She's sitting in the common area of her inn, reading a pamphlet and not paying particularly close attention to her surroundings. There are a handful of other people in the common area, but none who could conceivably be mistaken for her.

Yup, Calistrian whore, definitely that one. "Delegate Ferrer?"

She can think of lots of different reasons why two men wearing the Queen's insignia might be approaching her and almost none of them are good. But — almost none isn't literally none, if it somehow turns out that they're doing another headcount and she missed it it would be wrong to overreact—

"That's me, what do you want?"

To a Chelish person, she is not quite managing to hide the fact that she's terrified.

"Her Majesty's Prosecution would like to ask you some questions in connection with Valia Wain's speech and the surrounding events. We'll need you to come with us now."

She should have fled the city as soon as she heard they'd arrested Valia. There's still a chance they care enough about — justice, or pretending they care about justice — that they won't convict a literal priestess of Iomedae who didn't do anything wrong and didn't break any laws. There is absolutely no one who would think twice about convicting a Calistrian priestess, even if she had done nothing save for existing, nor about roughing her up before they did so.

She could still flee. A single channel could hit both of them. And if she gets lucky she might be able to get away — she hasn't used any of her spells yet — it might not work, but it might—

And they're not the only people in this room, and (her eyes dart around the room for a moment) she doesn't have a measuring stick but she thinks some of them would be caught in the blast — it's wrong to kill innocent people — she's not like Delegate Ibarra—

"I understand," she says coldly. 

Then they'll handcuff her, and take her holy symbol, and guide her to the palace's interrogation rooms. It isn't far. 

"Delegate Victòria Ferrer? I'm Meritxell Canillo. I work for the Queen. I trust you made it here safely? It is a priority of Her Majesty that even when investigating very serious crimes her subjects are not mistreated in any way."

—she's confused about why such a friendly, decent person is working for the Queen when the Queen is barely even bothering to pretend her justice system is better than Asmodeus. You'd think someone like that would — well, she's probably Lawful, she probably wouldn't actually try anything, but you'd think she'd at least quit. Maybe it's like the thing the azata said about how some people are just really really bad at morality, and don't notice things even if they're incredibly obvious??? She really thought the azata was wrong about that but you would really think 'it is Evil and for that matter Lawless to arrest innocent people who haven't done anything wrong just because the Queen is mad at them' would be obvious, especially when it's literally a priestess of Iomedae, but she can't think of any other reason why this woman would work for someone who's doing something like that. ...Maybe the Queen is threatening her and she's not brave enough to leave?

"...you should quit your job and go work for someone who isn't Evil," she says. "—Uh, to be clear, no one hurt me or anything" not that she even slightly believes the assurances about mistreatment, but if this woman has somehow managed not to notice that it's Evil to arrest people who haven't done anything wrong she might believe it "just, I don't know how well she was pretending before this, but you must've heard what she did to Valia, right? I, uh, I'm sorry, I don't actually know if there's some other country you could go to that wouldn't do things like that. But even if there isn't you should still quit."

"I can't say I agree with you. The prosecution's office has the authority to drop charges, in any case where we investigate and in fact no one did anything wrong. Right now, we're moving a little slower than usual - because there are hundreds of people who committed murder and arson and rape and looting in the streets the other night - but if Valia is innocent, there's no better place for me to be than here, where I can look into it, and then recommend her release. You think she's innocent because you worked with her on the speech, and worked to make sure it was a legal one?"

"Yes!! She can't read, she had us read her all the decrees we could find that had anything to do with her speech, and we made sure the speech followed them all, and I checked again after I heard she got arrested just in case we'd missed anything but we hadn't, you can read them yourself if you don't believe me, the Queen just arrested her because she's mad at her. She didn't do anything wrong."

"Do you know who took her speech and distributed it on the streets of Westcrown as a pamphlet? That, I think, is the person who really bears responsibility for this whole mess, and that is the person we are currently trying to find."

"No!! We were going to but we didn't, not until we could check if I could get the copying spell from my goddess." Turns out she could have! When they arrested her she'd been planning on making a pamphlet about how it's Evil and Asmodean to execute innocent people who didn't do anything wrong just because they ticked off someone more important than them. Only she was trying to figure out if there was a way to make it legal, and in hindsight she should've just published the draft she had but she didn't know they were going to arrest her — well, no, she didn't have the spell today, but if she'd thought of the pamphlet idea sooner then she could have.

