The guards walk Victòria up some stairs and down a hallway. The kind honest woman who works for the Queen talks with the guards, and is then let in. And -

Oh no oh no ohnoohnoohnoohno - 

"You read my mind," she says angrily to the prosecutor. "You read my mind and that's how you learned Victòria's name - but she didn't do anything wrong -"

They were reading her mind? Did this woman not know, or — maybe she just wasn't thinking about what it would mean — CALISTRIA IF YOU CAN HEAR ME PLEASE DON'T LET THEM GET RAIMON PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE—

"Hello, Valia. Victòria wanted to see you. If you'd like to see her, I can let the two of you speak."

"I want you to let her go she didn't do anything this isn't her fault you said if I - you said if I admitted it was all my fault -"

Damn it, the charm wore off at an inconvenient time. So it goes. "Calm down now if you'd like to meet with your friend."

"I'm so sorry, Victòria - I didn't tell them, I wouldn't have told them -"

"It wasn't your fault, you didn't do anything wrong — Valia didn't do anything wrong, I told you that, she didn't even break any laws, why can't you just let her go—"

"Victòria, Valia confessed to us that she committed treason, that she had tried to have the nobles overthrown by their subjects. She told us that."

"But Victòria didn't do anything!"

These sickening children. Maybe Pharasma is less sick of it than Canillo and they'll both escape damnation by it. "This is a favor I am doing you, and I will not be argued with. Talk to each other, or don't. I'll get Victòria in the morning."

That's not what she said earlier, she said there was just some sort of minor issue that she wasn't sure about. Valia wouldn't commit treason and if she did commit treason it would be Good, because the Queen is basically an Asmodean.

"—I did do some things," she says, because she really doesn't want to lie to Valia right now. "Not — that's not what they brought me in for, they brought me in because of the speech, but — they said I wasn't in trouble for the speech — she might've been wrong about that — I — if they were reading my mind that's probably how they found out, I was careful—"

She swallows.

"—I found out about — there's a school here, it's still open, or it was, it didn't get closed with the rest of them — it was awful, they had a priest teaching there who forced himself on a little girl, they beat kids so bad they couldn't walk just for coming last once, my school was run by an Asmodean priest and it wasn't even as bad — and it was still open — they were still teaching from the Asmodean Disciplines, we found a copy inside — and I burned it down. —Carefully. Not like Delegate Ibarra, I made sure no one was inside to get hurt and I put water all around it so it wouldn't spread and I stayed there while it was burning to make sure of it. I don't think they'd have let me go even if I hadn't broken the law, I'm a Calistrian priestess and the Queen is really mad about the speech, but... the woman who was asking questions seemed really reasonable but the Queen isn't, she's not going to care that the school was teaching people to worship Asmodeus, she doesn't care about all the innocent people it was hurting, she just cares that it disrupted the order in the city.

...You said on the Diabolism Committee that the Queen was Good but I think you were wrong. Because she arrested you for no reason even though you hadn't done anything wrong, and because she let a bunch of diabolist nobles and Asmodean priests stay in power and keep hurting people, and because she didn't shut down the school even though it was literally teaching people to worship Asmodeus, and because she still hasn't arrested Delegate Ibarra, Alicia told me he Fireballed a crowd of innocent people during the riots, she arrested you and she hasn't arrested him, and because I talked to an azata and it said — that forcing all the delegates by lots to come here was Evil, not as bad as murder but Evil in the same way, and that the whole idea of the convention seemed like, uh, a plot by Mephistopheles to make all the people at the convention responsible for a bunch of Evil that was actually her fault. I don't agree with everything the azata said but if I already know of a bunch of Evil things she's done and the azata points out more things she did that were Evil I'm not going to decide they were probably secretly good somehow. ...I don't think she's really working with Mephistopheles, if she were she'd just openly say that we were going to keep being Asmodean, but still.

And I don't think you were trying to do treason against her, when we were working on the speech you said you didn't want to break any of the laws even if they were stupid, but if you had been doing treason it would've been Good because she's Evil."

