Blai discards the first thirty-five thoughts to enter his head and finally decides that inanity is better than silence when he gets to: "I don't have any shoes."

"We have some set aside with your change of clothes, actually. I can't promise anything about the fit. You're currently in her Majesty's palace, and should be safe here, but we can arrange at least a temporary guard for you if you'd like to go somewhere else. You're not accused of anything, and not in any trouble."

"Are the - has anyone else died? There were nearly twenty people in that pamphlet -"

"Yes, a lot of people died. Most of them were themselves rioting, not the targets of the mob violence, but there were many of both. We don't have a final count yet, but I believe we've confirmed at least two hundred dead."

"The crown can't possibly afford -"

"They are not all being raised. Delegates to the convention are being raised, along with their family members. The Archmage believes that in asking you to come here, she and her companions took on a duty to protect you. She failed in that, and means to correct the damage as much as is feasible."

"Who else is being raised?"

...Ishani has what he believes is a complete list, and no particularly clear instructions on who he is or isn't supposed to share this information with. Possibly that's the sort of policy that he's supposed to be setting for himself according to his own judgement. Naima has extreme and mostly unfounded faith in his judgement.

"I'm not sure whether any of the dead would prefer not to have their deaths widely known about. About twenty people. Is there anyone in particular you're worried about?"

"- oh, of course you're right, I can - look for people where I would expect them to be if alive, instead."

"If you wish. If someone is a delegate, they should already be alive, with - I believe three exceptions, which we're working on resolving. But I don't know who you're worried about. Would you like an escort somewhere?"

"I... suppose that I have demonstrated the potential need for escort walking around the city. If you wouldn't mind accompanying me to the temple of Iomedae."

"It would certainly be less expensive than raising you again. I don't expect the same thing to happen again, but there are a handful of undead in the streets tonight. Be warned, it's raining hard at this hour, and will be until dawn, to prevent a repeat of last night."

"Mobs bent on murder are deterred by the prospect of murder-while-wet?"

"I've never personally been part of one, and can't speak to the exact experience. It did successfully break up the violence up last night, in addition to putting out the fires."

"Then I'm glad of it." He puts on his change of clothes including the shoes. "Are these - included, with the raise -"

"Yes. Please don't worry about it. Really I think it would be better to compensate you further to offset the cost of having been unexpectedly murdered in the course of participating in the archmage's project, but I'm afraid we won't have time to work out a specific policy about it until Westcrown is better in hand."

It's probably Blai's own fault but he doesn't want to bring that up considering -

- wait. Doesn't he?

Or rather, shouldn't he, obviously it will be excruciating but lots of stuff is excruciating.

"It's probably my own fault," he says, "for not clarifying if I was allowed to use lethal force against people trying to murder me even if they had quite understandably come to the conclusion that I was still an Asmodean." WOW THAT SUCKED. IF IT ALSO OBJECTIVELY MATTERED AT ALL IT WOULD BE A CATASTROPHE.

"I see," he says, entirely calmly. "From a financial perspective I don't really think that changes anything about our obligations. Legally, I believe you'd be entirely justified in defending yourself, but I can't speak to the question from an Iomedan theological perspective."

That guy is not acting like this was a catastrophe at all. Another tally-mark in Vicar Rey's column. He laces up his boots. "I'll have to see - who's alive in the temple and if any of them can advise me on it, I suppose."

Nod. Ishani is pretty sure that everyone used to be an Asmodean and has barely processed this as information. He can walk with Blai through the torrential rain, if that's what they're doing.

It seems to be what they're doing. It is wet, but it is not nearly as aversive as murder! What is with people!

At the temple Blai has a brief conversation with a harried Lastwaller, and turns right back around.

"I apologize for wasting your time," he tells Ishani, "but I want to go back. I want to visit Valia."

Well, that's really his own fault for deciding to attempt confidentiality. "Of course."

The rain is just as miserable on the way back.

Is Blai on the list of people who are allowed to see her?

He is! They'll show him on down to the dungeons.

"Valia?"

"Blai!" She does not race across the room and hug him because they're both Chelish but she takes two steps forwards and brightens noticeably. "You're - I found you dead - did they catch the people who did it -"

"I... don't actually know, that wasn't one of the things I prioritized asking. Though I did ask before I came here if I was supposed to use lethal force in self-defense and it turns out I was after all, so now I know that."

"...I guess of things to not know that's less damaging than the things I didn't know. I'm glad you're all right. I never met anyone who rose from the dead before - did you get to go to Heaven first? Was it nice?"

"I don't remember anything. - I'd guess Axis. But I don't remember either way."

"Oh. Axis is also all right but I thought that Iomedae's people went to Heaven." This is actually quite important for her near-term expectations and there's a bit of an edge to her voice. 

"Maybe She can make special requests, if She wants us. It's not always true of clerics in general."

"Oh." Valia's voice is small and tired. "Well. That's not - really important. I'm glad you're back. I'm sorry that you - I think if I had given a more careful speech there might not have been riots and then you wouldn't have died. I wasn't expecting this but I'm sorry."

"I don't - it's - if there were a lot of riots, the one that caught me might have been inspired by the general mood but -

- they were looking for me by name and they had a reason and that is not your fault."

"- I don't think they could possibly have had a very good reason to murder a priest of Iomedae in the street!"

"They thought - they - there was a pamphlet with - well, it spelled my name wrong, but -"

"They took my speech and made a pamphlet saying rip all tieflings limb from limb," says Valia sympathetically.

