She's technically working here under a different name and face, Galtan wizard assistant of the Queen's Liset, because of course she couldn't be seen around here as herself and she needed frequent access to the Queen. The pamphlets have not particularly slowed.

An Unseen Servant opens the door for Ione. Lilia is halfway through a scry; she's good enough at those to turn in her seat and wave Ione in.

"My recommendation to the Queen was that you avoid this plane until the convention is over." In case of Geb. Ione's the only one of them who possibly can; everyone else has gobbled up their titles and teleport routes and obligations here in Westcrown.

"You're not wrong." She pulls up a seat across from Lilia. "Shawil's been called away on Important Axis Business, so I'm tagging in. I've heard that the convention's on pause due to riots, but I don't know much more than that. What's going on?"

"On the second day of the convention Valia Wain, the passionate young Select of Iomedae from Pezzack, having been greatly disheartened by the Asmodean holdover nobles and Alexandre Ibarra who she'd actually like if she'd learned things about him in a different order and the priest of Erecura, gave a speech saying that the work is not done and that in cowardice we condemn our children to it and that Evil will die by pitchforks and stones and that her recommendation to the Evil nobles is that they run far away and not come back. This was dutifully spread throughout the city as the will of Iomedae, and then further mutated by revolutionary enthusiasm to introduce innovative additions such as 'all who die murdering diabolists in the streets go to Heaven!'.

Obviously they started the rain up as quickly as feasible, and got Cansellarion's men in to patrol the city the next morning, but the mobs managed to do an impressive amount of damage in the window of time that they had. About a dozen delegates died, and many more lost family members and staff. Naima's raising them but she's worried this will delay her paying enormous sums of money to Asmodeus." Lilia was against hurrying to change out the money supply. She thought they could come up with a twenty year plan for it and it'd be fine.

(Lilia is not under the impression Asmodeus rules Hell. Some things you don't speak, even in secure rooms in the palace, even to an ally.)

"Wain has been arrested for incitement, her trial is tomorrow. They're exploring charges against her allies in the convention, too. Other instigators are being executed at approximately the pace the system can bear. The Convention, when it paused, had been on the brink of banning slavery, so people started trying to ship their slaves out, so Her Majesty closed the ports, which got people even more panicked, especially as it coincided with more blessed pamphlets urging merchants and investors to flee the city. If you are in the mood to make a lot of money Teleports are going for extortionate prices in the Miratanza.

We haven't caught everyone who led mobs or authored pamphlets or took the chance to do real violence. Riudare's been helping me when he has spells free at night, and we still haven't. Someone went and did a well-executed and well-timed string of murders of Mammonite cultists and has dodged by this point twenty scries to find him. Everyone hates each other, and is frightened of each other, and is desperately frightened of the Crown. I spend my evenings identifying pamphleteers responsible for more and more creative rephrasings of 'to battle, people of Westcrown'. There's flooding because they don't feel safe yet letting the rains up at night. We believe five delegates have fled the city and will have to be kidnapped back when we're ready to demand their presence again."

Lilia is not a very expressive person but she's angry. It is an angry briefing.

"Wow that's a mess." Unfortunately, most of it is not the kind of mess improved by terrifying shadowy murdercats, which is really the kind of problem she's most suited to solving. 

"For a start, I can help with the scries." It seems hypocritical to take issue with whoever's killing Mammonite cultists. She seems to recall them all feeling just fine about their well-executed and well-timed string of murders of infernal cultists, back in Isarn. Not to mention how she was mopping up cultists of Belial just before the convention! Whatever. She rummages in her bag for the crystal ball.

"How long til the convention starts up again?" She'll probably be the one on kidnapping duty when the time comes. Joy.

"Day after tomorrow." She can share a memory extracted from a corpse of who they're after, which is all they've got. Twenty failed scries on that little might just be 'reasonably powerful person who was in disguise'. "We want to get Wain's trial done and know what kind of horrible consequences of every possible verdict we'll be dealing with - I told her to just rig it but she refused - and I think people are working on - reflecting on how to get the convention restarted on a better foot."

"What is even the point of being queen if there's a situation where your subjects aren't sure what you want done about something, and you know this, and you care about the outcome, and you can't just tell them what you want them to do."

She focuses on the memory and peers into the crystal ball. It really isn't much to go on.

"That's what I said. No matter what happens, people will assume it's the verdict she ordered. No one will ever believe otherwise. So why not just actually decide what outcome would be good, and do that?"

It's that her mother has friends. That's Lilia's primary diagnosis. Her mother has friends, and her mother likes having friends, and everything else including the fate of everyone in Cheliax is less important to her mother than being in philosophical accord with her friends. Lilia's not her friend, and Ione's not her friend. They are useful tools. But they're not archmages who read her mind and still trusted her, so their advice can never offer the satisfaction of friendship.

"Until the convention actually establishes a new set of laws, the only law there is is the Queen's will. I don't understand why she's so insistent on pretending otherwise, it's just going to confuse people."

Ione has spent the last year and a half trying to figure out whether she's Alfirin's friend. Their interactions have been - awkward, since Nex broke the charm. It's hard to shift to being an equal after a lifetime of subservience.

Part of the problem is: Naima and Elie might trust her, but Ione can't. Or maybe - she can, and the things she trusts her to do are things Ione isn't sure she can accept.

"What better foot are they hoping they'll manage shift to in two days?"

