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?"

"No." Yes, but not as part of a mob, she didn't burn down anyone's house, not even the people who deserved it. She was careful, she wasn't going to hurt anyone, it's nothing like the people who burned down innocent people's houses for fun.

She's picturing — soaking the area around it in water, walking through the school, making absolutely sure that no one had somehow ended up inside. The way her chest twisted up hearing stories about everything that happened there (a flash of something else, something upsetting involving a faceless twelve-year-old girl, that immediately gets shoved down), everything that was apparently still happening there. (It's mostly a visual memory; it comes with a face, clear enough in the darkness that it's probably being pulled from earlier memories, but not a name.) Finding the Asmodean Disciplines, which they still had for some reason. Setting the fucking Disciplines on fire. The confidence that comes with doing something you know is uncontrovertibly right. Flames, hot and bright and beautiful. Sticking around to watch it burn, just to be absolutely sure that the fire didn't spread.

There's enough visual detail to it that if you happen to have spent some time in the area since the riots it's not hard to figure out which school it was.

Well, there you go, you can hang people for that. Not helpful for the prosecution of Valia, except in that they can spin it as 'Valia's associate who helped write the speech was out burning down the city', but a crime. 

"I'm glad. It will be helpful to Valia that her friends cooperated with the police and didn't participate in the riots or do any murder or arson. It helps avoid the appearance that - you all planned this so you could cover for the crimes you wanted to commit, that night."

There's something — confusing — about how she says that, but Victòria can't quite put her finger on what. She was watching for witnesses, there shouldn't be anyone who can report her unless Raimon sells her out, and he wouldn't. Unless they put her under a Truthtelling but even then it depends on what they ask her, and they haven't yet, and if it really comes down to it this woman is reasonable and trustworthy enough that she might be willing to leave it out in her report to the Queen. ...Unless they want her to testify in court, but there's true things she can say in court, it feels a little like diabolist trickery even though it's not but she could say she didn't riot, didn't hurt anyone, didn't kill or loot or rape or burn anyone's house down, she just can't say she didn't do anything illegal. The arson wasn't even related to the speech! 

(—Not that it matters. Even if she could testify under a Truthtelling that she'd never committed a crime in her life, they'd just execute her either way. Maybe that's what felt confusing, the idea that anything was going to matter to Valia's trial, but — it could be true, it's probably not but this woman seems really convinced that they're not going to just convict her if she's really innocent, she just has too much faith that the Queen will actually care.)

"We didn't plan it at all." (True.) "We didn't know there were going to be riots. If we'd known people were going to go out and murder innocent people because of it we'd've said something else."

"I'm glad. What we're going to do is write up a statement exonerating you of everything, and then you'll have the opportunity to read it under a truth spell, and then having demonstrated your innocence you'll be released. All right?"

That depends a lot on what's in the statement but if she says so it's as good as a confession, and she doesn't want to count on this nice-but-probably-Lawful woman agreeing not to tell the Queen.

"All right, that's fine with me. ...Why haven't you let Valia go yet?" Maybe she was part of the mob that went after the nobles, but if so this woman could've just told her, it still would've been wrong to arrest her but not Asmodean.

She's already working on drafting the statement.

I assisted Valia Wain in writing her speech, but we believed at the time and believe now that all of the contents of the speech were legal speech permitted by the Queen's decrees. We did not anticipate the riots. We did not want innocent people to die. Our intent was to write a speech that obeyed all relevant laws and that did not result in the deaths of innocent people.

I did not assist in copying or distributing the speech, and do not know who copied or distributed the speech.

On the evening of the 3rd of Sarenith, I did not commit murder, theft, arson, or other crimes. I do not believe Valia to have committed murder, theft, arson or other crimes. 

"Does this look all right? I think that unfortunately Valia wasn't willing or able to sign a statement exonerating her completely. I don't know what the hold-up was."

She's going to die.

She already knew she was going to die. It's pathetic and contemptable to be — scared? upset? angry? — just because she believed for ten seconds that she wasn't going to die. The Queen doesn't care how reasonable and justified your crimes are, she doesn't care if you hurt anyone, she doesn't care if you did anything wrong. If you hurt the Queen's precious stability then you're as bad as someone who murdered a house full of innocent people, and never mind if the thing that was stable was a school still teaching people with the Disciplines.

