them brought here immediately and their other work is probably less important; the advantage of a person in my organization is that they can get word out without being beholden in any way to the palace guards, though of course they do answer to me and you might very reasonably not trust my judgement." 

She absolutely does not trust his judgment but it's still an easy choice. The palace ones absolutely wouldn't report a complaint about her treatment in the palace; the archmage has many shortcomings as a person but 'protecting the palace staff' really seems unlikely to be one of them. "I would prefer one of yours. - thank you."

That's only moderately inconvient (or he wouldn't have offered). He sends a message through one of his telepathic bonds for Xiulan to bring Netsai on the next teleport; she doesn't speak Chelish well enough to understand Hellcoast dialect but she usually has a Tongues up. 

"She should be here this evening, then." 

"I am very grateful." She really is. She has been attempting to adopt a broad perspective about being mistreated in prison since in the end it doesn't really matter very much but it's a difficult thing to adopt such a perspective on and it would be very painful for Iomedae to leave her now of all times, in addition to being taken as proof of her guilt.