Victòria is here early! When Delegate Bainilus arrives, she glances between her and the other two people who are here early.

Lluïsa has shown up alongside Enric and Victòria. She looks very perplexed and even more haggard than usual, like it's been three days with no sleep.

Enric is here! He has survived the night of the third!l. He has survived speaking in the floor. So long as there are rights to be grasped, he plans to survive to grasp them. 

He has arrived early with his friends the lawyer and the avenger, to ask a boon of the archduchess. He does not know the proper way to start a conversation with an archduchess.

Lluïsa does!

"Archduchess."

But then she glances at Enric.

Jilia was expecting to be the first, but it seems some of her committee, and Barrister Oriol, have plans. Well, she was busy, she has an excuse for missing them forming.

...And they're deferring mainly to Mr. Porras. So she'll do the same.

"Barrister; good to see you again. Delegates. Was there something you wanted to talk to me about before the committee?"

Victòria doesn't know the proper way to talk to anyone more important than a baron, and honestly she's pretty iffy on the barons, but she hasn't been letting that stop her. Probably that's a bad idea now that a bunch of the nobles forced through a law designed so they can Lawfully hurt you for talking about them wrong but she's pretty sure Delegate Bainilus isn't the type to try to do that.

"Hi! Uh, we had a couple things we wanted to talk to you quickly about before the session, and one of them is a little complicated so I'd rather let Delegate Porras explain, but the other one is just, we were wondering if you could add Lluïsa to the committee? Since she knows a lot about the courts, and she had some ideas for rights about the courts, and also she's on Judiciary."

Oh they’re looking to him? Because he’s the one that decided to do it. Do it, then.

“That’s the first one, and the one related to the committee. Adding Lluisa, if you think it’ll work. Have someone who’s here and in judiciary, since the two share a fence.”

Thats one reason, at least. He thinks she’ll get the real reason. Lawyer of heaven who deals with heaven knows law and rights, can make stronger ones.

"The main concerns against are that, one, it makes this committee look even more like the home of all the radicals than it already does. And two, that it sticks together 'the radicals' and 'those who stood up for Valia Wain' together more than they already are, which is an enormous political liability and will stay one for the next several weeks at least. I don't know that those things can be separated in the minds of the convention, but the more they are, the more receptive they'll be to proposals of the kind we want to write here."

"...I don't know all the complicated noble politics. But — as far as I can tell 'radicals' just means 'anyone who doesn't think nobles should be allowed to hurt people as much as they want,' and I think that's... popular... among people who aren't nobles? And everyone from the convention that I talked to over the weekend thought people should stand up for Valia Wain, even the actual former assassin. The Evil nobles keep trying to have her killed but I don't think the normal people want to, and there's more of us than them."

"I rather think that Bloody Purges are being planned in Other Rooms than this. This Committee had seemed to me a Bastion of Conservative Stability; at least as my colleague Delegate Porras has explained it, and being myself Staunchly against Radicalism I felt inclined to take his Invitation."

She's a little unsure of Victòria re: Bloody Purges but the Law will cure her, surely.

“Hm.” Enric guessed as much, but didn’t think it’d be a problem for committees.

Wait what. Okay it’s happening already.

”Okay I was going to ask about this part after committee business, but here it is. I just found out I was with the radicals and you were our leader today, and I can see we’re a mess. Don’t realize whose side we’re on or that we’re a side. Help?”

"Delegate Porras, you are no Radical! I am Quite Assured you would not wish my Neck beneath the Final Blade."

"Victòria. I like Valia Wain. I've been her age and made mistakes on the scale she did, and I picked myself up and kept going and did great things, and so will she. She is the future of Cheliax. But in the present, the city is wary of her and glad she left, and the convention is terrified of her, when they don't outright hate her for endangering them. It's not just evil nobles, it's almost all of the nobles and electeds, many of whom are outright Good and most of the rest of which are trying to be, which is good enough for me. Everyone is scared of her and what she did. Anyone who is the Wain Faction will lose every fight they pick."

