"That some day the people of Cheliax would rise up against them and kill them, if they didn't repent and quit their titles and flee to the Worldwound. I read the speech. It's very well composed."

"Yes. But if anyone had asked me, 'should we kill them right now' I'd have said no, because - well firstly because you can't very well tell people to repent and then kill them before they've even had the chance to, and because - I imagined their own people rising up against them? Because those are the people who know what they did. Every person in Pezzack can tell you the crimes of the nobles of Pezzack."

She looks animated, by that. Sincere. Ready to give a sermon. "The old nobility of Pezzack? Under House Thrune?"

"Yes. The thing is, that when a nobleman orders one of his servants beaten slowly to death because he spilled a glass of wine, he hardly remembers it. It would never occur to him that anyone else would remember it either; the people are nothing, to him, and so he imagines we are also nothing to each other. But that's not true. That servant had a mother, and one of the other servants knows her, and slips out that evening to tell her what happened so she doesn't just have to wonder why her son never comes home; and that servant had brothers, and sisters, and a lover, and a baby named four months later after him, and they remember. They remember without doing anything, for a long time, because they know it's hopeless, but ten years later, when the moment comes, they remember. All across Cheliax, people remember, and the Queen's amnesty means nothing to them because of course what was done to them was never a crime in the first place."

"And someday the people will rise up and get vengeance for all of the crimes they remember but no one else does."

"Yes. And - it would be better if we could avoid that. It would be better if they would repent and go to the Worldwound and escape damnation. I have been told that some of them are trying to do the right thing now, with the support of the Church, and I think it is a great evil, to speak in condemnation of a man when he has changed his ways. But the ones who haven't changed their ways - and they haven't all changed their ways, come on, have you ever met a noble? - I do think that some day the people will rise up against them."

"And you will be with them?"

.....not her too, of all people. "I'll be dead. Obviously."

"Do you intend at trial to admit your guilt, then?"

"You should present my lawyer with that deal you mentioned, if it's real. But - my lawyer said" and maybe I was a naive idiot to believe her "that at trial she would defend the Law, not me, and Her Majesty, because - Her Majesty's decrees have no meaning, if we cannot refer to them to determine guilt and innocence. And that I am innocent, by Her Majesty's decrees."

"So you wish to be found innocent, but only if you truly are. That is commendable. I cannot say that I share your lawyer's reading of Her Majesty's decrees. There was a problem in the city, you know, with people issuing denunciations of others, hoping that someone would follow up. It is different, I think, than the matter you spoke of in Pezzack. One thing for a grieving relative to remember a grievance and eventually take his own revenge for it; another entirely, for him to whisper it out onto the air hoping that some other man more inclined to murder takes it up, without checking if it's a true grievance or a false one. One thing for you to go burn a noble's manor to the ground; another for you to call on others to do it. And it sounds like you did intend that the evil nobles of Cheliax be killed."

"I'm not sure. I'm sure that sounds - dishonest - but it's - hard to remember not knowing the things I know now - I know now that it would lead to lots of deaths if the people of Menador, the families of their victims, rose up against them, because the archmages say that there is nothing else that can protect the people against the monsters and things coming out of Nidal. And they're trying to repent, and the church is working with them, and you can't betray people who are trying to work with you."

"What if there is some noble who has killed servants for careless mistakes, and who is not trying to repent, and who is not necessary to keep the people safe from monsters?"

"Is it treason against a Lawful Good queen to hope an evil man like that is gone, and never again has the power to hurt anyone? I know I should - try reporting him to the Queen first in case she just didn't know about it."

Is it treason to call for armed rebellion against the rightful lord of your lands if he killed a servant once and isn't sorry? Yes! It is treason! Very nearly the definition of it! "So you would petition Her Majesty for redress first, and go with pitchforks and torches and kill the man only if Her Majesty declined to act?"

"Yes. I think one of the most important errors was - I assumed that Her Majesty didn't have the power to do something about all the evil nobles. I couldn't think of a Lawful Good reason for them to all be in place, so I assumed that it wasn't her will at all, and that her will would not be subverted in fixing it - just like, you know, if you run across bandits on the roads, you don't think 'well, maybe Her Majesty likes these bandits and that's why they're here', you just figure that word hasn't gotten out yet and you should either kill them yourself or get word out, depending."

"If you had understood that Her Majesty had the power to replace the nobles, then you would have understood your demand for their replacement to be rebellion against Her Majesty."

"Well if I'd understood she had the power to replace the nobles I'd have just asked her to do that!"

This interrogation is going well, in that the girl is definitely a traitor and is happy to discuss the precise boundaries of her treasonous convictions, but is not something they want to do in public in front of the riotous people of Westcrown. Luckily Canillo's job is just to get as much as she can; other people will figure out how to use it to hang her. "What about Ibarra? You denounced him in your speech, and of course people went to try to kill him, but he wasn't an evil noble."

"I didn't expect them to try that." If there's a powerful wizard who's a Norgorber cultist going around, getting together a posse to go after him is very reasonable, but she shouldn't say it.

It doesn't actually matter if she says it or not. "What did you intend, when you denounced him to a crowd as a Norgorber cultist?"

"That if he do Norgorber cultist sorts of things at the convention the other delegates would be wise to him and on the lookout for it."

"But surely it had occurred to you that the men might get together a posse and go after him, as that's what any reasonable men would do if they learned there was a Norgorber cultist in their midst."

"The Archduke wouldn't even agree that it was good reason to not have him on our committee, so I figured that people just didn't actually think it was very bad to be a Norgorber cultist."

"I don't really think you're that foolish. I think you're lying to me and yourself to try to evade justice. You knew full well that any reasonable person would round up his friends and try to be rid of a Norgorber cultist who'd burned children to death in their homes. You praised the courage of the people of Cheliax, and that's the courage you meant."