"—Actually, wait, I assumed you already knew this but maybe not, someone made a version about how you should murder all the tieflings, she didn't say anything like that at all, half the speech was about how normal people shouldn't be worried that we were going to, like, go after anyone who ever whipped anyone in school. I guess if the Queen thought she gave that version of the speech and had her arrested for it that just makes her, like, bad at her job, and not Evil." She's not Good either way but there's a difference between just not caring about normal people and actively going out of your way to hurt innocent people for no good reason. "Uh, I think his name was... B-something Vidal-Espasomething? I don't remember exactly but I bet you could look it up, it was in the big amphitheater."

"We did know about that. Certainly he is guilty of many crimes of which Valia is innocent; he told men to tear apart tieflings in the streets, whereas Valia only told them to kill evil nobles. 

It's still a crime to tell people to kill evil nobles. Maybe it shouldn't be, and we're wrong to enforce it."

"She didn't tell people to kill Evil nobles! She said the Evil nobles should go to the Worldwound. I think it's kind of a stupid law but it was important to her that we not break any laws even if they were kind of stupid." You shouldn't make it illegal to tell people to do the right thing without a really good reason.

"...At the time I thought it was a really stupid law not just a kind of stupid law but apparently some people are dumb enough that they somehow misinterpreted her as telling them to go kill innocent people for no reason and I guess if she'd actually said to kill the Evil nobles maybe even more people would've gone and killed innocent people."

"She said that Evil in Cheliax would die by a thousand pitchforks and torches. I do not think it was madness, that the people of Cheliax believed what she had meant to say - what she was barred from telling them directly - was that they should pick up those pitchforks and torches."

Victòria thinks it would've been pretty great if the people of Cheliax had picked up pitchforks and torches and gone after the Evil nobles (rather than, you know, randomly murdering Liushna and Blai and Enric and a bunch of other innocent people for no reason) but she's pretty sure that if she says that then when the Queen reads this woman's report she's just going to use it as an excuse to go after Valia. In any case Valia didn't tell anyone to pick up pitchforks and torches. They spent a fair amount of time workshopping that section, Valia wanted to be sure she wasn't breaking the law. 

"I think if you take the law that broadly it would prevent a lot of things that are, like, obviously fine. Like, if someone was going around raping people all the time, and you told him 'if you keep it up one of them's going to kill you sooner or later,' that's not illegal, even if you turned out to be right." (If you know of someone who's going around raping people you should kill them, or maybe get them executed if you can manage it, but it wouldn't be illegal not to.) "...Also the line was 'pitchforks and stones,' not 'pitchforks and torches,' are you sure you didn't see an edited version of the speech?"

No she's just working very very long hours because of these fucking Galtan radical kids. "I'm so sorry I missed that, I'll double check. It sounds like you were trying very hard to avoid directly saying 'everyone should kill the Evil nobles', and then the people of Westcrown quite reasonably read that and saw it was the message of someone trying very hard to avoid directly saying 'everyone should kill the Evil nobles', and assumed they should kill the Evil nobles - did you hear about the mob on the Sacero?"

Well, obviously they were trying very hard to avoid saying that, what with how it would've been illegal. "I heard about a bunch of mobs but I don't know where specifically most of them were, which one was that?"

"They were unusually - strategic. They went house to house quietly, won the servants over into letting them in, had the strongest men rush upstairs and murder the nobles in their house, and rushed out. No killing innocent people. They got to about nine nobles, I think, before they were disbanded. It sounds - more like what you and Valia were envisioning."

Good for them. (See, azata-whose-name-she-doesn't-know, it's not that hard to not hurt innocent people if you're being careful.) It's a shame the Queen had all the delegates brought back but of course it's not surprising that she cares more about the Evil nobles than about the innocent people killed in the riots. 

"I mean, I'm not upset about it, if that's what you're asking, and I don't think Valia is either. But it's not illegal to secretly think it's good when someone gets what's coming to them." She checked. "Valia didn't tell them to do that, and if the nobles had gone to the Worldwound like Valia said they wouldn't have been able to kill them."

"Were you with that mob, Delegate Ferrer?"

Slight mental flinch at being called by just her surname, not that Victòria's noticed that this bothers her.

"No!!" It sounds like it was awesome, though, too bad she couldn't be part of it. Well, probably it would've been bad to be part of it because then the Queen would've had her executed, but she's going to do that anyway for helping Valia write a speech that didn't even break any laws. If you're going to be executed no matter what you might as well do as many Good illegal things as you can before they catch you.

"Part of a different mob?"

"I didn't riot at all. I spent most of the night talking to an azata." It is clear in her thoughts that she thinks 'I didn't riot at all' is true. She is also vividly picturing standing on a chilly dark water-soaked street and watching a school burn to the ground, feeling a tremendous sense of satisfaction.

"Not even a little arson, as a treat?"