Lluïsa has a good poker face when she's not being a nerd about law or magic, unfortunately.

"Would you have considered Select Wain to have followed a Prudent Course in regards to this Virulent Emotional Tendency had she refrained from Distributing or Causing to be Distributed her Speech outside the Hall of the Convention? As in fact she did, of course."

"Yes, halting her initial plans to publish was the wise thing to do."

It is probably not useful to the case to tell the audience that she regrets the speech and so she isn't going to do it, even though it would probably be more believable to Valia said before an audience of hundreds instead of in a private cell alone.

"For Completeness and Avoidance of Doubt I ask in specific; did the Speech contain Incitement to Crime; did the Speech constitute a Proscription List banned under the Decree of 29 Desnus; and in general, did the Speech comply with the Letter and Spirit of the Royal Decrees?"

The witness, he observes to the judge, is not a magistrate, and cannot answer that question; nor even could the magistrate, just having heard the speech, as the law requires that Wain have intended to inspire violence.

"I believe that it did not contain incitement, it certainly did not include a proscription list, and it abided by all decrees up to that point with a large margin of safety for the letter and a narrower margin of safety for the spirit."

"I have heard you say on the General Floor that you are No Lawyer. How then did you come by this Opinion on the Law, which I a Lawyer find to be Quite Sound?"

Women have many important virtues, but those virtues often include levels of mercy and peaceableness that would be excessive in men, certainly in noblemen, and he really thinks this is disqualifying for someone trying to be in charge of an archduchy.

"I have no formal training, though I have had to oversee courts as Lord Mayor, and since my elevation to Archduchess judge some offenses. I make my assessment based on my reading of the decrees themselves as an experienced layman, and my experience with cases of definite incitement in Kintargo."

"Thank you, Archduchess."

"I submit also the Affidavit of Archduchess Bainilus taken and sworn before me and defer now to the Court."

Valia is spiraling a little bit. It was easier before they asked her questions, because she had to hold herself together to answer the questions and help justice be done. But now she has spoken. Unless she misunderstands how trials work she will not be called again to speak. She very much doubts they will permit her to speak after the verdict is pronounced, except to decline the Final Blade. She can tell herself that it matters, that she go to her death with dignity, but it only matters for her own pride, and possibly for what the people in the stadium think of her, and she is not even sure that the thing which makes them least likely to have another riot is for her to go to her death with dignity. Maybe really it would be best for ensuring people do not think too highly of her if she cries the whole time like a little child. If there are any choices left they are all of that character. 

She doesn't want to die. She had gotten in the habit, over the last year and a half, of imagining she would live to grow old. She would tell the stories of the fight against Asmodeus to children who grew up never having known him. She would travel to other places, and meet other peoples, and trade stories and go to the theatre and witness the birth of their children and use Iomedae's blessings to keep them alive through the birthing and - be free. There are things, lots of them, that were more important to her than not dying. Giving the speech would have been one of them, even, if people had taken the thing she meant and not the disastrous nearby things to heart, if she'd known enough to make it a good speech, not that she thinks there any realistic way she could have learned enough to make it a good speech within the next year.




But now there are no higher things to hold up against the dying. There is just the dying, and her mind keeps flickering around all of the minutia. Will they let her thank Lluisa, before they take her away? The Queen said that the execution would be private. Which is meant as a mercy, probably, but for whatever reason she is having trouble thinking of it that way. If it were public there would be friendly faces in the crowd, even assuming the guards did not let them close enough to tug on her legs and help her die faster. Maybe it is a mercy to them, because it's not very pleasant, doing that. Victòria might do something stupid.

Victòria might do something stupid. Valia was not thinking about it when they last spoke, when her greatest fear was that Victòria would be executed for helping her. But Victòria is free now, probably in the crowd not that Valia can pick her out, and might be the kind of person who instead of helping the execution go a little faster once the guards are bored enough of it anyway tries something stupid, and then she really will die. 

Will they silence her immediately if she speaks once sentenced? Probably. Maybe not if she's speaking to dissuade the crowd from objecting to the verdict. The first few words will be essential, though. She should have been composing those, last night, instead of a stupid foolish fantasy of a speech a girl in a play would give if she were innocent, which Valia isn't.

This is the kind of woman with an angle; a goal beyond truth. What is it? She wants Wain as an ally? Dumb move after that speech. Trying to turn the mob of Westcrown to her side? Well, he has heard she's been out on the streets doing favors for them. But she seems very good at it. Probably he hasn't seen her real angle coming.

"The court has no further questions. Thank you for lending us your time, Archduchess."

"Having shown by Testimony that the Tendency to Riot in a Great City is apparent only with Expertise, and Bolstered the Plain Reading of the Law apparent to All Readers, I shall show next that Select Wain was of the Same Mind as the Archduchess in desiring the Cooling of the Metaphorical Cauldron. I continue therefore to follow the Chronology of Events; after the General Floor had Concluded, Valia Wain spoke Immediately Thereafter to a Paladin of Iomedae, Feliu Tauler, whose Testimony I shall now Present."

Feliu Tauler just looks fundamentally like a paladin, as he walks up to the stand to take the oath. He's got mithril armor and everything.

"Do you, Feliu Tauler, a Paladin of holy Iomedae whose Integrity is Vouchsafed by that holy God, give your Oath to Testify True to the Very Word, your own same holy God the Test of your Honesty?"

(It's an archaic but still-valid form for paladins! It was not used under the Thrunes.)

"I do," his voice rings out.

"I would hear first how you came to hear Select Wain's Speech on the Floor and come to Speak to her Immediately After it."

"During the Four Day War and its aftermath I served under the count of Gandisa fighting the Asmodeans, and in this count's retinue I came to Westcrown, giving me the privilege of sitting in the visitor's gallery during Select Wain's speech. I thought that it was a very foolish speech to give and that if it was published as a pamphlet it might incite a riot, and so I hurried to speak with Valia Wain as soon as she left the floor so I could warn her of this."

"You reached her quite Promptly?"

"Oh yes, I had no difficulties finding her."

"You have said you wished to Explain to Select Wain your Concerns; what did you tell her?"

"I told her that I thought that the speech she just gave was unwise to give, and that I thought that if it was published as a pamphlet it would produce riots."

"How did Select Wain react when you said this to her?"

"She was rather surprised and dubious. She hadn't seriously considered it as a possibility or thought it remotely likely."

(Was it that obvious? They weren't — they weren't trying to start a riot, they weren't trying to get innocent people killed — Delegate Bainilus didn't think it was obvious, but maybe that was wrong — and Feliu is a good person, he's one of the people Valia told her to write to, he wouldn't have been lying—)