This one's reportedly an adventurer, if a young and not notable one, so they send a bit more force, two from the prosecution's office to supervise the two from the Watch with a fifth man hanging back to call in backup. She's staying in the awful Galtan cafe because of course she is. 

The men go in. "Delegate Rivera," he says to the proprietor quietly. "Upstairs?" 

"Excuse me," he says loudly, standing up and moving in such a way as to deniably stand between them and the stairs. "Delegate Rivera? She doesn't stay here." (He is still projecting his voice.) "She just plays here sometimes. I think you're looking in the wrong place."

"Keep your voice down, please. We need to check upstairs."

She can improvise the next bit of her song on the fly to include the verbal components for alter self; before they turn around, she looks like someone who plausibly could have been the person they saw when they came in but definitely doesn't match any descriptions of delegate Rivera on close inspection. She gives Raimon a meaningful glance.

"Do you have any warrant?" His voice is quiet now. "How do I know you're royal officers and not a gang of robbers?"

They indeed have proof of their identities; not anything specific to picking up Rivera, but that they work for the Crown. "Not city watch, either, because I know folks are skittish of them. Is she upstairs?"

"Nobody is," he says, "I'll go with you," to make sure they don't steal anything and to slow them down.

One of them is staring intently at the girl in the corner but she doesn't resemble the sketch at all. Upstairs the four of them go. 

They don't steal anything, just start searching the place thoroughly enough to find an invisible person if there is one.

He'll slow them down if he can, because he hates the police. If he can he'll try to make sure he's between them and the stairs down, but he'll be subtle about it.

And Alicia finishes her song, checks to make sure her money pouch is hidden, and casually walks out the door. Nothing to see here, just another innocent working woman heading back into the city after finishing up her lunch break.

Nope, the fifth guy at the door isn't stupid. "Sorry, ma'am, you've got to stay until they've found who they're looking for." It's a terrible shame about this innocent woman being caught up in this whole business. 

She can very convincingly imitate an innocent bystander who is nevertheless quite intimidated by a sudden soldier!

"I'm so sorry sir, I'll go do that."

And then she hums a little lullaby to quiet her nerves and he can very shortly be a sleeping guy at the door.

Zzzzzzzzz yeah now there's no one to stop her, and a full minute before a pair of the men upstairs come down and realize what happened.

By that time she's long since vacated the premises and wandered unhurriedly into the press of westcrown's streets. She dismisses the alter self now that they've seen its face, and instead wraps her cloak around herself before swearing not to reveal her identity. She takes a meandering path towards a scriviner she once saw in passing to have a letter dictated and sent to the temple of Shelyn telling them to not expect her for the morning channel tomorrow. It's almost certainly a lost cause to try and keep them from having any items of hers, especially since she's not stupid enough to go back for her things, but there's no need to make it easier on them.

"She's not here," Raimon will point out again, after a particularly fruitless search of the upstairs.

" - she made it out the front, damn it, the guard's sleeping."

         "Fucking song-sorcerers."

Then unless they're much quicker on the ball than she expects, about half an hour from the attempted arrest a middle-aged merchant takes a horse and leaves the city towards Hinji. She plans to swing south once she's out of sight and make for the coast, but that's a slightly more unusual destination and might stick around in the memories of the guards for longer.

No, they'll stomp home and tell the wizards. "There's a song-sorcerer on the loose somewhere in the city" is a problem for wizards. 

Well, and they'll smash the rest of the cafe up since he gave them the runaround. Maybe there are hints hiding somewhere about how she assaulted that guard.

Not that they can find! He will immediately report this to a Church of Abadar, accept a truth-telling, write a full description of how they smashed it up after they failed to find the person they were looking for, have them write that it was made under a truth-telling with Detect Magic confirming no spells active, make a copy, have them both notarized, and submit the copy to the Queen, just to make the point that this absolutely doesn't work, at all. Then he'll get back to repairing the cafe.

Look, it was possible the song-sorcerer was invisible and still in the room somewhere. You've got to be thorough when you have a missing suspect who has just assaulted an officer of the law.

The thing is that you've got to track down the runaway delegates before they get to Andoran and become a cause célèbre. Felandriel Morgethai would absolutely put them up in her tower and the people of Andoran protest the heroes who Cheliax tried to jail for telling the truth, never mind that in fact the delegates she's currently charged with tracking down are charged with incitement to violence, arson, and resisting arrest.

