"Is there something useful to you that the Church could have done at that stage, in order to mitigate the harm from Wain's speech or help you prepare better should trouble result from it?"

"Not without predicting the riots. Had they predicted them, I assume that Count Cansellarion wouldn't have teleported home that evening, might have advised us to leave the manor, or might have brought the reclamation troops in that evening, but I don't see that he was particularly better positioned to predict that response than I was. At the time, I wanted to know that I still had allies, and he obliged."

"I suppose he could have said something on the floor, but I understand he tried that, and it didn't work."

"That is what he told us, yes, that he joined the queue for speeches on the floor but was not prioritized ahead of a large number of other people with less relevant opinions. So, not foreseeing the riots, you had in place that evening only your usual security arrangements? Security arrangements are usually treated as in confidence - not in a public version of the report - if you choose to share them at all."

Under other circumstances this would still sort of give them a bunch of information with which they themselves could kill him, which he supposes at least makes it a good show of cooperation, except for how the problem is really that he didn't have any of his normal security with him.

"I appreciate that."

"We didn't really have security. I had four other archers and a staff wizard, and the house was alarmed, but I don't think this constitutes much of a serious attempt to defend it from anything. There were of course the other lords inside, and a half dozen men they had with them. Insofar as we were relying on anything, it was our own personal strength, but I think it's more accurate to say that I wasn't expecting to have to defend the mansion."

"...even when I heard the house was surrounded, I don't think I was initially worried about being overrun. But I hadn't really thought through the tactical implications of not shooting through the fence."

"Can you walk me through what happened once you realized the house was surrounded?"

"Of course. One of my men came and got me - late, I suppose, unless the crowd surrounded the building very quickly - and I stepped out of the dining hall to look. The guard at the back came and reported that they had wrapped around the fence in the back of the building as well. When I came back to the dining hall, the others were discussing ways to get word out. Archduke Blanxart said he couldn't fly. Marquis Reixach's wizard had a sparrow familiar, so we wrote a message and sent the bird to the palace, hoping that a response would come before things came to violence. I told the others I thought we could defend the house, but not without a massacre, and said the only other thing I could think of was sending one of the Iomedans out to talk to them. None of us had much hope of it working. Baron Ramirez suggested that we might walk out and allow the crowd to kill us, in the hope that they would spare everyone else inside. I decided against that; there would have been no one else capable of defending the civilians if it didn't satisfy them. Valentia went through the house and gathered them all while we were discussing what to do. I told her to take them to the cellar, and she took up position there."

"Archduke Blanxart put a protection from arrows on Marit, and on some of the other defenders, and we sent him out and attempted to fortify the front of the house behind him. I told everyone before we took positions not to kill anyone until they were actually on the property, past the fence, and not to kill anyone who tried to flee. I think - that was the order that made it impossible to defend the house with what we had, really. We didn't fire on the people trying to batter down the gate. Once it was open, the gate wasn't enough of a chokepoint, and it wasn't a policy that made it obvious what to do about people throwing torches. Arn did comment that he thought it was permissible to fire on the people with torches in particular, but I didn't give the order to do it in time for it to matter."

"What was your reasoning for asking your men not to fire on the crowd unless they'd stepped onto the property?"

"I thought the likely alternative was killing almost everyone outside. And - it seemed like an unassailable line. I thought it couldn't be argued that we had overreacted to a crowd that was aggressive but not violent, if we only killed the people who had actually forced their way onto the property."

That's not precisely morality, is it. When he gave the instructions, he had still been more worried about the Crown's response to a massacre than about the danger presented by the mob itself. It wasn't enough to win, or to defend the mansion; they had to do it while doing nothing even arguably wrong. He'd misjudged how much of a handicap that was.

"Is there counsel that the Iomedaen priests assigned to your service could have given you at that point that would have resulted in a better outcome?"

"That depends. I don't know what decision would have led to a better outcome overall. Tactically, if we think only about the immediate priority of defending the house, with no concern for the aftermath or the people outside, it would obviously have been better to direct everyone to kill, at minimum, the people with the battering ram and the torches, and possibly to have fired on the people holding the ladders, or into the crowd generally, and killed enough people to have prevented them from organizing other attempts to break the fence."