Xavier will, sadly, interrupt this by arriving. "My apologies for the delay, Archduchess. Delegate Oriol, it's good to see you here. What is the topic of discussion?"

(Victòria really doesn't think that anyone who's trying to kill an innocent person for saying Evil nobles should repent and go to the Worldwound could possibly be Good, or even just be trying to be Good, but she's interrupted by the arrival of Delegate Requena i Cortes before she can say that.)

Enric freezes a bit. Xavier is like a normal fey archduke, great and terrible and utterly unpredictable. Summoner of both angels and skeletons. Clearly a power on the floor, and seems mostly for good or for confusing neutral. Let Jilia deal with this. 

"Inviting Barrister Oriol to the Committee, and how best to politically organize the people who support the rights of the commons. I'm against the former, both for making the latter group appear to be the Wain Faction and because Rights is already stacked with, well, us. Yourself not included, Archduke, your first and second political loyalties are both perfectly clear and neither is to the Party of the Commons."

Lluïsa has never once considered the rights of the non-attorney commons and is just more confused.

"I certainly wouldn't describe myself as opposed to the rights of the commons," he says, "but I certainly cannot commit myself to any one faction, not when the Chelish nation must always come first."

Victòria continues not to understand complicated noble politics. Maybe the nobles should spend less time doing complicated politics and more time finding Good adventurers to replace all the Evil nobles. 

"If we can't have her on the actual committee can we still have her around to give advice and tell us about what the Judiciary committee has decided and things like that? Or would that also mess up the politics?"

Jilia is really good at being leader of the radicals. She just gave the radicals a better name that doesn’t scare people, and answered his question about Xavier before he even asked. Other loyalties. Now he just said it, not an enemy but not on the same side either.

Victoria, meanwhile, hasn’t realized that the radical commons planning stops when people with other loyalties walk in the room? Unless Jilia meant to start it up again.

Enric hasn’t read enough constitutions to know the right words to make the comment about what is a nation if not the people, but that’s good because he shouldn’t. 

"I think it would, Avenger Ferrer. I trust her judgment and that she will be a good voice on Judiciary and I would be happy to meet her after hours, but not with the committee directly. My apologies, Barrister."

"And to your question, Delegate Porras, I should not be your first choice. I'll help, and stand with you and speak for you, but there is a better person, and we should ask her about it right after the committee wraps up today."

Soler cancelled Forests for the day because the morning floor session was exhausting but if they're doing this he will show up.

And here's Delegate Tallandria, still blissfully unaware that she's leading anything. Well, except the Education committee. She's aware of that one.

"Your words are Entirely Perplexing but I trust your Judgment Well Enough myself, Archduchess."

"After the Committee, then, Delegate Porras? Please put any Wild Notions out of your Mind; you are hardly one to Wish me Dead."

Well then. Korva seems too busy to be leader, and also doesn’t have the secret powers of an archduchess. Lluisa won’t be able to do as much without being in the room, unless being a lawyer keeps her safe from pamphlet law and lets her read the transcripts. But he asked her to be leader because he trusts that she knows what she’s doing. 

“Right, then.” 

Apologetic look to Lluisa. Then concerned one. “No we already— this morning— We’ll talk after rights.”

The first explanation he can think of was that inviting her to rights was luring her into an ambush. Which makes sense, the last time he asked her to go somewhere was. But…

And here is Theopho, who isn't leading anything but has noticed that Korva really ought to be.

"Archduchess, I do hope you were able to receive my Letter; it seems Fit Material for this Committee to discuss. I have spoken with my Colleagues on it briefly as well."

"Ah, the consideration of drunkenness for interrogation? Yes, I think it's reasonable to consider in the committee. I'm underinformed on what the alternatives are, besides heavier use of enchantments, but you're absolutely right that Cayden wouldn't approve and it ought to be something we do regretfully if at all. I was... charmed that you thought I'd enjoy the pamphlet; I did, but in fact I'd seen it much earlier."