"Okay. Okay. I - so you know what we should do, is write a letter, about the school that was still teaching Asmodeanism and about the fact now you're in trouble too, to Lord Cansellarion, and to Ser Cantes who came here to interview me about what went wrong, and to Feliu. I - I don't know if the Queen is Good or Evil. There are a lot of things about the world I don't know, and - if there are a few things you don't know you can catch people lying to you because the thing they say doesn't make sense against something else you know, but if there are a lot of things you don't know then you'll just get more confused by every lie. And people are lying. I don't think the interrogators have to tell us the truth. 

But I do trust the Church. I really and completely do. They have only ever been kind to me, even when they thought I was making a terrible mistake. When they came to talk about it they just wanted to understand, so it wouldn't happen again, they just wanted to fix things. They weren't angry. They knew what I'd done wrong but they just - wanted things to be better, instead of worse. If the Queen is Evil, they need to know, so they can stop her. It won't save us but that's not the important thing anyway. And if the Queen's not Evil and she just didn't know about a secret Asmodean school, then she won't be mad at you for burning it down, because that's the right thing to do about Asmodean schools, if you were careful and I believe you that you were careful and you're a priest. And if the Queen were Lord Cansellarion, or Feliu, they'd just want to know what would have needed to be different so that you thought it was safe to tell the government about Asmodean schools and not have to handle them yourself.

And my secretary doesn't work for the Queen. She works for Elie Cotonnet and I've been feeling kind of mad at him because - because the convention isn't the thing I'd built up in my imagination and I kind of blamed him for it - but he freed us from Hell, and he freed his own country from Hell and he - he knows how hard that is, he wasn't just reading my mind and pretending to know I don't think - and I think his secretary won't pretend to take letters for us and not really do it. And I specifically asked for her because I didn't want one who worked for the Queen. Just in case. So - all you need to do, is write down everything you know about that makes you worried the Queen's Evil and also worried she's going to kill you, and then we'll tell them, and they can figure it out, all right? Not necessarily in time for us, but - in time for the people of Cheliax. 

But also I don't think that the Queen arresting me means she's Evil. I was expecting the guards to take advantage, and they didn't, and I was expecting them to torture me to get me to confess, and they didn't, just talked to me, and I have a secretary, and they gave me eyeglasses so I could see my confession. And I have a lawyer and she's going to argue that I'm innocent, And I'm not expecting it to work. I'm expecting the judge to hear all that and then go 'well, there was a lot of trouble and you admit you started it, so I'm going to have you killed now', because that's how judges are. But. For me to not die, there would have to be so many different moving things that all weren't Evil. And if I look at six different pieces and five of them look - like the kind of thing you'd do if you were actually trying, at something, maybe a stupid something, not the thing I'd try at, but not an easy thing - then maybe that's what you get if you're trying, but not hard enough. Lots of plans fail and it's not that anyone was trying to sabotage them, it's that they needed a lot of things to go right and they only had half of them. So maybe the Queen's Evil. And maybe she's not and she's trying to build a government that's actually a good idea to tell about things and that protects the innocent and only punishes the guilty but she only has some of the pieces so it keeps doing Evil things like punishing people for not trusting it when it isn't yet trustworthy -

- and if that's what it's like, she wouldn't even be wrong, is the awful thing, because Elie said - the thing he said that I don't think he just got by reading my mind because I don't think I'd have thought it - was that you can't just look and see it failed and know you did it wrong, because lots of the failed rebellions were still worth fighting, because sometimes it takes a hundred failed rebellions to have a successful one and that would be worth it. Maybe you have to have an awful failed court that just goes around killing the bravest and best people in the country while you try to get all six of its different pieces screwed on straight so it stops just doing evil and evil and more evil, for years and years, before you succeed. Maybe that's even worth it. And maybe it's not worth it and it's a terrible decision, but the Queen isn't Evil she's just bad at making decisions and she can't stop making them, it's not like there are any non-decisions when you're a Queen.

