This is the most exciting place Kicharchu has ever been, except for - no, actually, including the Great Work, which is Greater, but not more exciting.

Laia doesn't actually want to be here but better to be here the whole time and catch up on some of her reading in the din than to hold up all the proceedings being dragged over from the temple, or worse, be passed over and miss a chance to help poor Valia.

This one's worth preparing spells to run away and showing up in the crowd anyway. What does the Queen want, today, and what will we get?

...Admittedly he's less likely to be stuck under Her if the answer is 'bad things'. He still wants to know.

He doesn't place any bets today. He's always liked the philosophy that you should bet for the outcome you dislike, and betting on Wain hanging is just too depressing.

It won't even be satisfying, is the thing, but he owes his sister a letter with the information as soon as he can have it in hand.

Anna is here with her scribe. She's not being given a wide berth, it's too crowded for that, but she has elbow room, which is more than a lot of them can say. Let Law be upheld, she prays, to Abadar in the absence of any god better to ask it of.

Josep is looking forward to this. He was afraid that the church of Iomedae would pressure the Crown into letting Valia Wain go, but it looks like they either didn't try, or tried and failed. In just a little bit, it will be too late.

He settles in to wait for the show. He's going to enjoy this.

Liushna was torn on whether or not to attend, but--Valia deserves to have the people who care about her and believe in her here, to witness what might be her last witnessable moments. 

If they execute her, then--then there's no point in actually trying to make the Constitution work. She won't go home immediately, of course. With her stipend she can acquire resources that the tribe will be glad to have, and also she would rather wait to bring Rojix home until he can mostly understand Itarii. 

She puts money on Valia not being executed. Gambling is still a completely wild concept but she--wants the world where Valia lives to be the right one, wants the people who think she should die entertainingly to have egg on their faces. 

She has her wings wrapped protectively around Rojix to shield him from the noise of the crowd. She couldn't find someone she trusted to mind him while she was at the trial. Hazards of being away from the tribe. 

There's a portion of the arena set aside, near the front where stairs can be used to reach the floor, where those who either prosecution or defense have affirmed may be called as a witness are seated.

Archduchess Jilia Bainilus, dressed much more as an Archduchess than she usually bothers or consents to do, is there, with a small entourage tracing out a square around her. Lady Sofia is with her, leaving the house for the first time this week; her job is to keep an eye on the crowd and assess its moods while Jilia is performing, either her role as a high noble or her role as a witness for the defense.

(It's also a test of Sofia. She might need better political skills soon. She probably knows it's a test, if she's doing her job right.)

Jilia can't entirely keep the crowd's mood from affecting her. She's optimistic: she believe the Queen is Good, and would not condemn a well-intentioned young woman for making a huge mistake. The list of charges is heartening, less in what is there and more in what isn't; treason, which means anything power wants it to. But the crowd wants blood; it's angry, and scared, and angry to cover up its fear. They'll be outraged with any result but a death.

And she may be out on the steps giving a speech to try to talk them down, if they are. It would probably be the most dangerous thing she's done this year.

Borrowing trouble. She has a speech written for it; Sofia helped workshop it. Later.

His morning spell preparations were interrupted several times by his familiar, saying he’d better not be preparing the dramatic rescue set. He wasn’t. He was preparing the undramatic rescue and quick getaway set. But he got talked out of that too. Blasted creature, why did it have to be wiser than he is? 

So, Lisandro is very grumpily sitting in the stands. What’s the point of being an anarchic wizard, if he’s just watching a show trial for a cleric of Iomedae? At least he’s got an extended arcane sight up so he can scope out any magical defenses. 

He's here, dressed for danger. He only has two guards with him; the rest are elsewhere in the city, keeping order. He didn't attend the previous trial, just read the transcript after the fact, but this one is important.

He's not sure what to pray for. Justice? Tempting, at a trial. But what he wants most is peace.

Sarenrae, let them be satisfied.

She doesn't arrive in time to find a seat, so she ends up standing in the middle of a cluster of other people in the same situation. 

Valia has to be okay, she has to be, the Queen let her and Alicia and Raimon go, and she and Raimon had actually broken the law. Valia didn't break the law, didn't do anything wrong at all, so she should be fine, she's going to be fine, she has to be fine. 

She doesn't entirely believe it. 

...She desperately wishes she could tell Valia they let her go. She tells herself firmly that when they find Valia innocent she'll just tell her herself.

Ok this time it'll be the axe, for sure.

This is the queen’s last chance to redeem herself after that dreadful pamphlet trial. If this one is boring too, Mattin will have to start holding games at the exact same time as trials so everyone sees who fills more seats.

It’s so much nicer to be a tiny bird in a high up perch than to be stuck elbowing through the crowd below. She recommends it to anyone with shapeshifting abilities.

While she’s not particularly invested in the outcome of the trial, it’s clearly important to the question of ‘will this new regime collapse into civil war.’ She doesn’t even have a particular way she wants it to go, it not being clear what outcome would definitely avoid a civil war. Civilization is deeply confusing and these people are insane.

Joan-Pau Ardiaca, brother of an Abadaran priestess, watches the trial, having quietly gotten a number of inconspicuous-looking servants to bet money on "not executed" at every bookmaker willing to both distinguish this from "not convicted" and offer decent odds on it. Hey, he's got to pay his army somehow.

