There is indeed a lunch quickly being spread, to which she will be lead, followed shortly afterwards by the sound of a gryphon landing in the courtyard.

Only a few minutes later Xavier will arrive to it, freshly Presdigitated clean and wearing clothes that he has clearly just changed into.

"Ah, Duchess, how good to see you."

"Archduke. It is good to see you as well." And then straight to the chase, because she's in the habit of bluntness from talking to the paladins and they are in fact pressed for time. "I have come to believe that, firstly, the Queen may be expecting her magistrates to find Wain not guilty of the charges she's laid this afternoon, and secondly that neither Church nor Crown have prepared anything in the way of public communications, either for that eventuality or for the still more likely one where the magistrate decides that it doesn't matter what the law says he's not finding her innocent under the circumstances."

"They have soldiers on the streets," Xavier says, "mine and the Reclamation both to prevent a riot. But - Church and crown?" How? The Church is too busy to send anyone qualified for this, but the Crown? - Joan-Pau is on his way."

"The Church is too busy to put on its armor. I just wrote the Lord Marshal a speech if they let him give it, in case of an innocent verdict, and also asked him to ask the Crown for custody of Wain if they acquit her, so they can announce she's been handed over for the Church's internal investigation and so there's no question of her being turned loose.

But - I would generally presume those to be steps the Crown would take itself, if they were not sure of the verdict and wanted to manage the fallout of all possibilities, and I would generally presume them, if they were contemplating the possibility of acquitting her, to have been writing and releasing some explanatory pamphlets over the last few days, interviews at the local newspapers and so on, describing how they understand the legal system to function because certainly no one else has any idea.

They have done nothing like that, so I naturally assumed that they have no such plans and haven't tried preparing the city for the contingency as there is no chance of it - which I wouldn't blame them for under the circumstances. It's probably what I'd do at home. 

Except the Queen assured the Lord Marshal of a fair trial, and placed no treason charges, and - look, by a plain reading of the law those're the only ones she's guilty of. Westcrown is governed by decree. Very few things are banned. Wain didn't do them.

 I am worried the Queen decided to hold a fair trial and is - listening to the same advisors, frankly, that she did with respect to the convention, showing no indication of her preferences and hoping that we weren't relying on them for anything.

And I do not envy the poor magistrate, and I would not bet with any confidence where he'll come down. But - there should be some explanations ready to go out, if something bizarre happens. And even if it all goes smoothly there should be some explanations being penned that don't injure any crucial institutions too badly."

He thinks about it, follows the logic "- Yes, I think you're right. I was focusing on damage control for the convention -"

Joan-Pau will hurry in, escorted by a servant, who bows off -

"- I think I understand the meaning." He'll catch Joan-Pau up on what he's seen of the conversation.

"I too was focused on damage control for the convention, with a flicker of unease when I saw the charges, and then it didn't properly occur to me until I spoke with the Lord Marshal this morning. I hope I have wasted your time on no account, sincerely. And I hope soon it is harder than it is today to flood the city with any one carefully manipulated account of events that will define it forever in the public mind. But today, if events are confusing - I would like the account of them to be ours."

"Yes, you're right."

"One for a conviction, one for an acquittal - do we need one for if the sentence is death and one for if she remands it to a lesser punishment? Copies already made or still needing the details?"

"Ready to edit with details, I think. It'll sell best if it can fit in a few choice quotes from the trial, and be credibly a product of it. We will need some copyists retained, or I suppose if we're not sure of their discretion you and I can do it. I do think a death sentence and some kind of lesser punishment will need to be pitched differently."

He nods, glances at Xavier -

"You can rely on my scribes' discretion." He has retinues, and this is one of the things they're for.

Good! Carlota would ordinarily trust her own copyist but someone told a deranged pamphleteer about the censorship law and she's hardly had time to figure out who, or how, and also she has one of them because she rules a duchy and not all of Sirmium (and because she recently returned from the dead and it takes time to build an organization from scratch). "Then I gratefully will, Archduke. Do you two read the pamphlets? The fashion of the times is - baffling and ironic dialogues between thinly-anonymized political figures, and tediously extended badly inaccurate metaphors."

Actually, he's an archduke because he has more than one of them much more than the other way around.

"You do need to stay updated. I don't think I've had the chance to express my sympathy for your bout with the slanderer yet..."

"I expect we'll all have a turn before the convention's over, just with a bit more plausible deniability if our law is passed."

"No question of it. I did observe to the crown that one of the few laws they have managed having is that one shouldn't publish on the impressive achievements of infernal powers, but the Galtan in their public affairs office - I do not refer obliquely to our archduke, the public affairs office is run by a different Galtan - thought that it was no concern on that account. 

