I may have been a little bit rude when he told me that technically nothing in Valia Wain's speech was illegal. He came to plead for a pardon for her which - really seems like a matter for after her trial, not now.

What with one thing and the other and searching four different rivers for a nymph who knew anything about hydrology and was willing to be transported, he hadn't been thinking about Valia Wain. The speech wasn't illegal, and the dead don't care. The trial will be political: necessarily. He doesn't want to get involved. He didn't want to get involved with this entire convention in the first place. Nobody would do a better job, Naima said. Well, he can think of a few people who might have avoided a massacre on the second day. 

He'd like to say that Valia Wain isn't his problem, but that's not true. She might not be his first or fifth or sixteenth problem, but everyone and everything associated with this whole misbegotten idea is somewhere on the list. And when he thinks about it that way, it's like an itch, sticking to his skin as he ferries river nymphs and tracks down corpses and coordinates teleports. Valia Wain isn't his most important problem. She is not a problem he can solve; in fact, she is a problem to which no good solution exists. The thing is, he's seen this problem before. If there is a trial – and it's public – then he does not doubt that Valia Wain is capable of standing up and declaring herself a martyr for anti-diabolism and getting herself killed and poisoning the very idea that the people of Cheliax might be able to take it upon themselves to judge the conduct of their betters. 

She won't listen to him, of course. He doesn't expect it. He does expect a few more sleepless nights turning over words he's left unsaid, and he's had enough of those to last a lifetime. That decides him. 

He'll fly to the palace. For the first time in over a year, he's running short on teleports.