Narikopolus does not especially care what happens to Valia. He's here to know and uphold the Queen's will, whatever it is, and because everyone else who was in his house on the third is invested and needs the moral support. 

Llei is anxious and irritable and only not holding his breath in the literal sense.

They have to execute her. Surely. By hanging, fine, and straight to Axis if the goddess finds she's not done enough wrong to outweigh having freed Pezzack. Fine. But until she is executed, the people will not know whether the Queen wants him dead or not.

She doesn't. So they're going to hang her, whatever the paladins say, and then he can finally go back to being only as uncomfortable as he was when he first arrived in Westcrown. But he needs to see it, because he already knows it, and knowing it is not actually helping at all.

He seeks out de Fraga in the crowd. This execution is a start, but they'll need to keep pushing afterwards. The torrent of pamphlets flowing around the arena makes that even more clear.

The last trial was really boring so Conradí is skipping this one. He places some bets on "killed by archons" and "tongue cut out" and "stoned to death by her Raised victims," they've all got really good odds.

"Throwing rocks! Get your stones right here, guaranteed perfect size for tossing when they let us stone her-"

"Marquis." He's glad to see Vidal and the guards clear him a space to sit next to the Duke, who taps Vidal with a Protection from Arrows. It doesn't save your dignity from fruit, but it makes surviving mob violence much easier, if it comes to that.

It’s a long shot, but Iker thinks he can beat the odds. He lost some coin betting on last trial, but he’s about to make it all back. 

It’s obvious, if you think about it. Last week, if he said the new queen was going to have a kill-the-Iomedaean show, no one would believe him. That’s the last thing the new queen would do, only the old queen would do that. Iker was kinda sad about it, actually. He never saw the show with a cleric, and it looked like he’d never get to. Everyone with good taste says clerics are a better show than paladins because they still get scared. Anyway, no one thought they’d be in a crowd watching them kill an Iomedaean, but now it’s happening. So, the winning choice is something the old queen would do, but the last thing anyone expects from a lawful good queen. 

Ten gold on Malediction. 

Antoni doesn't know whether Wain's speech was technically legal and it has not even slightly occurred to him that it might matter. If the Queen doesn't want further riots — and his impression is that she sincerely doesn't — she'll do whatever is necessary to make that happen, and never might what the law or the Church of Iomedae has to say about it. She could hardly have conquered a country if she wasn't willing to hurt people to do so.

Silvia is worried. She can't say she's never broken a law under truth spells right now, and that's bad. Soon, she expects, she will need to. But she clutches her stake and remembers that killing real Asmodean priests was supposed to be a good thing with the new crown. And apparently this trial is different somehow? Thea talked about it, and some of her ideas sounded like they would mean Silvia didn't actually break the law. And it's always better to know.

Sergi and Gisella are nervous. In Andoran it would matter that she has probably not committed the crimes the prosecutor promulgated as the charges, but in Andoran a single speech, maliciously published, wouldn't have caused riots across the whole city.

Sergi hopes for mercy; if she isn't Good already, she certainly deserves redemption. Gisella would take cruelty if it calms the city.

He has his trident with him. It looks a little silly on shore, but he wants to be armed to defend himself, if the guards outside aren't enough.

It would've been better for this trial to happen right away, the day after the riots. Tell the people that there will be consequences for anarchism and riots, even for clerics of Iomedae; tell the victims that the Crown is with them, not with lawless murderers. Don't give people nearly a week to come up with stories in which convicting her is an endorsement of diabolism and proof that the people should storm the steps of the palace, or whatever other nonsense the pamphlets are saying today. The necessary message is fundamentally very simple: murder, arson, and any other forms of lawless disorder will not be tolerated, and anyone who tries to stir it up regardless will die for it.

(Not knowing what constraints the Queen is under, he of course would not presume to think that she acted in error.)

Sefora's here to support Valia, who she likes because she gives good speeches against the nobility, and not for any other reason. 

"Get your badgers! Get your badgers! Guaranteed to say something wierd in every issue!"

Let the first round of social gladiatorial combat be resolved.

If he doesn't see it, he won't know how to edit the pamphlets.

Ricard is here, existing.  Better to find out what the Queen wants now.

Poor Valia. She was trying. 

"Stop doing that, you need to look dignified."

Couldn't she have gotten my mom killed instead, that would have been so much nicer. 