Or maybe she's Evil. And so what if she is, Victòria? We'll die. Lots of other people will die. But she's not stronger than Hell, and we overthrew Hell. If she's an Evil Queen then she's a scared Evil Queen, I bet you that. She has the dungeons and the armies and she can swordfight the Tarrasque but she's scared of us. The speech - I didn't want any of this to happen and I wouldn't have said most of it if I'd known what would happen but it's just true, how much power the people hold. All the power of Hell could barely hold Cheliax and all the power of the archmages can also barely hold Cheliax and - in the end, Cheliax will be free. Maybe it already is! I really don't know! But if it isn't, someday it will be."

When Valia says it it almost feels like it could be true, like it could matter that she was doing the right thing, like it could matter that Valia was doing the right thing. It feels like a very stupid thing to hope for but that isn't actually managing to stop her. She really hadn't been expecting that they wouldn't torture Valia.

Cansellarion is — one of the noblemen, she thinks, he was in favor of the taxes thing, and against the proposal about when to go to war, for different reasons than she was but not ones that were obviously stupid or Evil. He is still, of course, a nobleman, but if he's an Iomedaean priest maybe he's somehow managed to be decent despite that. Probably if someone made Valia a noble she wouldn't suddenly decide it was fine for her to do what she wanted to ordinary people.

"I can send them a letter if you think it's a good idea, and if your secretary can bring something to write with. Do you know — are any of them Chelish, I don't know how much I need to explain to them, apparently it's not normal most places to whip people for coming last — we should probably get started on it right away, I don't know how long I have—

...I think you're wrong that it'll matter that I'm a priestess, though. I think it'll matter that you're a priestess, everyone knows Iomedae wouldn't pick someone Evil, and if she cares even a little bit about looking like she's Good — I don't know if she cares, just, if — she can't have you convicted. But I'm a Calistrian, half the people talking to me seem to think that I'm an anarchic whore who wants to murder innocent people even though I'm not a whore and I don't want to hurt innocent people at all. I didn't think they were going to let me go even before they found out about the school." Despite what the mindreader probably expects she really does seem to believe that she's not a whore. Now she's picturing men on the streets of Westcrown (not any specific men, just the abstract concept of men) leering at her.

"It matters that you're a priestess for starting a fire in city limits," says Valia. "In Pezzack if someone started a fire in city limits we'd exile them about it but that's because they can't put out fires. It is much less of a dangerous thing to do if you wouldn't need a bucket brigade if it came to the worst. I agree that probably people will not count it in your favor, and might count it against you, that you are a Calistrian. ...I never presumed you were a whore and that is a despicable thing to presume of a person. The courts might do it but it'd be Evil, if they do." And Valia will get some writing supplies from her secretary. "Feliu and Ser Cantes and Lord Cansellarion are not Chelish. Probably you will have to explain things like how schools are here. And - they will want to understand why you didn't just tell the government about the Asmodean school because in Lastwall I think you can just tell the government about bad things and they'll fix them, and they consider it - betraying the Queen, to break the law trying to fix things when she'd have fixed them if you told her, but I think they will understand if you explain that in Cheliax no one has ever had it go well to tell the government anything."

Delegate Cansellarion,

My name is Victòria and I am a delegate to the Constitutional Convention. I was arrested earlier today for helping Valia write her speech. We didn't break any laws with the speech but while they were questioning me they found out that I burned down an Asmodean school. Valia thought that if I wrote to you to explain why I burned it down you would be able to explain to the Queen that I was doing the right thing, and that the Queen would care. (I think the Queen is probably not going to care because I think the Queen is probably Evil and wouldn't care about executing a Calistrian priestess who annoyed her even if I were completely innocent. Valia thought I should write down why I think the Queen is Evil, too, so that even if she has us both executed you can use it to help figure out if the Queen is Evil.)

I also had a conversation with an azata a few nights ago where it told me some things that might be important. The nice woman asking questions said she would pass them along but Valia said she might have lied about some things and also I forgot to tell her about one of the important ones.

Valia thought that since you didn't grow up in Cheliax I should explain to you what the schools were like so that you would properly understand how bad they were. I started going to school when I was six years old. The school where I lived was taught by an Asmodean priest, and we got a lot of lessons about why we should worship Asmodeus and be Asmodeans, but I've talked to people who grew up other places in Cheliax and they were taught the same things even if their teacher wasn't a priest. For all the subjects, not just Asmodeanism, the person who did the best on an assignment would be assigned to whip the person who did the worst. (I didn't realize that wasn't normal outside of Cheliax until recently but apparently it isn't, the azata was so upset about it.) If you ended up bleeding from a punishment they would wash it with salt water but I don't know if that's Evil or not. Sometimes they would teach you something one year and then the next year they would beat you for saying it. They would also beat you for not showing up even if you had a good reason, like if you were too sick to go or you needed to help take in the harvest.