I have never much subscribed to the view that it is important to keep people from criticizing their rulers, but I am cheered by imagining the quality will go up.

So. Wain acquitted. What.... is our line."

"Hmm. 'A trial concludes with the strictly correct legal result, and Her Majesty demonstrates her stern commitment to Law by releasing Delegate Wain' probably won't sell well.  'the true criminal has already been executed, and now his patsy is, as is proper, cleared; a chastened Valia Wain, realizing how her ineptness enabled such a horrifying tragedy, pleads her absolute foolishness and pledges to change her ways...' 'Radical Iomedaean released, proving that you have a right to freedom of  speech except as explicitly restricted by law, because we aren't diabolists any more -' what has she pledged? What cooperation do we have from the Church of Iomedae?'"

"The Lord Marshal and I planned a speech, here's a draft:"

Every murderer in Westcrown will, if caught, be put to death, and they should be caught and they should be put to death. This was not a trial about whether murder is Evil. It is. It was not a trial about whether murder is unlawful. It is. 

This trial concerned what should be done when legal words were spoken, and then misspoken, and then twisted, and then inspired great evil and greatly illegal deeds. The doers of the evil deeds will meet justice, should meet justice, but what of the speaker of the legal words? 

Many unwise and evil words are permitted by law, and if a word is permitted by law no one should be put to death for it. That was the matter this case concerned. The Queen has made it clear that no one will be put to death for words they spoke that weren't illegal, no matter how others further twist those words, no matter how much harm ultimately unfolds from them.

 In this she is entirely right: for what do Her Majesty's decrees mean, if no one can rely on them, and be safe having relied on them? 

But that does not mean that those words were not reckless and foolish. It certainly does not mean that those words did not lead to great evil. Valia Wain's speech was wrong, foolish and reckless. It should never have been spoken. It certainly should never have been spoken by a person who would be understood to speak for the Church of Iomedae. The Church of Iomedae condemns riots and arson and murder as enormous evils. The Church of Iomedae knows many of the men targeted by the riots to have been faithful and decent men who Valia Wain denounced wrongly in her ignorance. Had Valia Wain been trained in the teachings of the Church, she would never have given such a speech.

And so the Church of Iomedae has removed her as a delegate from the Constitutional Convention, and requested her release into our custody, that she may be removed to Lastwall for the Church's own ongoing investigation into how such words could be spoken in Iomedae's name. 

We are grateful for the noble and important work of the Queen's magistrates in identifying and convicting the guilty in the riots. We will have many senior men in Iomedae's priesthood at the temple tonight, to discuss the verdict and dispel any remaining confusion. And the army of the Glorious Reclamation will remain vigilant in the streets of Westcrown, that all Her Majesty's citizens may go about their business safety, and that any man who strives to do his neighbor violence will die for it.

"I have no idea if Wain can be relied on to cooperate with anything. I do hear she's very sorry."

Xavier reads the draft carefully. "I think he has it well; we'll want to quote it where we can."

"Yes. The question is - what narrative can we tell for Valia Wain? We don't want to say 'she did nothing wrong and everyone else should do what she did.' 'She was a dupe of the real killer and is sorry she was so easily mislead' has the advantage that it appears to be true, but the disadvantage that the killer's trial is already over and so there's no grand conclusion. The obvious grand conclusions are 'the hero is free and the queen supports her' and 'the murderess has got loose through a trick of the law' and both of those are disasters."

"Exactly. You can perhaps say that the Queen's courts, reviewing the matter, determined that Wain ought to answer for her crimes against Iomedae and she's been sent off for that. It has the major disadvantage of not being substantively true and still not being all that satisfying."

"Yes. 'The Crown remands her into the custody of the Church' suggests she's being punished - suggests rather worse punishments than she'd get otherwise, possibly - but in fact I suspect she's going with the church because she wants to, so the same disadvantage still lasts even if we phrase it that way..."

"And the Church refuses to say that the Iomedaen inquisition will review her case, which sounds even more ominous and potentially deescalatory, because that'd be unlawful of the Iomedaen inquisition, having not possessed any authority to do that last Wealday. 

....to put a priest of Iomedae to death is no punishment, as she'd go to Heaven, and so in order to punish her it is necessary to remand her first to the Church? False in most of the particulars but maybe useful."

"We could just say she's being sent to the Church 'for her proper education?' I'll guess that's actually true, or if it isn't that fact will go in one of their famous failure analyses."