Unless you're Delegate Ibarra, in which case burning down houses full of innocent children is fine. Unless you're a diabolist noble, in which case you can murder your servants and rape their daughters and anyone who says you should die for it is a traitor. The azata thought the convention sounded like a Mephistophelean plot — which doesn't make sense, there's no need to play pretend about fighting Asmodeus if they're on his side, but it's true in the way that matters, which is that she'd gladly sacrifice every ordinary person in Cheliax to avoid minorly inconveniencing someone important. A category which includes diabolist nobles and powerful murderous wizards but not priestesses of Iomedae, and certainly not anyone like Victòria.

She knew that already, so it really shouldn't be upsetting.

...She should have run. She knew they were probably going to kill her. She doesn't know for sure anyone innocent would have been in the range of her channel. And even if she hadn't made it out of the city she could've gotten someone to warn Raimon — her hand darts to the place where she normally keeps her holy symbol — Calistria, if you can hear me, please help Raimon get away — I don't know if this is the sort of thing you can help with but please— 

And it's not going to matter because even if she were completely innocent it wouldn't matter but she has to try — it feels dirty and Asmodean, even though it's completely different, even though she's not doing anything wrong—

"I — set fire to a copy of the Asmodean Disciplines that I don't own. And also a pair of whips that I don't own. I have Create Water, it wasn't going to burn anything I didn't want it to, but I don't think I can read this as written. Can we edit it to — 'On the evening of the 3rd of Sarenith, I did not commit murder, did not riot, and did not burn down any houses or businesses'?

—Valia wasn't involved. If the Queen wants to hang me for burning the Disciplines it's not like I can stop her but Valia had nothing to do with it."

(it's not going to work, it's not going to work, Hell is the destruction of hope so if Hell's recaptured you can't let yourself start to hope—)

"If you can say that you only burned a copy of the Asmodean disciplines and two whips and not anything else and didn't commit or attempt murder or other acts of violence that'd probably be good enough."

"I can say that." She isn't sure she can say it but she isn't sure she can't. She wasn't sending Sparks at the school. And she didn't do any murder or violence and didn't try to, that part is easy.

"I don't think you're being straightforward with me, Victòria. What actually happened? Where did you find a copy of the Asmodean Disciplines and two whips? Did anything else burn?"

She's picturing the inside of the school again. "I — I know you're reasonable but the Queen isn't, and you'd have to tell her — I didn't hurt anyone—"

"I don't have to tell the Queen everything. I'm not even allowed to tell the Queen everything, actually, she's far too busy for that. Just the important stuff. I need to know what happened so I can know if the city is safe from you. But if the city's safe - that's the important thing. I don't have to tell the Queen about every crime anyone has ever committed. But I can't decide if it's a big deal or not if you won't even tell me what actually happened."

"I — I didn't hurt anyone—" (we didn't hurt anyone, there's that boy again) "—I was careful—" (and now she's remembering how she felt when Delegate Ibarra admitted to being a mass murderer who went after children, every way she thought about hurting him none of which would even slightly work against a fifth-circle wizard who Fireballed a crowd of innocent people—)

"—there's a school, or, was a school, the one back home had closed down but this one was still running, it was still using the Disciplines, and it was — the one back home was run by a priest and this one was worse — one of the teachers raped a twelve-year-old girl and no one cared—" (she's thinking about being thirteen years old, beaten within an inch of her life for trying to stop some kind of nobleman, the details aren't clear in her thoughts from raping her, and everyone just pretended like it was fine, as if they didn't all know exactly what had happened — and thirteen is practically an adult but a twelve-year-old is a child—)

"—anyways. I was careful, I checked to make absolutely sure there wasn't anyone inside, I took all the other books that weren't the Disciplines so I could bring them to the temple of Nethys—" (actually, she ended up not even being strong enough to drag them once they were all full, Raimon had to bring them both, she felt a little bad) "—I made sure all the area around it was covered in water so the fire didn't spread, I stuck around afterwards just to be sure it wouldn't, until the rains had totally put it out. And, yes, I burned it down. But I didn't burn down anything else, and I didn't try to, and I wouldn't burn down someone's house even if they were an Asmodean because there might be someone innocent inside. And also because it would be harder to make absolutely sure it didn't spread."

She swallows. "—It really didn't have anything to do with the riots, it was just coincidence that it happened the same night. And I didn't tell Valia."