Feliu expects to be called on and is here to do his duty.

Carlota is in a horrendous mood because some of the pamphlets being eagerly distributed around the stadium are the ones calling her a whore of Geryon, or worse referencing this as an established feature to further riff on, and from their distribution at the trial by unafraid vendors people will infer that the Crown considers them a great example of encouraged and reasonable civic participation. Even worse, people won't be wrong, as that does seem to be the Crown's position. She has a number of plans to deal with this, and it's possible one of her first few plans will work and it'll be solved shortly, but none of them will come soon enough for it to not horrendously damage everything she cares about, endanger her people and her legislative proposals, and quite possibly get everyone in the Mansion killed, and it feels particularly difficult in this moment to escape the conclusion that's what the Crown wants.

It would be a mistake to treat the Valia trial as a verdict on that, a mistake she has just written several pamphlets counseling people against making. The Valia trial is, she believes the Crown that far, about whether Valia broke the law or not. The Queen may be the only person in Westcrown who cares about the answer to that question, but she is the one with the authority to demand everyone sit down and answer it. 

She isn't a gambling woman, not with money; she has gambled political capital with her allies that they'll be glad of the time they spent preparing for an acquittal. She sits, and watches the wizard duel unimpressed (she could do better, with her own Major Image, were she not saving her spells in case the mobs being incited in this very moment go after her home tonight), and contemplates sitting close enough to Alexaera she could ask him to make her unafraid (she would rather die than admit that much weakness, but contemplating it does dissolve the fear a little, or at least make it possible to separate herself from it.) 

They will have themselves some dry legal wrangling, and then a verdict, and then one of two different flavors of a mess, and it is their duty to support the Crown through all of it; Cheliax cannot bear otherwise, from any of them. At least she is not Alexaera, who has to sit here acting like he approves of all this, knowing the Queen to be secretly Evil, obliged to nonetheless plan to use the Reclamation to crush the likely riots if the Queen has Valia put to death. 

It is a surprisingly cheering thought, that everyone around her carries their private and highly specific misery into this moment, that probably - not none of them, but fewer than ten of them - are thinking about the Geryon whore pamphlets at all. 

Eulàlia is here because they will not really know if Valia Wain was right or wrong until they watch her die. (Yes, she understands that the trial part doesn't include the execution). On the one hand, everyone has been stridently denouncing her, so in that sense Valia Wain was wrong. On the other, Valia Wain stood up and said that the government needed fear its people and made it true, so Valia Wain was right. She seems like the kind of person who will be right if she lives, which is why she needs to die.

There's something really special about proceedings whose outcomes are secret even from those presiding over them. 

She is not actually here. She was approached about six different harebrained rescue schemes, vetoed all of them, and expects to go unrecognized for her services to the new Chelish state.

Whenever it comes to a big production of Civilization like this, Feather is acutely aware she doesn't understand these people. They're alien to her, and she's coming to appreciate Voshrelka's gloss of them as 'insane' but that's not productive.

They don't know what alignment they are, or what they want out of life. Riot following a Good cleric? Hang a Good cleric for inciting riots? Either one makes sense but not both at once! The only thing they all agree on is that they're supposed to be Lawful, except they have no idea what the law actually says (see: everyone disagreeing on the upcoming verdict) and, also, almost everyone she asks in the crowd thinks the Queen and/or the judge are above the law more than they are enforcing it, because they can decide the verdict. Except no-one can agree what verdict they'll decide.

When she talks to any one person in isolation they sort of make sense, but as soon as you bring a bunch of them together they coalesce into a giant swirling Chaotic(?) mass that claims it's Lawful but can't actually predict what it will do next round, like some demented hive mind. We're lawful! No, overthrow the old queen and her laws, call a convention to write the new laws! No, charge a delegate for proposing new laws! Charge her under what laws, we cancelled the old laws! 

Maybe this is how Lawful people go crazy when they have no law to follow?

Alicia is at the trial, having gotten there incredibly to ensure she got a decent seat. It’s a risk, to be here, especially in a disguise carefully treading the line of “not immediately recognizable as herself” and “not obviously in disguise” if recognized, but - she’s certainly not in more danger than Valia, and the girl has no choice about the matter. Hopefully invisibility and alter self are enough to escape any outraged nobles in the event that Valia survives.

She badly wants to cast heroism to steady her nerves, but if there’s another riot after she’ll sorry regret having fewer healing spells available. She’ll spend one for the trial and its immediate aftermath, and instead sit there fretfully staring at the overwhelming powerful abjuration magic layered over the entire stadium.

Thea is here, with Dia elsewhere in the crowd.  Dia has attended a number of trials at this point.  She didn’t lecture Thea about how much more cautious Thea needs to be, so presumably the other trials at least appear fair.  Provided Valia didn’t actually lead a mob and is being tried for her floor speech, she should get acquitted.  If not, Thea will need to radically change her approach to the convention, staying silent as much as possible and abandoning all but the easiest to obtain goals.

Fernando is here and kind of confused.  They are apparently committed enough to their loyalty test that they didn’t simply release Valia once her role in it was done?  Maybe this ‘trial’ will be used to give one last test or lesson?  Fernando thought the test was obvious: don’t use a Select’s words as an excuse for Evil Anarchic riots.  He’s not sure how the arrest of the Select factors into it.