"Anyway, if you'd like me to teleport you back to Westcrown right now and then never see me again, it wouldn't damage anything important," he says eventually. "But I think the Church plans to do a failure analysis of this incident and would like to hear your perspective. They'll send people to Westcrown to do interviews, probably, but it might be more convenient to do yours while you're here."

"I'll probably hire someone else for the duration of the convention, on account of you obviously having too much to do already, but I hope you'll consider returning to Cheliax more permanently as soon as it wouldn't be a disaster for Lastwall to lose you. We have the archmages, of course, but—"

"I'd certainly like to, and—a great deal of my actual job has been obviated on account of the fall of the Th—" wait, no, "—of the Infernal regime, but I've acquired several additional jobs on account of being the most powerful wizard around. I think it probably would be a disaster for Lastwall to lose me now."

"Of course. Anyway, I'll stick around for the failure analysis. I don't know that I have anything to say to them that I didn't say to them yesterday, but perhaps they will—interpret it differently, in the context of recent events."

"What is your impression of the operations of the Church in Westcrown?"

Oh good, it's de Luna, he won't have to carefully avoid saying anything that could imply the existence of Alfirin.

"My impression is that it doesn't have enough people," he says. "I realize that you probably know that already, and knew it a long time ago, but it's the—obvious relevant fact, here."

"I spoke to Select Iustin at the temple yesterday morning. I told him that Select Wain had been saying things that I thought were unorthodox and dangerous, and I asked whom I ought to treat as my—advisor on religious matters and liaison to the Church, since in effect I had been treating Sir Cansellarion as such, just on account of him being the only Iomedaen I actually knew well, and that was quite evidently not the best use of his time. We ended up getting into an argument about—the role of the Church in liberated Cheliax. I spoke somewhat rudely, I think, for reasons I now identify as—grief, really, at the death of Aroden and the loss of the support His church used to give the Empire. That was rather more recent for me than it was for you, of course. I regret the way I spoke, certainly insofar as it might have disposed Select Iustin to ignore my rather more urgent warning about Select Wain. Possibly I should have left off the request for an advisor altogether until I was assured that something would be done about the first thing, although I think the request for a Church liaison was a reasonable one that the temple ought to have been able to fulfill. The Archduke of Menador has two in his entourage. If I erred there it was by not requesting one much sooner."

"In general—well, do you want my opinion on what you should be doing, or just on what you are doing?"

"Both, please."

"I think the Church is neglecting the rebuilding of Cheliax. I know it isn't the sort of thing you've set yourself up to do, and I'm going to have to accept that Aroden's church is gone never to return, but—well, I don't need to explain theology to you, but defeating Evil doesn't necessarily mean stabbing it with a sword. The evil that's happening right now in Cheliax is that millions of people are still damned who are now free to save themselves, and they don't know how. Millions of people are looking to Iomedae for a way out of Hell, and maybe they should actually be looking to Sarenrae or something instead, but they're not. They're looking to Iomedae, and what they found was an Iomedaen priestess who was too poorly catechized to avoid—let's be quite honest here—leading hundreds of them straight into the Abyss."

"I think you're neglecting the convention, specifically, because you think of it as an archmage's folly and not as a thing that's actually going to affect the fates of millions of people. I can explain why it's the latter thing, if you don't believe me. The only one of you who isn't neglecting it is Sir Cansellarion, and he's actually prioritizing it for reasons I don't even agree with, though that's not at all relevant to what happened last night."

"I think the policy of exerting absolutely no authority over Select who haven't sworn an oath is admirably Lawful, in the abstract, but that whoever devised it," and yes, he knows it was Iomedae herself, "should have also devised a contingency plan for what to do if an uncatechized cleric starts giving inflammatory political speeches while wearing Iomedae's holy symbol."

He is diligently taking notes. The time for figuring out which other thing the Church is also neglecting they should neglect more for Cheliax's sake is not right now. Right now - the man warned them, and they should listen to him. 

