"What Impression did you Form of her Understanding of Riots such as Westcrown has Seen?"

"That she had none whatsoever, believing a populace would only riot under the harshest tyrannies a diabolist could offer. She only came here a few days ago and no one she talked to mentioned had mentioned them."

"You are her Senior among the Faithful of Iomedae? How long Empowered by that God are you?"

When she told people to rise up against her lord they didn't decide to randomly murder his — didn't decide to randomly murder completely unrelated innocents. It's really kind of a bizarre thing for people to do, if they're listening to you at all. (But they weren't, is the thing, they were murderers taking advantage of Valia's speech and just using it as an excuse — maybe not the ones that killed the Countess of Sopont's child — maybe they didn't know—)

(—if you set fire to someone's house sometimes there's someone else living there who doesn't get out—)

It's not that Valia doesn't want to hear what Feliu has to say, she does, but the ringing in her ears is rather too loud, and in any event it doesn't matter, and she has gone and once again strung her sanity to something that does, which is figuring out how to talk the people who care about her down from some kind of doomed idiocy once she is convicted.

She knows what she'd say, to try to convince Victòria not to do something foolish. She already said most of it to her earlier, when they were in prison. But there are thousands of people here, and probably a lot of them are like Victòria, and she doesn't owe them anything less because she doesn't know them, it's just that it's easier to pitch a speech to a person you know than to a person you don't. She fixates on a woman who is ahead of her in the crowd, a woman who is fixedly praying with her eyes sliding between Valia and Feliu. Praying for Valia, Valia suspects, because the people here praying for her to die don't look at her like that. The sort of person she will need to speak to, if she doesn't want to inspire yet more awful pointless violence. 

'People of Westcrown' - no. They'll Silence her, suspecting she's trying to instigate more trouble. The first few words have to convince the court to let her keep speaking, or at least leave the wizards who'd silence her desperately curious where she's going with this.

"I went to Lastwall to take service with the goddess in 4701 and was chosen as an empowered paladin in 4702, so twelve years."

"In this Long Experience you have had the Opportunity to attain an Understanding of such Riots as the Late ones?"

"- Oh no, before it, almost all my service was at the Worldwound. But I spent many years in my youth before dedicating myself to Iomedae in the city of Canorate, and there were riots in Canorate multiple times a year while I lived there." 

"Was your Impression that Select Wain was Attentive to your Concerns?"

"Yes, of course, very. She's a priest of Iomedae and I'm a paladin of Iomedae."

"All in all she seemed not at all Desirous of the Subsequent Riots, then?"

"She did not. She had no expectation that they would occur and no desire for them to occur."

"The Evening of that Day you Met Again with her in the Streets of Westcrown, to my Understanding; what was she doing at that Time?"

"She was stabilizing people injured in the riots so they wouldn't die."

"Thank you for your" unimpeachable shiny paladin "Testimony."

"I defer now to the Court."

Valia is so good. It hadn't even occurred to Victòria to try to do something like that. (They can't kill her, they can't, surely everyone here has to see how Evil it would be—)

Thea has actually come around to thinking it would be fair to convict Valia for inciting the attempted murder on Delegate Ibarra.  The riots as whole, obviously no, Lluisa is easily showing that, but Ibarra was named specifically, in detail, with some intent that he die, even if obviously Valia wanted the attempt to kill him to be more competent.  Politically, convicting Valia for inciting an unsuccessful murder of a Norgorber worshipper is the least acceptable charge to convict her for, but the Judge is apparently enchanted to not think about that?

Also Lluisa is amazing and Thea’s really hoping she doesn’t have a Mephistophelian plot or end goal in all of this.

"When you spoke with the accused the day before the riots, you say she did not expect or intend the riots. Did she say to you what she did expect or intend at the time?"

"She intended to weaken the influence of Evil Asmodean nobles on the convention. She expected, first, that it would make people believe themselves to be better and bolder and thereby make them better and bolder, second, that word would travel out into the distant reaches of Cheliax where the people ruled by particularly wicked Asmodean nobles would hear of it and murder them, and, third, that for fear of this evil Asmodean nobles might repent."

When he says it like that it sounds like the sort of thing that the diabolist prosecutor is going to try to twist into saying that she was inciting people to murder. There's nothing wrong with murdering wicked Asmodean nobles, if no one murders the wicked Asmodean nobles then there'll just keep being Asmodean nobles.

"After you warned the accused that riots might occur, did she take any steps - that you know of - to prevent that outcome?"

"She suggested that we find an Evil nobleman removed from his post by the Queen for his evil deeds, and then she would use that evildoer as an example and make a speech and publish a pamphlet to tell everyone that they shouldn't rebel because the Queen is handling the problem, but it did not get further than the suggestion before the riots."

"Did you or she or any other person present to your knowledge suspect that the speech would be published as a pamphlet without the accused taking further steps to publish it?"

"No." 

"The court has no more questions for you, you are dismissed."