As far as I can tell the school I burned down was a lot worse than the one I attended. My school never injured anyone so badly that they'd never be able to work, but the one I burned down sometimes hurt people so badly that they couldn't ever walk again. One of the teachers at the school I burned down was an Asmodean priest who forced himself on twelve-year-old girls (also older ones, I don't think he was picky about them being exactly twelve). The school I went to shut down a while ago, I don't remember for sure which month, but the one I burned down was still open and still teaching people to be Asmodeans — they hadn't even bothered to get rid of their copy of the Asmodean Disciplines.

I know there are a lot of ways that burning things down can go wrong but it was very important to me not to hurt any innocent people so I made absolutely sure that I wouldn't. I soaked the whole area around the school in water so that the fire wouldn't spread. (There was also another delegate with me, the one who told me about the school, but I don't want him to get in trouble so I'm not going to say his name even though they've probably read it out of my mind already.) I walked through the whole building to make absolutely sure there wasn't somehow anyone inside. We took all the books that weren't the Asmodean Disciplines out of the school so that we could bring them to the Temple of Nethys. Once we'd started the fire, we both stayed around to make absolutely sure it didn't spread until the rains had completely put it out, and if it had tried to spread we could've stopped it with Create Water. The azata had happened to mention some ways that setting buildings on fire can hurt people by mistake so I made absolutely sure I didn't do any of them. When I was arrested for helping write the speech I didn't try to fight back, even though I could've, even though I thought I'd be tortured, and even though I thought they wouldn't care that I hadn't done anything wrong, because there were other people in the area who hadn't done anything wrong and I didn't want to risk hurting them.

This all happened the same night as the riots but it wasn't related to the riots, and I didn't tell Valia about it or anyone else besides the person I was doing it with. I didn't participate in the riots at all, didn't kill anyone or try to kill anyone, didn't hurt anyone or try to hurt anyone, didn't set any other buildings on fire, and didn't steal anything except the books I took from the school. I think I didn't do any other crimes that day but the Queen is trying to pretend like it was a crime for Valia to give her speech so I guess she might decide some of the other things I've done were illegal, like arguing with the nobles on the Rights Committee.

Valia thought I should explain why we couldn't just tell the Crown that there was still an Evil school hurting people and teaching them to be Asmodeans and have them fix it. The first reason is that it's been a year and a half and they hadn't fixed it yet even though it was literally in the capitol, so I assumed she wouldn't care. The second reason is that it has never in my life been a good idea to tell the government about things like this, even if it's something they're theoretically supposed to be against. If I had told my lord about someone hurting me and he liked them better than me, he would probably just have had me beaten for wasting his time, even if they'd obviously broken the law, and if he liked us both the same he might've still had me beaten if I used the wrong title or he thought I was looking at him the wrong way. Before this convention I'd never met a noble who cared even a little bit about hurting ordinary people if it would help them get what they wanted. I have also heard stories of men in the city watch trying to force themselves on anyone they think they can get away with. It would have been a really bad idea for them to try that with me but I don't know if they'd have done it anyway.

If it would help you believe me even though I'm Chaotic, I'm happy to say anything in this letter under a Truthtelling, or any other truth magic, or probably other kinds of magic but I don't know all the kinds of magic there are so I guess if there was something really horrible I might rather just be executed.

Valia also thought I should list out all the reasons why I thought the Queen was probably Evil and definitely not Good, so that you can figure out if she really is.

