"Was he unworried, by the speech?"

         "He was very worried by it, but he said that the convention had the protection of the archmages, and archmages can do -" her voice quavers - "anything, so we had nothing to fear."

"What happened that evening?"

         "Well, a mob endeavored to do what Valia Wain said, and go kill all the nobles. They snuck in to the house where we were staying, and they murdered my husband and I both, in our beds. I - I woke up in a temple, a day later, with the memory of a sword at my neck, and without my child."

"You were with child?"

         "Yes. Our first, he would've been. Or she, but I had an intuition he was going to be a son."

"Do you believe that Valia Wain gave her speech intending that mobs would kill those nobles who the Queen had pardoned?"

        "Obviously she did. She stirred them to it. She was not addressing the hall, not really, even if she was speaking in it. She was speaking to the people of Cheliax, and she wanted them to come kill us in our beds."

"Did the speech strike you as illegal?"

        "I thought that the Galtan archmage was making whatever rules he wanted and he liked the speech because it was very Galtan."

"If you had known that Her Majesty's law applied in the convention hall as well as outside it, that there is no exception by decree for convention-hall speeches?"

       "Then I'd have expected her to be arrested on the spot, for saying people should be murdered by mobs."

"I have no further questions for this witness, your honor, and submit her to your questions if you have any."

Now we're getting back on track, Josep thinks. There were some confusing things said earlier, but the prosecutor has a good head on his shoulders, and there's really only one possible outcome here, and everyone knows it.

On the message to the judge, noting the contradiction; "nobility who swore to the Thrunes" in the speech is qualified by "and are not repentant"; the exiled wife did not swear to the Thrunes, and Solpont must be repentant, had he always attempted to defy the Thrunes and rule well and wisely, and received pardon of the Queen, he must be repentant. Cf. also the Queen's own speech at the opening of this trial. (Quite aside from how it doesn't call for rising up and butchering nobles! But I'm just pointing out that the testimony is contradictory.)

It's not good rhetoric but it's a message to the judge; on direct questioning it could come out as a series of questions establishing each point.

Gods, nobles really are the same anywhere. This one might be from Absalom but she's still lying to get Valia killed, claiming the speech was illegal when it wasn't, acting like Valia telling her husband to go to the Worldwound is the same as stirring up mobs. She and her husband got what they deserved.

...their baby didn't deserve it. (Her chest hurts.) But they did. 

Noted. He's not going to bother asking the witness about the particulars of the speech; he fully believes that she's recounting it as she remembers it, being a flawed mortal being, and for his own purposes in judging the matter he has a written copy of the speech in evidence already.

"Lady Solpont, can you describe in any more detail what happened to you on the night of the third?"

"Yes, your honor, though most of what I know about it I learned afterwards because the men killed us in our beds, so I remember only great pain and terror and then waking up elsewhere. What we learned afterwards was that some powerful adventurers at the head of a mob came to the house - it was a mansion rented by many of the delegates attending the convention, and their staffs. The security was sympathetic to the mob, probably because a priest of Iomedae commanded this. The mob leaders let themselves in and murdered my husband and I and at least four other people, maybe more. ...only the nobles, though. Because those were the people Valia Wain had told them to kill, and they were listening to her."

...Eulàlia will pass a note, in case the prosecution doesn't know because of how he escaped prison, that the leader of the mob was Rui d'Argent and that when the Archduke caught up to him he said  'Iomedae and the queen have delivered the devil-lovers into our hands.' It seems like it might be important for the prosecution to know that. It is relevant to making sure Valia Wain dies.

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

Can one of his assistants go check if the Countess of Seguer, who is one of the people they'd absolutely have interviewed if they hadn't had eighty different capital cases to try in the space of four days, would be good to call to the stand. In the meantime -

He'd originally been planning not to call Napaciza, because the man is a devilspawn. But the law doesn't care about that, and the case she's guilty under the law is weaker without the confession. And they did do witness preparation with him in case it ended up seeming worthwhile to call him. So:

"The prosecution next calls to the stand the Count-Regent Llei Napaciza of Ilnea."

Alas, it is not the suicidal-to-call Ibarra. At least he's a devilspawn, not that this makes him noncredible before the purportedly dominated judge.

He was kind of hoping this wouldn't be necessary. But a lot of people sure do seem to have a lot of confidence that the people who matter care what happens to him, and he really, really hopes it's founded.

He approaches the witness stand. He thinks he's succeeding at looking neither terrified nor murderous, insofar as that's possible.

"Do you swear before the gods of Good and Law, and before this court, and before your Queen, that every word of your testimony is true, and that your integrity as a man of the Law may be verified by magic, should any call it into question?"

"I do."

"Can you tell this court your background, and how you came to be present in the convention hall for Valia Wain's speech?"

"I serve as regent for my half-sister, the Countess of Ilnea. When the nobility were summoned to participate at the constitutional convention, I responded to the call in her place."

"Did you listen to Valia Wain's speech?"

"I did."

"What did you understand her to be saying?"

"I understood her to be encouraging the people of Cheliax to kill all nobles who had served under the Thrunes and still detected as evil, and to kill me in particular, if we did not give up our titles and possessions and flee to the Worldwound."

"During her speech, Valia Wain said that among the people who should be afraid were 'evil titled devilspawn'. When she said that, was she referring to you, specifically?"

"I believed so. She looked directly at me as she said it."

“What happened after the speech?”

"After the convention's business concluded for the day, I returned to the residence where I was staying. While we were eating dinner, a large crowd surrounded the house. They broke down the gates, set fire to the building, and killed most of the people inside, including my daughter and my seven-year-old nephew."

"You'd been staying at the manor for some time, correct? Had anyone tried to kill you, before Valia Wain told them to?"