"But the safety of those inside was not, actually, just a question of defending the house from a particular mob. I thought, when I gave the order, that we were at more risk of the Queen executing or removing us for excessive brutality, or the rest of the nobility and the populace turning against us, than we were at risk of dying by the hands of the mob. Had we fired into the crowd, we would have had to defend the decision. It seems easy to say that we panicked and did something unnecessary, if everyone in the building was completely unscathed, and a hundred Westcrown commoners were dead. I know now that I was wrong about the risk posed by the mob, and that the line I set was too much of a handicap to let us defend the house, and all of the servants died for it. But I don't know whether I was wrong about the risks of the alternative. Maybe all the servants live, but I die. I'm not very clear, from the goddess's perspective, whether that's better, or if it depends on the crown's response, or whether I was right, and it's simply that being right results in a tactical loss, here."

" - I see. I don't have much information yet on the Crown's response, and don't expect to get an interview with the Queen. It makes sense that - not being seen to have responded with excessive violence - would have been an important constraint, under the circumstances. ...have you sought, and do you want, spiritual counsel on this situation? I know we're sending more priests as advisors, though I do not know the details."

"Badly enough in general that I've been tempted to have Marit or Arn raised, though I don't really expect it's the best use of the money it'd take. I suppose if none comes I should probably send for one of the others we left in Menador, but there aren't very many, for half a million people."

" - if you want them back in particular, my understanding is that the archmages offered resurrections but the Church was inclined to, instead, get empowered priests who can also serve Menador's priest shortages. But that decision was not made with any particular consideration for the working relationship already established over the last year, and if you'd rather have them particularly I'm sure you could get an empowered priest from somewhere for less than the cost of a Raise Dead."

Well, sure, he'd prefer that Marit and Arn not be dead.

"I think they'd be kind of disappointed, really, if I had them raised knowing it wasn't the best thing to do."

"I think we should stay for some spiritual counseling but we ought to finish the interview first, and not blend them. So at that time you attempted a defense of the house according to the rules you laid out, and lost, and the house burned. After that?"

"Are you looking for what happened while the house was burning, or what happened after we abandoned it? I personally kept firing until I saw one of the servants running around the edge of the house, and realized the cellar was open. I think a few of the servants may have made it out, but most of the people in the house were killed. I and Ramirez scaled the fence together and ran. Archduke Blanxart and Valentia died defining them. Aniol jumped out the window with his nephew, who died at some point in the process. Llei went out the back with Baron Ramirez's grandson, who I understand was also dead by the time he reached the temple of Iomedae. The rest of us met up at the main temple of Abadar, having heard the announcement about shelter."

"Is there anything Marit or Arn could usefully have done at that stage? Or were they dead by then?"

"Marit was killed when the crowd breached the gate, he was still out there trying to talk them down. Arn was alive when the fires started, but was hit sometime after that. Before we decided to run."

"Is there anything you can identify that they should have done differently, either once the building was surrounded or earlier?"

He thinks about it for a moment. "No, I can't. I think they conducted themselves with as much wisdom and honor as any man could. It's possible that I should have sent them to coordinate more closely with the Church in Westcrown when we first arrived, or that they should have asked to do so, which might have given them the opportunity to meet with Valia. But as it was, we agreed to prioritize it as soon as we became aware she existed and needed it, and that was too late."

"Is there anything you would have chosen to do differently, with the information you now have?"

Drip, drip, drip.

"I think I would have had a long conversation with Marit and Arn about which additional men to bring to Westcrown. I'd say I'd have found another place to stay in the city, but I'm not sure if anything better was on offer, I'd have to think more about that. I'd have sent Marit to the temple immediately, to make contact with Select Wain. And I'd have asked Count Cansellarion to remain in Westcrown the night of the third."

"Is there anything any other member of the Church of Iomedae or of Lastwall could have done differently to improve the situation?"

"Talked to the Select, I expect. If there were other things, I don't see them from here. Spoken to the convention about whether they'd allow more than two Iomedans who are neither of them part of the Church, I suppose."

"All right. Do you have questions for us?"