"How did you identify Select Wain as likely to pose a problem?"

"Her conduct in the opening session of the convention's committee on excising diabolism. She started by declaring that she didn't mean to obey Élie Cotonnet, who had forbade us from proposing the expulsion of other delegates, and she went on to propose that anyone who 'sought power' while reading Evil ought to be put to death. To be clear, the thing I was initially afraid of was not immediate mob violence, it was the actual implementation of this policy, which I thought was insane even if carried out exactly as proposed and likely to lead to escalating rounds of purges and counter-purges if attempted in practice...I was also concerned that Alfirin might perceive Select Wain as a threat and either murder her or rewrite her mind into something more convenient. I'm not sure that's not still an active concern, though it seems like less of one now."

"—on that note, if Wain is still alive, you ought to limit her interaction with Sir Cansellarion, who might find himself obliged by his oath of honesty to reveal to her that the Queen is secretly Evil. I can't imagine that would go well."

"Was there anyone else from the church on that committee? Did she have any advisors or assistants?"

"Not from the Church of Iomedae. Her closest ally on the committee was a cleric of Calistria, which was another cause of my concern."

"Why was there a ...committee on excising diabolism, and who decided who would be on it?"

"It was one of several committees that the Duchess of Chelam proposed forming in the opening session, and the assembly voted to approve her proposal with only minor amendments. The membership was...whoever volunteered, with the condition that all four estates of the convention—noble, religious, elected, and sortition—had to be represented. I think the Duchess's intent was to keep all the people bent on bloody vengeance distracted from the other business of the convention, but putting them all in a room together at all was an obvious mistake. I joined in the hope of being a voice of moderation, though I stopped attending after the morning of the second day when they started purging members from the committee itself."

"And then Wain decided to give an incendiary speech, which was...also on the second day?"

"Yes. The speech was a surprise to me. I was actually denounced in it, albeit mildly, for opposing the purges on the committee. Most likely this was a minor factor in the incitement of my own murder, compared with the revelation later that day that my father's name was Thrune, but it may have been a factor—I do have a suspicion about who published that page from the Ancient Houses, and it has nothing to do with this situation, I think, it was merely inconveniently timed for me."

"What was the policy around giving speeches, anyone could do it? Do you know if the Church delegation had any internal rules about it?"

"Yes. There were rules of orderly debate but she was following all of them. President Cotonnet could in theory have interrupted her but he wouldn't have. What he could have done is given Sir Cansellarion five minutes to compose a response before allowing debate to move on to something unrelated, though I found out later that Cansellarion hadn't slept in eight months so I'm not sure his response would have been particularly effective."

"I'm not sure there...was...a Church delegation, strictly speaking. There was Wain, one other Select who may or may not be a former priest of Asmodeus, and then Cansellarion, who was attending in his capacity as Count of Lladó rather than as a representative of the Church, and as far as I know none of them had spoken to each other prior to Wain's speech."

"Do you happen to know anything about how that decision was made?"

"Which decision?"

"To have as the church's only representatives attending this fairly important event two non-Church members and Cansellarion who has a distinct set of diplomatic obligations. It's fine if you don't know, I'm just trying to get oriented before I get there."

"I don't know anything about the Church's internal process there," assuming there was one, "but I suspect the limiting factor was that all non-noble delegates had to be native Chelaxians, which didn't leave a lot of options given the Goddess's recent constraints."

"There was also the requirement that nobility who wanted to attend had to do so personally. I think Cotonnet was hoping most of us wouldn't bother to show up. For my own part, I probably would have come myself even if I'd been allowed to send a man, but Cansellarion might have had the option of appointing someone less busy."

"All right. What kind of support could the church usefully have provided you over the last few months and with the start of the convention, if we had say five people working on it?"

"Myself, or the convention in general?"

"I'd like to start with you since it sounds like you specifically requested more support and didn't get it. The convention does not seem to have especially wanted our support, which makes for different dynamics around providing it."