1. She had Valia arrested for making her speech even though she didn't do anything wrong and didn't break any laws, just because she's mad about what other people did. We checked over all the laws about speeches while we were writing it because it was really important not to break any of them, and nothing she said was against any of the laws. Having innocent people arrested and executed when they didn't break the law or do anything wrong is really obviously Evil, and she's literally a priestess of Iomedae so I don't think it's just that she's bad at her job. (Valia thinks she's trying her best but I think it's really obvious she shouldn't have arrested Valia, even someone who wasn't Good but was bothering to pretend to be Good would have known not to arrest her.)
2. She let a bunch of diabolist priests and Asmodean nobles stay around in power and keep hurting people. When I heard that the country got taken over I thought she would obviously get rid of them but she didn't even though she's working with some archmages and it would've been really easy for them. (I know she got rid of some of the nobles but she didn't get rid of my local lord even though he did things like having girls whipped for fighting back when his son forced himself on them, which I think is pretty normal for nobles but still the sort of thing that should mean you get kicked out of being a noble, and the Asmodean priest was an Asmodean priest. I think the baron is still the same but I'm not positive because I've never met him. I don't have any idea who the count is or if he's the same as before.)
3. She pardoned Delegate Ibarra for burning down houses full of innocent children and is letting him and people like him just keep on hurting people. Some people have told me they think that it would've been hard to pardon just the people who didn't really do anything that serious or only broke the law in Good ways, but I think for things as obvious as murdering little kids I don't think it's very hard. I also heard that Delegate Ibarra Fireballed crowds of innocent people the night of the riots but I guess maybe he's been arrested and I just haven't heard.
4. It's been a year and a half and she didn't do anything about the school that was still teaching people to worship Asmodeus.
5. I talked to an azata and it said that forcing the delegates by lot to come here was kidnapping and Evil, and compared it to murder. It also said that the whole idea of the convention seemed like a really bad idea and suggested that it might be a Mephistophelean plot to get ordinary people to be responsible for all the Evil the new laws caused. I don't think the azata was right about everything and I don't think she's literally working with Mephistopheles but I already know about a bunch of other Evil things she was doing so I think it was probably right about this one.
6. She invited all the diabolist nobles and people like Delegate Ibarra to come to the convention and help write the laws. When the Diabolism Committee checked we found that about one noble in five was Evil, and that doesn't count anyone who wasn't strong enough to show up or who was using magic to hide it. If you want your new laws to not be Evil you should have them written by people who aren't Evil.
7. She's done lots of things that are basically just siding with the nobility over the ordinary people. I don't think that necessarily makes her Evil but it definitely makes her not Good, if you're Good you should care what happens to normal people.

I also wanted to list out the things the azata told me that might be important for people to know.

1. It's Evil for a husband to force himself on a wife if she doesn't want to lie with him, even if they're married. I know you are a man but I think it would be good for women to know this, I didn't know it.
2. Turning criminals into undead to have them work the mines is very Evil (I already thought it was Evil to turn people into undead but there was a big argument on the Rights Committee about it). We talked about why Delegate Requena i Cortes was probably trying to get us to allow it and the azata thought that it was probably just a "horrible tragedy" and not just him deciding to be super Evil on purpose, and said that he was doing a thing lots of mortals do where they want something and can get it by hurting people so they convince themselves it's okay to hurt people. If they execute me I would appreciate you telling the Rights Committee and especially Delegate Requena i Cortes about this.
3. Asmodeus is not actually dead and Elysium would know if he were (I don't know if you read the pamphlets but some of them have been saying he's dead and I didn't know how to tell for sure).
4. I mentioned this already, but forcing the sortitioned delegates to come here was kidnapping and Evil. I don't think they should have to go home if they want to stay but I think they should be allowed to.

Thank you very much for reading my letter. I'm sorry it's so long, I had a lot of things I wanted to say.

Sincerely,

Victòria Ferrer

(While composing this letter she incidentally thinks about killing her priest, poisoning someone in her lord's family (exact relationship unclear from the memory), and leading her lord's servants against him, but it's not clear just from the memories whether any of these were before or after the amnesty.)

She copies out one for Feliu and one for Cantes. She adds a note for Cantes that if he wants to ask her about what went wrong she is happy to tell him, as long as he does it before they hang her. (She is thinking how none of this would've happened if the Queen had just gotten rid of all the Evil nobles.) She hands them off to the secretary and asks for them to please be delivered as soon as possible.

