"It might give me more context." The idea of a group of delegates asking her to make the final decisions about what they do is insane, but if the Archduchess means to help her organize talking to people - well, she probably shouldn't be passing that up.

"I will help you organize. I will give you funds, advice, protection. I am not handing you a responsibility and expecting you to complete it yourself. But if this is to succeed, the leader needs to be you, not me."

Well, the only thing that beats a Duchess's protection is an Archduchess's protection. It's not like she was about to shut up anyway. Odds are they all disagree with her and leave, but that's no different than before. They'll probably all die, if they try to do something, but she's at least not going to tell them to kill anyone. Maybe that'll help.

"We'll need a place to talk, outside the convention hall."

She was really expecting this to be harder.

"We will, and I have some thoughts. Many taverns have a meeting room in the back or a second floor; I could lease one near the convention hall. Or I could just lease another space for meetings or dinner parties, but I like the tavern idea best so far."

"We say anything that matters, and people are going to start spying on us. But yeah, all right. If you find us a place, we can invite some people and - start talking through what the commons want. If you want me, I'll be there."

Jilia smiles warmly. "Excellent. I'll look into it tonight. ...There is one thing I'd like to ask privately."

"Of course." Rapidly going through everything this could possibly be and not actually coming up with any possibilities to go through.

"If we could have the room?", she asks the audience.

They have a leader! They’re going to have somewhere to meet in, probably safer than the cafe!

“Thank you. To both of you.”

“Before we leave so you can talk privately, Victoria had a question about something you said on the floor earlier? If you aren’t in a hurry to talk and then get to another committee.”

Theo will nod and go outside, but hang near the door.

Ugh. This will not remotely show on her face but ugh.

"Now is fine, I suppose. What was your question, Avenger?"

"Oh. Uh. It's not urgent or anything, if you two want to talk I can try to remember to ask tomorrow, I was just wondering — so Delegate Porras explained to me that you're not actually like a normal archduke, you started out as just a normal person in the city, but sometimes you still have to say things that sound like normal noble things so the other archdukes don't get mad at you. Except — I'm still confused about what you were saying about Pezzack last week? Because — it doesn't seem like the sort of thing you'd need to say just to fool the other archdukes, that Pezzack shouldn't have rebelled—

—uh, but like I said already this isn't an urgent question."

Victòria does not really think she explained that very well but she's not sure how to explain it better.

"I think Pezzack rebelled too soon. They say, in war, that you should not start a war until you are ready to win it. This goes double for a rebellion, because the price of failure is much higher. And that price falls on everyone around you, not just on your army, because there is no line where your army ends and your neighbors begin. Pezzack got very, very lucky that the Four-Day War began when it did, or they would have been slaughtered; it would have been better to wait. Probably, at least, according to the best information I have. I admit I exaggerated my confidence in that, because someone needed to speak against Valia on short notice to make sure a riot didn't start right then and there, which none of us wanted."

She was in fact always a noble, but correcting that misconception is not the important thing here.

"—I don't think they got a choice? At least, that's not what Valia said — the Asmodeans got mad and tried to kill a bunch of innocent people who hadn't even broken any laws, not even the bad ones, it's not like they picked that time."

Jilia shrugs. "I don't know what the city was like that night, just what it was like the week before, and then months later after the blockade broke. There's always a choice, but maybe it was the right one. If twice as many rose that day when they were provoked, as would have if they waited five years, then likely it was the best chance they'd ever get. If the rebellion has already started, and it's big enough that you and all your neighbors will be crushed even if you don't go along, then it's right to throw everything you have behind it. But you have a choice, as a leader, and you're making it for everyone around you, so you have to be very damn careful about it."

