Message to Duchess Carlota. Would imposing a requirement that at least half the committee live in a city at least two months a year help, you think? Or all, but I don't want to exclude Cansellarion and Narikopolus.

Regardless of the answer, she gets in line again.

I like it. A majority of the members, maybe. Can you get anyone who didn't defend Wain at trial to suggest it.

Having been given his instructions, he goes to the podium. "Ah- uh- it seems to me that the freedom of the pen has some advantages. We- I mean, I would object to significant infringements on it."

"The details of a proposal to end the vicious madness tearing our city to shreds are the proper remit of the committee we are about to vote on forming, and a floor debate once there is a proposal to consider. But I challenge any man to look me in the eye and say that they believe it was right, that I was murdered in my bed alongside my wife and my son because the Galtans made it legal to tell men to do that and then sat back and let those men do it."

"It was wrong," says Joan-Pau, "indeed I personally delivered the man responsible to justice. But bluntly, Your Excellency, it was illegal. The man who wrote the pamphlet was hanged for it. The man who led the mob awaits hanging. The Galtan archmage who here hosts us cast the spells that brought down the rains that ended the riot. I would be the last to say that the existing laws were sufficient; for instance, they did not cover conspiracy to incite murder, but the vicious madness that tore our city to shreds ended approximately a week ago, and since that period we have had enough soldiers on the streets to terrify any rioter, no matter how mad, into submission. Our jails are filled to bursting with rioters, pamphleteers and murderers, and would be still more filled if we hadn't already hanged most of them. I agree that we need a bill on censorship, but the existing laws did not permit calls for murder. They were brazenly defied, and the man who brazenly defied them has been put in his proper place - the Abyss. It will not return your son, and I am deeply sorry for your loss. But justice has been done."

"The instigators of those riots was Valia Wain. The Galtans set her free."

Solpont — that's the man whose wife was trying to have Valia killed. Obviously it was right for him to face justice. Their child, no, of course not, Victòria can't think of any way an unborn baby could possibly have done something bad enough to deserve to die, but he was working for the Thrunes, he could die a dozen times over and it wouldn't come close to matching all the innocent people he hurt.

...She is pretty sure that if she gets up there and says so he'll try to have her arrested on some Asmodean interpretation of the law, and she told Valia she wouldn't break the law without a really good reason. 

And now he's trying to accuse Valia again — that's not illegal to respond to no matter how he tries to twist things, she will... get in line, it's a pretty long line...

I'll ask Lestdemarc, if you don't have anyone to feed it to. I can be an urban radical at the podium in another way.

Sergi, would you kindly get in line and propose that the city committee be at least majority city residents? I'd rather not propose it myself but I think they're going to be quite wildly ignorant if we don't get that.

Oh, that could be bad. Yes, I can propose it.

He gets up, whispers to his wife, and gets in the speaker's line.

Felip looks at the line.

"I fear at this point my proposal has already taken up too much of the general floor's time. We have committees and then votes on their proposals for a reason, and I say we put our system to use, instead of attempting to hold the debates on proposals before the committee is even formed. I move to hold the vote to form a Committee on Urban Order chaired by Delegate Cerdanya now, and any comments on the committee be directed to him once it is formed."

"My amendment was on the structure of the committee, may I propose it?"

"I recommend you propose it to Cerdanya, who can judge the wisdom of it without taking more of the floor's time."

She will oppose the cloture vote, of course, because she wants the 'some of these people have to be from cities' rule proposed and it hasn't yet had the chance. But she does not register her vote against it optimistically. The convention has never failed to vote for cloture. It's one of those consequences of having a convention made up almost entirely of people who do not want to be here. 

Huh? Stop debating this and make the committee and then start arguing about how Valia Wain got away with it? Yeah sounds good, 340-125.

Mmmhmm. And then the vote on the committee itself?

Law and order! No more riots in the cities! Those are good things! Passes by approximately the same margin!

Yep. And a note to Alexaera and Narikopolus in case they didn't instinctively parse all that the same way she did. The one to Narikopolus is written the way that allies speak to each other in Cheliax and the one to Alexaera in the way allies speak to each other in Axis.

Archduke, I am grateful to see that you will be present on the new committee, as I believe it positioned to do - or if things go ill to prevent - crucial work to improve the situation here in Westcrown. You already generously reviewed our efforts to impose adequate censorship. I expect the committee to entertain an alternative censorship proposal. If it is more just, lawful and Good I of course know it will have your support, but if (as I suspect) it is worse it mostly needs your delay, that Rights may bring the proposal you have reviewed already to the floor first. 

and to Alexaera: 

They have all their proposals already and I doubt they meant to spend any time debating them. A few might even be a good idea. I don't want them to get their censorship proposal to the floor before we can do ours. Try to hold the proposal for a new Lord Mayor for some time interviewing the man, if they have a specific man in mind. I do not think it will be productive for you to speak on Valia, assuming you are unwilling to imply that the Church's custody of her in Lastwall will involve any of the retribution they're looking for. Bloodthirsty schemes to hurt her further will play well on the floor and poorly in the city, I think, and are in any event an exertion of everyone's energy towards something they can't achieve. 

Jonatan is "taking signups" in the back, which is to say that he has a sign-up sheet with eleven carefully selected names already on it. The official procedure is that the chair can choose who to put on the committee, if more than eleven people want to be on it; he'll regretfully remove a few people to make room for the Archduke, Archduchess, and Conde Cansellarion.

When there's a break in the floor's business, he'll be pulling his eleven people into an immediate meeting, the matter of public order being an urgent one.

She’ll try to sign up, but when she sees it, she suspects the sign up was prefilled and the chair already had people in mind.  She looks to see who the religious delegate they have prefilled is, maybe there is an angle there.  Yes, it’s as she originally suspected, it’s Fiducia Jaume Agramunt.

"Now I wish to turn the floor's attention to the Committee on Diabolism, whose activities have spurred so much of this recent emergency. The war is over. Diabolism is not Cheliax's most pressing problem, and people animated by vengeance are not following the spirit of Her Majesty's pardons, and not interested in rebuilding this great country to the glory of its Arodenite days. Doing good is not the opposite of doing evil; we should turn our eyes to the virtuous churches, not remain fixated on Asmodean wounds. I move that we dissolve that committee, and that the floor not consider the proposals it managed to pass, if there even are any."

Yeah that's got to be nearly unanimous.

Oh good, she doesn't have to say it.

... But diabolists are bad!

Clap clap clap.

She'll sit this one out. Vote for it, yes, express that, no.