Where's Alicia Rivera? Lilia watched her speech; she has a solid recollection to go off.

In a small port town on the coast, currently negotiating for transit on a fishing boat!

How commendably nonstupid of her. Invisibility, Teleport, Flesh to Stone.

Alicia has incredibly good reflexes from long experience of living in terror, which does her precisely no good in avoiding an attack from an invisible wizard 200 feet away. She turns to a statue mid conversation, terrifying her conversation partner.

And a unrecognizable wizard in Her Majesty's livery floats down and says to her conversation partner with a terrifying smile, "I would not recommend agreeing to smuggle people out of the country." Shrink Item. Back home.

"Delegate Rivera?" says a remarkably kind and trustworthy woman subjectively a second later in the dungeons of the palace.

She knows what charm person is, thanks, she used it a bunch herself before she got good enough to not need it. This doesn't help one iota in resisting it, of course, but there's more than one way to plan ahead.

"Yes?"

She's terrified, of course, but projecting enough confidence over it to fool most chelish people.

Song-sorcerers, can't trust any impression you have of them. It's fine. 

"The Crown's prosecutor's office is investigating whether you were involved in the riots on the 3rd of Sarenith. When we tried to find you, you attempted to flee the country. Where were you headed? Andoran? Absalom?"

"Andoran, ma'am." The lie is much harder to spot in her voice but her mind betrays her with a flickering thought of another city.

"Did you help Valia Wain attempt to start a peasant rebellion against the lords of Cheliax, or was that all her idea?"

"I didn't help anyone with a rebellion!"

"Then why did you run from the investigators?"

"I thought I could escape if I was quick about it."

She's still not completely sure how she got captured but wizard seems like a safe guess.

"No one gets away if the Queen wants them found. Why not just tell us that you didn't help Valia plot rebellion, and didn't participate in the riots, and did no murder and no arson and no theft and no other crimes?"

"I didn't want to get raped or tortured or executed, and you wouldn't have believed me if I said it anyway."

"Did you participate in the riots?"

"No."

"Have you killed anyone since you came to Westcrown for the convention?"

"No, I have not."

"Have you participated in helping other people kill someone, or make a plan to kill someone, or conceal having killed someone?"

"No."

"Have you burned down any buildings, or helped anyone burn down any buildings, or helped anyone plan any arson, or helped anyone conceal any arson?"

"No."

That one might technically not be true, since it's a broad enough question to encompass the war, but neither her face nor her thoughts give any sign of it and she's pretty sure she could get it past a truth spell.

"Have you taken anything that wasn't yours, since you arrived in Westcrown for the convention?"

"No."

"Are you the person who made and distributed copies of Valia's speech?"

"No, I am not."

"Do you know who did it?"

"No."

"If we write all that out and you read it under a truth spell, is anything funny going to happen? And I mean anything at all, because I know you're a song-sorcerer, I don't have all day, and I cannot hold your hand through three attempts to exonerate you if I get the slightest suspicion you are interfering with the first."

Obviously they're going to have suspicions of the first, or it's going to turn out that that surprise you were an idiot if you thought they cared, or they'll dismiss it midway through if it looks like she'll pass it, or whatever. But it's not going to come from her.

"I can say that under a truth spell without interfering with it."

What if they give her a written out version that has those phrasing and also the same questions phrased a little differently, does that throw her or is she able to read it all the way through?

No, that one's easier actually. After scanning it she can read it without hesitating, stumbling, or singing.

Absolutely no singing. And no humming. No musicality of any kind. 

...fine. "Great. Thank you. You're under arrest for resisting arrest, but that's not a capital crime, and we'll waive it if you are willing to testify that all the treason came from Valia."

She's not an idiot, if they want her to testify that someone she associated with committed treason they'll have to try harder than that. She'll take the jail cell until they decide to tell her she's being executed or sent to hard labor after all, or possibly until they torture the confession out of her if that satisfies them.

Not allowed anymore, which honestly suits Meritxell fine, there's no artistry in it. She writes up that either the song sorcerer is in fact completely innocent or she's got some nonmagical way of beating truth spells. They can still get her on the resisting arrest, at least.

Alicia settles in for a very uncomfortable stay. She has friends that would feed her if they knew, of course, but she's hardly confident any of them know the crown caught her or that the guard would let them through to do it. Hopefully if the guards come into her cell they'll do it in small numbers, since a larger group could snap each other out of it before she suggests it's not worth their trouble.