"Thank you. Telling me the truth was the right thing to do. I told Valia too - it might seem like it's always better to lie but it's not. In the end there's still the truth, and in the court that really matters we all still answer for it. People can't help you if they don't know what they're helping with. I'm glad you were careful. It still seems like a risky thing to do, honestly, but - taking steps to make it less risky is a lot better than not taking those steps. 

Are you all right?"

"...Not really. I keep — I know you trust the Queen a lot but I'm scared she's just going to execute Valia anyway, even though she didn't do anything wrong—" And she's scared they're going to execute her, and Alicia and Raimon and while she's at it maybe she'll decide to execute Liushna too for being a bird-person, it doesn't make any less sense than arresting Valia—

"- you know what, we need to finish this interview first - which means you signing what you just said, that you meant it and it's the whole truth - and then, if you'd like, I can arrange for you to see Valia. Just so you know she hasn't been hurt and Her Majesty's treating her fairly."

It hadn't occurred to her that that might even theoretically be an option and now that she knows it is she wants it very, very badly. It wouldn't even help with the thing where the Queen is probably going to execute Valia, even if she hasn't been tortured that doesn't mean she's going to be okay, but — she'd still get to see Valia —

"I can sign to what I said." She hasn't told them about Raimon but she doesn't have an issue with signing that what she said was the whole truth when it wasn't. No one saw them, he didn't help to write their speech, he'll be fine as long as she doesn't give him up.

"I've been writing it out for you to sign. But if I'm going to recommend to the department that we not worry about it or tell the Queen about it it has to be the whole truth, understand? Both because someone might ask you to repeat it under a truth spell and because my job is to have the whole picture when I decide if someone's a danger to innocent people or not. So even if it seems like a small thing, like that, I don't know, there was a cat sleeping in the school and maybe the cat burned too - I can't say 'I decided this is fine and we're not going to pursue it', and then have you not pass a truth spell for it and have to go back and figure out what's actually true."

"...I was working with another delegate to do it but if I tell you which one I'm worried the Queen will kill him." Raimon Pages, one of the other Calistrians. If they don't know what he looks like she's also conveniently visualizing him. "Uh, and I also spent a lot of that evening talking to an azata, I can tell you about the azata if there's things you need to know about it. And Victòria isn't the name I was born with. I can't think of anything else that's relevant but I might've forgotten something. —are you married? The azata told me something that might be important if you are — that's not relevant to the school thing, just, it seems like it would be good for you to know." And she might never get the chance to tell anyone. Probably she should be telling this woman everything the azata told her that's important. Maybe she can tell the rights committee not to turn people into skeletons.

"I'm not married but I am happy to take notes on things that are generally important to know. Thank you for telling me about the other delegate. I won't ask his name."

Oh, thank the gods, Raimon is going to be okay.

"So the thing I was thinking of was, apparently it's Evil for a husband to force himself on a wife, even though they're married. And it said that it's really Evil to turn people into skeletons to work the mines, but that probably the guy who suggested it — Delegate Requena i Cortes — was probably just doing it for reasons that were a horrible tragedy, not because he was going out of his way to be Evil, and that — it was a normal thing for mortals to really want something that they can only get by hurting people and then convince themself it's not Evil to hurt them. I don't know if it's right about how Evil he is but if you could tell him and also the rest of the Rights Committee about that I'd really appreciate it. And it said Asmodeus isn't dead and that Elysium would know if he was — lots of the pamphlets have been saying he was dead. We talked about lots of other things but — those are the main ones I can think of that are important to know, I might be forgetting some, I didn't have my notes from that conversation with me when I got arrested." It said a lot of confusing and upsetting things about hurting Evil people that she really doesn't want to repeat and probably can't explain anyways, but she's mostly trying not to think about that. It shows up in her thoughts as a confused tangle of emotions more than anything coherent. 

"—We did also talk about buildings burning down, I forgot to say that earlier. Not — I didn't — it was the one that brought it up, when it was explaining how sometimes you can hurt innocent people by accident, and I kept what it said in mind when I was burning down the school so I could make sure I didn't hurt anyone."

"Huh. Thank you, that's all good to know. I will pass it along to the committee if you don't get the chance to do so yourself." And will she sign the confession if it's not labelled CONFESSION in bold block letters at the top, and swear that it's the whole truth aside from the name of the other involved party she's withholding for his safety?

