They don't explain what they're taking Valia to, when they come to take her, and she considers resisting, but she thinks it's not allowed and while she'll accept doing something illegal when they try to rape her she doesn't want to put herself in the position of doing something illegal when they've just decided to move her to a different cell or something. She goes with them. Down another flight of stairs, to another windowless room, and there's a woman there, a cold and contemptuous important woman who is nonetheless a relief to see. The guards chain her to her chair and then leave. 

"Valia Wain?"

She nods. Would say something, actually, but she suddenly can't find her voice. 

Well, she's been hoping to stop having to be around people who keep kindly telling her she's not going to die and she's pretty sure she's gotten her wish now.

"I'm Her Majesty's Prosecutor Merixtell Canillo. You are charged with two hundred forty one wrongful deaths - that number almost certain to increase as search efforts continue - with murder, with incitement to murder, with incitement to treason, and with treason, and with conspiring with your allies and confederates to achieve all of those same. They will all be similarly charged." They may or may not actually charge all of those, and they don't actually know yet if Wain conspired with anyone; there's no rule she has to say things that are true. 

Oh no oh no oh no oh no of course they knew about Alicia and -

- no, it's possible they didn't know, it's possible they're just trying to get her to say something - 

It would be convenient right now if the girl was a bit more of an idiot, but everyone's an idiot when they've gone long enough without sleep. Alicia, that's something to start with, and more where it came from probably. "You were permitted to meet with your lawyer. Did she explain the charges to you?"

"When I met with my lawyer no one had told us yet of any charges, ma'am."

"She'll be informed of them in writing. Have your friends retained the same attorney, or a different one? The recommendation in criminal conspiracy cases is that you each secure your own attorney; for your attorney will attempt to establish your innocence perhaps at Miss Alicia's expense, and hers to establish her innocence at yours."

"I don't - I didn't ask my lawyer to -" did Lluisa tell the prosecutors about Alicia and Victoria? She was an idiot, to assume that Lluisa wouldn't do that because she had a spell for it, what does a spell mean -

"We will get this over with more quickly if you are competent to speak in complete sentences, Miss Wain. If you had been inclined to incoherent stuttering all along, two hundred forty dead men would live; but you were by all accounts a very good speaker, and I'm sure you're capable of it now. You did not ask your lawyer to craft a defense at the expense of your associates, Alicia and Victoria, with whom you are charged with conspiring in treason, incitement, etcetera."

"I did not ask that of my lawyer."

"If you wanted to protect them, the thing you should have asked of your lawyer is to negotiate with the prosecution to confess your full responsibility for all of your crimes, and absolve them of any part in them. Yours, Wain, is the name that was on every tongue as they marched through the city murdering, looting and rebelling against the Queen; we've charged conspiracy because you did have co-conspirators, but it's not the element of this situation that's most important to us. If you accept full responsibility for this, perhaps the charges against them can be dropped."

Valia is not an idiot and can tell when she is being obviously manipulated. That awareness does not create any obvious escape route from the manipulation.  If it's a real offer she'll take it; if it's a lie then she of course shouldn't; it's probably a lie, but how probably?

"I will bear that in mind, ma'am."

"Was it Victoria's idea, to write your speech down and distribute it within the convention hall to other delegates?"

"No."

"Alicia's?"

"No."

"Yours, then."

When you're confused you should try to think, not just - reflexively do the thing in front of you, especially not when the enemy put it there. It probably does not help Alicia or Victoria to confess to any - crimes? Was making copies of her speech for the floor a crime? Other delegates did it all the time! It might help them to make a deal in which she confesses, but only if the deal is actually in ink. And she trusts the person who read it to her. Maybe Blai - no, Blai was recently an Asmodean. Maybe Feliu.

She doesn't answer.

"Valia. You are a subject of a Lawful Good Queen. You betrayed her, spit in her face, killed her people by the hundreds, and in response She has protected you, permitted you to write letters and hire lawyers and seek the counsel of anyone you'd seek it from. Do you have complaints about your treatment, in Her custody?"

"No, ma'am."

"Then you owe the Queen the truth. It is Our solemn duty to make this city safe, and bring to justice its murderers, and more than that to understand how this came to pass, that no one need fear it again. Did you intend for hundreds of people to die?"

"No!"

"Then tell me what you did intend."

"I don't - it's hard to think about, right, because - so much happened - but I know I didn't intend the riots, because Feliu said to me afterwards, if the speech is published there'll be riots in Westcrown, and I was very surprised that he thought so. And I didn't intend treason against the Queen because the Duchess of Chelam said, during the debate over the speech, that one ought to rebel against Asmodeus and not against our Lawful Good queen who freed us from Asmodeus, and I didn't even - understand what she was getting at - because in my mind I wasn't calling for rebellion against the Queen. I - so people were scared of the committee on excising diabolism, right. One of the delegates on it had told us she was scared that we were going to just end up - condemning everyone in the whole country as not good enough. And I talked to the Inquisitor Shawil, and he said that we needed to - focus on a few important evils. 

So the point of the speech was to let everybody know that the excising diabolism committee wasn't about making them scared. It's not - good for people to be scared. That we were focused on people who were - still in positions of power and Evil and doing awful things, that no one else had anything to fear from us. And - to put the evil nobles on notice, I guess. That even if they were powerful and the people of Cheliax were weak, that it wouldn't always be that way."