"Not like that." Why can't she read. She is certainly already aware of the fact that it would be convenient if she could read and she has been trying but if he could just hand her a fistful of letters and - well, no, he destroyed his copy of the denouncement -

"It said in the pamphlet, that I was actually a priest of Asmodeus.

"Because I was one for twenty years."

"Oh.

....why were you a priest of Asmodeus?"

Why did she ask that question and not any of the ones he thought of in advance? He thought of so many possible reactions she could have in advance. He was ready to duck if she tried to hit him and everything. "They picked us out toward the end of school, like with wizards only a little later on, and - it might help if you had more specific questions, I don't know where to start."

"Well. I don't - there are a lot of things about the world I don't know. But if I woke up one day and was a priest of Asmodeus somehow, and everyone else thought I was a priest of Asmodeus, I'd go try and be a Worldwound priest of Asmodeus, and I take it you did that because you were at the Worldwound, and then I would renounce Asmodeus and go try to make it to one of the other forts. ...I guess unless my fort was immediately going to fall if I did that? That'd be a pretty good reason to wait it out until the Worldwound was closed..."

"I did go to the Worldwound. I didn't renounce Him. He pulled my spells the same day as everyone else's."

" - but that was after the Wound closed, right? Why be a priest of Asmodeus once it's not even helping prevent the world from being overrun by demons?"

"It's very kind of you to assume I had a reason."

Valia is not usually a person who is lost for words but she is kind of lost for words! The only thing she can think of to say is 'what went wrong such that you didn't think of renouncing Asmodeus and running away the day the Wound closed' but when the Archmage Cotonnet did that to her she hated it, because it was - 'assuming my thing is the most important thing in the world, explain your error in not having noticed that sooner'. The thing in question is 'not serving Asmodeus' which really does seem like a good candidate for the most important thing in the world, but that doesn't mean it'd land any better. But she can't exactly think what to say instead. 

"Are you...do you think that you did the right thing?"

"...almost never, no."

"Oh. 

Are you trying to do the right thing?"

"Very poorly! Apparently I should have been killing people who were responding to what they, quite reasonably under the circumstances, imagined to be a priest of Asmodeus walking among them! I am fantasizing about challenging Ser Cansellarion's arguable underuse of his boots of teleportation to see if I can get some kind of accelerated catechism course so that I can have a church superior who can tell me!"

"Feliu's pretty good at explaining things. I don't think you should have killed people who were responding reasonably to what they thought was going on, who told you that?"

"The Lastwaller in the temple who told me that I ought to have used lethal force to keep the mob off me. I probably could have gotten away, if I'd responded to concern about a mob reading that pamphlet by walking the streets armed and prepped with that approach in mind - Sanctuary doesn't last long, I wasn't carrying my mace in the streets..."

"Well I'm obviously not qualified to tell anyone anything about how Iomedae works but killing people is bad, especially people who are - making a mistake and who might go to Hell for it - and I don't understand that rule and I think you did the right thing."

"Raising me cost more than five thousand gold."

"It seems very Evil and dangerous to me to say that because you are so important that people will spend a lot of money to return you from the dead you ought to kill people sometimes when it wouldn't be the right thing to do for anyone who wasn't important. It seems like ...not just accepting that there will have to be evil nobles until we have a better way to deal with monsters, but saying that if those evil nobles need to have a couple girls chained up in their room to give them the motivation to fight monsters then that's just for the best really -"

"I also came to the conclusion that I should not kill any of them, and so I wasn't ready to and didn't, and then when I was raised that was the first thing I asked of a better-catechized Iomedaean, and admittedly I was trying to catch up with Archmage Naima's staffer as soon as I heard you were here so I did not stay to ask if that was doctrinal or his personal opinion or circumstantial or what, and in general I am very confused."

"Well you certainly shouldn't listen to me about it because there are a lot of things I don't know anything about." Sigh. "I'm glad you didn't kill them and I think it was decent of you and I am sure it was very scary and if there's actually some complicated reason it was the wrong decision it's - better to make wrong decisions that don't get lots of innocent people killed, than wrong decisions that do."

"That sounds right, I guess.

"Have you been all right in here?"

"The guards only come in to give me food." And if they tried more she was planning to try to kill them but - that's different than people trying to kill you because they know you were a priest of Asmodeus and reasonably think you still are, right? "Apparently there is to be a trial. I don't know when, or on what charges."

"Is there anything you need read for you?"

"The Archmage Cotonnet sent a secretary. - thank you, though."

"You're welcome."

"I would be interested in hearing about the other trials, if anyone has written up anything about what they were like. Just so I know what to expect. I know how it worked in Pezzack but I do not think that's at all the thing that Queens do."

"If they are public I can try to attend at least one if there are any before yours."

"You shouldn't feel obligated, I'm sure there's more important work to do, but - if you did happen to it would be nice to know just - how long it is, and which parts you're supposed to speak at, and how many people watch, and whether they do the execution straight after or let you talk to a priest first."

Nod.

She appreciates him enormously for not jumping in to reassure her that probably something nice will happen. Even if it's only because he was a priest of Asmodeus for twenty years. 

"Do you want me to stay or go?"

"I appreciate your company but was not really intending to tie up half Iomedae's resources in Westcrown for the next - however long until the trial."

He nods and gets up to go. Though he doubts Archmage Naima's man has stayed around for that entire conversation so he's not sure how he will get back to the temple safely.

Valia returns to pointlessly pacing only now with even more deep confusion.