Assuming it doesn't have anything obviously objectionable, and includes some disclaimers about how it was totally unrelated to anything Valia did and Valia had no idea it was happening, she's happy to sign.

"Can I see Valia now?"

"Yes, of course. Let's head over there." And then someone will have to keep up the mindreading and also just eavesdropping, see if the girls betray any more to each other, but she can assign that to a junior person and get some sleep.

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."

Valia isn't sure what to do with themselves, now, after that. "...so other than being arrested by the new Queen of uncertain Evilness how have you been."

Oh, good, she was completely failing to come up with things to say for her last chance to ever talk to Valia.

"...not great, honestly. I was so worried about you — when I couldn't find you I thought you were dead — the Judiciary Committee tried to have an emergency meeting but we barely got anything done, your lawyer and I kept getting into arguments..."

"I like her. Don't be angry at her, if they hang me, it'll be because the law had nothing to do with it. She was - if it takes six working pieces to have a Good justice system she was definitely one of them."

"I won't be, I promise. We weren't mostly arguing about that, it was — I kept trying to suggest ways to make the justice system work better, and she kept getting annoyed that it wasn't following ... some sort of lawyer rule about how constitutions are supposed to be ... only she didn't explain why very well, I think she thought I was stupid because I haven't had lawyer training. And she kept accusing me of being part of the riots even though I wasn't." To be totally fair to the diabolist lawyer she did also accuse her of arson, which was technically true.

"She mentioned to me that she came to harm in the riots so I think she is - probably scared like the rest of us, but being lawyerly about how she lets it on. I think everyone's scared, really.

I was planning to prepare - something to say, if the trial is real and I'm found innocent, but it's very hard to focus on that when I can't believe it might really happen."

Victòria mostly doesn't believe it'll happen either. "Do you want help writing it?"

"I should say yes but I notice that I don't -

- I'm scared that it will hurt more to be sentenced to death if I spent any time thinking or planning as if -"

Hug. Hug hug hug.

"I think — I think it probably will hurt more. And — I don't want that — but you're the bravest person I know, you stood up to the Asmodeans in Pezzack, I think — I know — you're brave enough to do it anyway.

...you don't have to think like you might be found innocent. You could think about it like — Pezzack had a theater, right, that was what set things off — you could think about it like, you're writing a script for a play, and in the play someone like you is found innocent — because anything can happen in a play—"

Hug. That's helpful, which isn't surprising, because Victòria is good and kind.

"Right. Okay. I want to say - that the speech was wrong, that it was a mistake. That I am innocent, under the law, and to a just Queen that matters, but that no one should imagine that the result of the trial means that I did nothing wrong, or that they would be wise to do what I did."

But Valia didn't do anything wrong, the problem is that Evildoers decided to just go out and kill innocent people — maybe it can still be a mistake even if it's not her fault, if they'd know what was going to happen they'd have done something different —

"I think — one thing I was talking about with the azata was, sometimes even when you're trying to do the right thing, sometimes you still end up hurting innocent people by mistake. And if you're found innocent, they're saying — that that's what happened, that you weren't trying to hurt anyone innocent, but innocent people still got hurt. But if you knew that innocent people were going to get killed you'd never have made the speech, and now that we've seen what happened other people shouldn't try and copy you. You're better at speeches than me but I'd phrase it like—"

She is happy to provide wording suggestions for as long as Valia wants.

Yeah. Just like last time except last time lurched everything into sickening disaster and this time's just a play, a very unrealistic play that establishes how good its Queen is by having a trial in which someone is innocent.

"They wrote a bunch more letters confessing to the arson, but not to anything new. Maybe some flashes of other past crimes but - the arson's plenty, and we're busy -" 

          "Thank you. Yes, I don't need anything else. It's gotten more complicated to put people to death but not that much more complicated. - one final thing."

"Yes?"

           "I don't want Wain brought out for trial a disheveled wreck. Her Majesty's very proud of treating all the prisoners like one's cousin who's in the guest room until he sobers up. And I don't want the crowd to pity her, and I don't want them imagining what happened to her. They can have their fun with the Calistrian whore but this one's sensitive. Get her cleaned up, get her clean clothes, heal her if there's anything to heal."

"The Calistrian one actually isn't a whore, as far as I can tell."

        "More's the pity. Being a whore isn't a hanging offense and being an arsonist is."