"I'm done. ...I know that this is a pathetic thing to care about but I'm scared that if they execute either of us I'm never going to see you again. I'm Chaotic, maybe Alicia and I will both end up in Elysium but you definitely won't — not that I'm saying you should, just."

"I want to go to Heaven," says Valia steadily. "But I wouldn't worry about it. Listen - all across Cheliax there are girls like me and girls like you, yes? If they kill me, and they don't kill you, you'll go out and find them. You'll talk with them about why we need to not kill innocent people doing it but we need to make things better - apparently the reason they haven't gotten rid of the Evil nobles is they think that without them monsters would eat lots more people. You'll find out if that's true. You'll find the people who - care if it's true or not, who know there are things worth dying for and just don't know which ones those are. And if you go to Elysium, I am sure there are girls like me in Elysium too. When one is willing to fight one finds it, or awakens it, in everyone they meet.

Blai told me how the trials work. The prosecutor explains what the Queen said you did, and then they ask you if it's true or not, and sometimes they call up investigators who explain things to the court about the situation, and then the judge says that you are guilty and will be put to death, and asks if you want the Final Blade or not.

I just - hopefully they won't give you a trial but if they do, I want you to know what it's like, because I found it sort of comforting."

Probably there are people like Valia in Elysium but they won't be Valia. Probably this is a very stupid thing to be upset about. (There's an undercurrent of fear in her thoughts that doesn't seem to be about Valia at all.) 

"I went to one of the trials, the one for the guy who edited your sermon to talk about murdering all tieflings." (Victòria thinks they're almost all Evil, but you shouldn't kill the innocent ones.) "...It was good to see that justice was being done to him but I am not really finding it very comforting to think about it happening to me. They let him give a speech at the start and he tried to claim he'd been doing the right thing, if they let me have a speech I'll explain about how it was an Asmodean school. The judge won't care but the ordinary people should know what happened. ...Later on he said he was going to read from some speeches by Archmage Cotonnet but they used magic to make him shut up. So probably anything I want to say I'd need to say right at the start."

"That seems likely. I think - even if it won't convince the judge you'd want to say it the way that would convince a just and Good judge, so that it is more apparent the judge isn't one. Instead of just saying 'look, this is evil and we know you'll kill me'. But hopefully they won't do a trial. 

If you are willing to dictate it I want to send a shorter letter with yours explaining who you are and why this is my responsibility."

"...It's not your responsibility, you didn't tell me to burn down a school. I can take dictation if you want but what happened isn't your fault." It's the Queen's, for not closing down the Asmodean schools and hanging whoever was trying to get people to be Asmodeans.

Feliu, (/Lord Cansellarion), (Sir Cantes),

 

I have remembered our conversation closely and am very grateful for it. You were kind to me when there was much cause for anger. When I was interrogated they read my mind to learn the names of the other delegates who I had consulted for advice and help as I planned my speech. They advised me only in how to follow the law, reading me decrees because I could not read, and even if my speech is treason as I have since learned no word they spoke was. However when Victòria was arrested they learned that she had, contrary to the law but not in a way that endangered public safety, burned down a building which was still in use for Asmodean schooling. I know that you will advise that as the Queen is Good it is treason against her, to solve our problems ourselves and not bring them to her. But I hope you will have sympathy for how the people of Cheliax do not understand this, as for all our lives the crown has been only a symbol of torment and cruelty and the enemy of all that is noble and good in the world. And I hope you will understand how I feel responsibility for this, as the crown would never have learned of it had they not learned her name from my mind, had I not sought her counsel on how to follow the law for my speech. I have known Victòria to be kind, brave, and concerned mostly with protecting the innocent. It would trouble me greatly for my having asked her advice to have destroyed her life. She has included far more details.

She manages not to cry when Valia starts talking about her positive qualities but it takes active effort.

"Can your secretary sign to say that you dictated it? So they don't think I was trying to forge a letter from you."

"Oh, I guess so." She goes over to ask her. 


The secretary can sign for that, sure.

"Thank you very much, ma'am. If — I don't know how long it takes to deliver these, but — if you could send them as soon as possible I'd really appreciate it."