Antonio is mostly here to make sure Llei doesn't do anything rash. Something's gotten into him since the riots.

(Xavi is not here. He heard they let the prisoners speak, and "trial of woman whose last speech started murderous riots" sounded like the single most likely place in the city to be murdered in a riot.)

The guards bring Valia in a few minutes before the appointed starting time. The stadium is very full, and very loud. That makes sense. There are far more people in Westcrown than in Pezzack. And most of them will want to come out, to this, to know that justice has been done. 

She finds it easier, somehow, to endure once they bring her in. It will be terrible, probably, but at least it won't be waiting. And Victòria is safe, and Alicia is safe, and the fact she was herself to die was never the most unbearable part of the whole thing. Cheliax is free; the innocent people who helped her are safe; what is there left to fear, justice? Heaven? She fears neither, or at least it is possible to imagine a version of herself who fears neither, who is full not of anger and aggressively quenched hope and blind sickening terror but of the knowledge that however badly it hurts she will deserve it and it will eventually end and Cheliax will not be enslaved forever for her absence, because it was in fact free already. 

(She does not look like she was tortured even half as much as she deserved in prison, though of course one can conceal that with enough healing magic. She does not appear to be bespelled, though the chains that hold her in place are.)

Alfirin walks slowly to the center of the arena. It is in fact somewhat irregular for the queen to give an address at the beginning of a trial, but these are irregular circumstances and the people will hopefully be made less confused by her speech rather than more.

"People of Westcrown,

We know many of you have come here today to learn what we think of Valia Wain. You will not. We have not told the prosecutor what we think of Valia Wain; We have not told the Magistrate. The prosecutor will argue that she is guilty of many crimes; That is his job. The Magistrate will use his knowledge of the law and of the facts presented to decide whether she is in fact guilty of breaking the law as it was written. That is his job. His task is not to discern whether we think Valia Wain should live or die and rule accordingly, only to decide whether the law says that she should live or die. He is bound by powerful magic to not give any consideration to what we might want, or even to what he wants, but to consider only the law and the truth as it is presented to him. This is how the courts act in truly lawful countries, and though Cheliax is still learning how to be a lawful and unAsmodean country it is our fervent hope and our daily labor that she learn quickly.

There are other, deeper questions that we know many of you have, which we will answer. We know that many of you are wondering whether we desired the riots on the night of the third; We did not. Those who took part in the killing and the looting and the arson are being found, tried, and executed. We know that many of you are wondering whether we think the nobles who ruled under the Thrunes should live or die; We have already put to death those who we think should die. Those who live do so at our will and enjoy the protection of the law extended to all of our subjects. We know that many of you wonder whether, as Valia Wain claimed, the Convention is full of evil people. A just government rules for the benefit of its people, in consultation with its people. Many of the people of Cheliax are evil, as that was the will of Hell, and so any body which represents the people of Cheliax will be a body of people with evil in their pasts. Today's trial is not concerned with representative government, nor with evil, nor the existence of the nobility, nor whether we approve of lawless violence; A speech was given, and this court is tasked with determining whether that speech obeyed the law, nothing more and nothing less.

So, people of Westcrown - If we have answered your questions, and you have no more, then you should return to your homes. If you have come seeking to learn our opinion of Valia Wain, then go home; you will not learn that today. If you have come to see a young woman be killed, then go home; if she is condemned any execution will occur in private, and if she is set free there shall be none. If you have come to make certain that Valia Wain dies, or to make certain that she lives, go home; that is not within your power. If, indeed, you have come here for any reason at all besides an interest in the question of whether Valia Wain committed a crime under the laws of Cheliax as they stood last Toilday - then return to your homes, because that is the only question which this court will answer. And whether Wain is condemned or acquitted, whatever you may think of that verdict or her sentence, know that no violent reaction will be tolerated."

And then she disappears back to the royal box to watch the proceedings and hopefully not have to stop any ill-conceived rescues or murders or pointless violence.

Well, they should definitely get that printed and distributed everywhere, if the Queen's scribes aren't on that already. 

(She doesn't actually care at all about whether Valia Wain technically broke the law and in any event trusts her own competence at legal analysis more than that of the court if she did care. She is present to support the Queen and know which disasters to expect in the city. She is of course not leaving.)

Joan-Pau leans over one of his scribes' shoulder, observes he's already copying it down, and leans back into his seat.