"Well, for one thing, they got halfway through abolishing slavery and should probably still force through a vote on it. Beyond that -

I think they're not guessing the mood of the delegates right. If Valia doesn't hang that'll be all they can think about and if she does they'll want to go after everyone who ever spoke to her next. Every person I've mindread regards the freedom of the pen as a despicably evil intervention of the Archmage for the destruction of the city, I don't disagree, and the question is just whether they'll vote to ban all publishing or do something slightly more moderate than that. I have heard discussion of proposals to reintroduce torture before executions, to march the whole city through a Zone of Truth and hang ten thousand of them, to place everyone under magically enforced oaths of loyaty and obedience like Lastwall does-" That's not exactly what Lastwall does but that doesn't stop the proposer. 

"A man who narrowly escaped a mob is a single-issue voter, and Èlie now has a convention on his hands that is a single-issue voter against its own existence and his rule of it. I think he understands that he needs to offer them - more clarity and direction - and I think he is underestimating the degree to which they only thing they want to do with clarity and direction is to take their country back from all of the reforms he introduced."

Maybe she should have accepted a duchy or whatever the others would have foisted on her if she'd let them.

"I regret not pushing back against the sortition idea harder, once it became clear that the delegates would be conscripts. Those who chose to be here - if they think participating isn't worth it, they can leave. I wouldn't be surprised if plenty of noble delegates did just that, after coming all the way here only to have a murderous mob sicced on them. Those, we might win back with promises of greater protections and stricter proceedings. But to take people unwilling and then tell them that their will shall be the foundation of the law? Why should they believe we have any care for their will?"

"Really there was no chance anyone raised in Infernal Cheliax was going to have any understanding of the concept of being anything other than a servant of Hell, and we should have waited a generation or two before trying anything. Bring up a new crop of Chelish citizens steeped in the new official line, and have them hold your convention."

She sighs. There's no use arguing about what they ought to have done. There's only doing what she can do right now, and that's focusing on this scry.

They should really make crystal balls that do greater scry. These things take forever.

"The sortitions have honestly contributed more to the convention than I imagined they would. The slaves, in particular, I think are positively constructive to have around for the abolition debates. You are right that it is an injustice to them, but - all of the people of Cheliax are Her Majesty's property, and I can't claim with a straight face I think she has duties to them. 

I do think the convention should have waited just so it would not rock what has turned out to be a very fragile boat as far as the rule of law in Westcrown."

"It's rather embarrassing for the rule of law in the capital city to be so tenuous. I hope it has any chance to rebalance before the convention resumes."

"With the sortitions, it's less about whether she has duties to them, and more about what it communicates to them through her actions? Being kidnapped is not exactly an empowering experience. But I'm glad to hear that they're managing to contribute despite it. I had expected them to spend the entire time cowering or kowtowing. Who are the notables?"

Sure, she will offer Ione a slightly acerbic summary of everyone who has participated notably in the convention over the first two days. 


" - Barro felt passionately about the issue of slavery, and having failed on the convention floor expressed these feelings by leading one of the mobs that evening. He's been put to death. Perhaps we will need a new sortition to replace him, I'm not sure how they're planning to handle that, but certainly he has served greatly to discredit his cause. The halflings all acquitted themselves fine. I expect one of them will give a great speech about being murdered, once we're back in session. - anyway, it was a busy morning, as not only was there the slavery fiasco but in the midst of it a motion was introduced to exempt all delegates from taxes forever. Alex backed it. All of the archdukes except Narikopolus, who has been doing his best flowering shrub impression, spoke out against it, it failed by an embarrassingly narrow margin, we managed to avoid the convention's first vote being to effectively dissolve the country. Then Wain spoke."

Ione has fond memories of some of those halflings, she was the one who kidnapped them. She feels a bit of unwarranted pride that the ones she grabbed are doing a good job, as though she bore any responsibility for their contributions.

"Incredible. Are the committees taking minutes? I can skim through those and probably spare you most of the rest of my questions that way."

The scry fails.

"Well. Whoever killed your Mammonites is not going to be found based on that scrap. What do we know about the murders? Anywhere that a lurking shadow might be able to sniff out something?"

"Top drawer over on the right, for the minutes. 

We really don't have that many leads on the Mammonites. I could suggest a dozen people for Varanthe to follow but none of them are actually strong leads, just - people who it'd be worth following for a week if I had all the time in the world. And of course I don't really care about Mammonite murderers, but - we also haven't found by scry the person who took Valia's speech out of the convention hall and papered the city with it, and - they're probably not two different people with such unusual capabilities. The riots shouldn't have happened; someone worked to make them start at the first opportunity. It does not seem implausible that someone instigated the riots to get these murders done, and they've got Mind Blank or some rare and clever item. Or are Mephistopheles. He'd be a fool, to be here, but we'd be fools to be sure he isn't."

Ione's shadow flickers.

"An unscryable murderer is bad enough but an unscryable murderer who provokes riots as cover for their murders is worse."

Surely starting riots in the first week of the convention would count as interfering..? Whatever, it's Mephistopheles, he'll have some very clever argument for why it's not. But if they can catch him on the Material - hm. Killing him for real might actually cause more problems than it solves, at this point. They'll have to figure out their action plan for confronting him. What would he gain from killing Mammonites?

"Well, I can have Varanthe tail whoever you like while I'm here, it's not like I've got anything for him to rip to shreds in the next few days."

"Here is my list of people I'd tail if I still had my old organization. ...I should have just kept it all. I was being too clever by half, really."

"It's just how it goes, you plan assuming a certain level of competence and end up doing something that would have worked beautifully if only everyone else weren't so disappointing. Come up with something to cover every angle and you just end up wasting resources, because they didn't even notice most of those angles existed."

"Thanks for the updates." She takes the list and heads out the door. "I'll let you know if any of these are up to something interesting."

Her shadow glides out the window.

Lilia closes her eyes, casts a spell, and starts drawing secrets out of the mind of a man halfway across the world. She doesn't even really need these specific secrets. It's just the only one of her relaxing hobbies that isn't illegal around here these days.