That's definitely a lot less awful than thinking Pezzack should have just stayed Asmodean. It's like — she didn't immediately go try to kill her priest and all her nobles the moment she realized Asmodeanism was bad, she didn't even kill him the moment she found out the country had been taken over, she waited for the priest to lose his powers first, and she's pretty sure it was wrong to wait as long as she did but that doesn't mean it would've been a good idea when she was thirteen. And it's not like she knew about Pezzack before Valia told her, it makes sense that Delegate Bainilus wouldn't have known either.

"That's all I was wondering about, thank you." 

She leaves Korva and Delegate Bainilus alone.

Then she'll turn back to Korva. "Is there anything you need immediately, Miss Tallandria? Funds, a clerk or two, a bodyguard? ...My spare bodyguards are probably worse than you can get from the President."

Uh.

"I'm afraid I don't know exactly what the responsibilities of an informal leader of the commons are." Long-term safety is what she needs most fundamentally, and even in the short term she's not going to manage security through obscurity much longer, but she's... afraid of the government... and also of people who become bodyguards... so the concept is on sort of shaky ground. She would like money, obviously, but not for any particular reason. 

"I guess if I have to pick something - information? Not about what's happening in the convention, about what's happening in the country. I don't have a list right now, but - if we want to argue things, we're going to have to know what's going on. I guess that's not immediate."

"I can get people working on it. Most of my network has been about trade or rebelliousness in the cities. I do want you to have whatever sets you up to succeed, here, and I was prepared to offer quite a bit more if you needed a bribe. But actually what I wanted privacy for was a gift I want to insist on: New clothes. Not noble fashions, I don't think we even want guildmaster, but you look like a poor laborer with no education or social class, and just because it's part-true doesn't mean it won't get in the way of persuading people. Open your mouth and no one underestimates you, but before you do? They might not bother to listen. So. New clothes. I'll pick a ladies' tailor and get you three sets. I'm paying, and no obligation whatsoever."

....oh.

She wouldn't have thought she was attached to her clothes. These are shitty clothes, even by her standards; she hasn't had a second set since the earthquake, and has only been getting them cleaned by virtue of Zara's particular talents. Zara can't mend them, though, and Korva's mundane attempts are wearing them out.

But she doesn't want to look like someone who's gotten ahead in Cheliax. She wants everyone to live with the fact that they threw her away. Maybe that's idiotic and everyone is only capable of respecting people who are somehow simultaneously wealthy and free of Asmodean taint, but -

"Well, you know much more than me, but - I'm not sure it helps to look like something I'm not. I guess it would probably be better to have another set."

"You're educated and a skilled professional, even if you've not been working in that profession yet; it's not really a lie. And gut impressions reacting to looking lower class are strong. You don't need to look rich - indeed, it's best if you don't - but if we're to get anywhere with elected burghers it's necessary to make you look like someone they're used to taking seriously. Fashion is a weapon, and to many people you've been fighting unarmed."

"Well, it's a weapon in the sense that how you dress indicates to people that you have money, and that if you don't have money, people know that they can ignore you or quite literally attack you, and not face consequences. But the whole point of giving the sortitions a voice is that this is wrong, right? That the people who no one takes seriously do have things to say, and that other orphanage workers and maids in other cities probably had fiery speeches in them, too. Maybe it's dumb, but I'm not sure I want to help everyone ignore the fact that there are women who read four languages and have been living on room, board, and three bits a week. But I guess it used to be a dollar, and I guess I don't mind dressing like that again."

"It would be a greater achievement, if we could force them to remember that. But I think it's a reach we can't grasp, and it's worse to try and fail than not try. Reminding them in words is more likely to be effective. I don't want to overdo it and make you look upper-class; Lebanel and Barrister Oriol will still be better-dressed, by high society standards. But I think it's worth it." 

"Well. I will agree to stop dressing like a homeless beggar."

"Then we can see about getting that started tonight or tomorrow, and there's nothing more to discuss secretly. Oh, but just to be explicit - if you ever want a job, now or after the convention or if you show up in Kintargo in twenty years and ask my successor, you'll have one on the spot."