Smile. "Thank you for your Consideration. May this Committee carry out its Duties Joyfully." Nod.

Stomp stomp.

"—I think using enchantments in the interrogations is mostly fine, but — uh, I know this is going to sound kind of pathetic but I'd rather not have to explain it too many times, so probably I should save the explanation for the actual meeting—"

"Personally I'm hoping Ser Cansellarion convinces the Judiciary to adopt Lastwall rules and save us a great deal of trouble. But yes, you probably ought to. And we may ask the President's scribes to omit the details of what you say from the record."

That’s a thing we can do?? Now she’s just showing off the secret archduke powers. 

He said it earlier!

"I don't actually know what the Lastwall rules are, I don't know if they'd cover all the things I'm worried about, but probably that's the sort of thing we can talk about in the meeting." 

She's honestly not sure they'll obey, but the Chair can certainly ask. Politician powers are mighty and various.

"Indeed. Well, let's take our seats, shall we? I don't want a long session, given this long morning, though I did have one suggestion. But first, I wanted to thank you all for this morning. It was a scramble, one that started last night for three of us, drafting and proposing it, and we missed a few spots, but it was a success, and in my estimation quite a great one."

"And I think we ought to take a moment to thank the principal means of that success. The archduke and I may have drafted it, with Delegate Lebanel's assistance and some from parties not in this room. But for convincing the delegates of the convention, more than any of those, we have Delegate Korva Tallandria to thank. That was a truly remarkable series of speeches you made, and they very definitely made the difference between failure and success, and I suspect by quite a large margin, thirty votes or more. Congratulations, Delegate!"

She bows shallowly toward Korva but does not, yet, start applauding.

Korva is going to spend a moment trying not to look like she's determining whether she's being made fun of or not. Probably not? It's not like she was completely useless up there, but -

Xavier can start applauding, then!

She's confused about why they asked Delegate Lebanel for help, he's a priest of Hell (like Chosen Artigas — she should probably not be thinking about that right now, the twisty feeling in her chest is back and she needs to be able to focus here). But Korva's speeches were really good. She claps for Korva too.

And Theopho will follow them!

Tallandria looks a bit like a stunned deer, to sharp eyes. Not entirely unexpected.

She'll clap enthusiastically all the same.

Enric will applaud. Probably some people heard her book speech and took the side of books, instead of screaming horror at cities. Which is important for people who need books and have faraway people to write letters to. Well, it’s rights committee, and every right is a win. He’ll celebrate the less important ones too. Encourage Korva’s bravery, too, she spoke up on the first day and she keeps doing it. 

These people are sure all very pleased about having banned the Parables.

....okay, Ferrer is a lot of things, and Lebanel is a lot of other things, and Enric more still, but they are not all making fun of her. Even if this is... weird.

"Thank you, Archduchess," she says, bowing back, and hoping that it isn't more disrespectful to bow the incorrect amount to someone than to not bow when it's called for. "But I rather think you deserve more thanks for calling us here to see that we put forward the best version we could. I didn't even know the battle needed fighting, before this morning."

"I'll take them, and share the credit where it's due. But were it not for your speeches to the sortition delegates and those like them, it would have failed, and our version would have been proven not so good after all. I have some experience with identifying people good at speech-writing and talking to crowds of non-nobles, employing quite a few in Kintargo. You're excellent at both. You were the main spokeswoman for this law, and I hope you will be for whatever we send to the floor in the future, too."

Korva would suspect a plot - sort of does anyway, really, the Archduchess can have similar priorities and still want someone else to take the fall for any ideas that go sour, or can simply not care about her safety, which now that she thinks about it isn't a plot at all, it's just the normal way for things to be and only feels off because it's really incredibly rare for anyone to say anything nice to her, and three separate nobles are now clamoring to use her - but you at least can't go around under the delusion that what you do doesn't matter, under these circumstances. 

Still. This is really an awful lot of talking about her.

"If we put out something good, I intend to speak for it. I do think we're doing good work here, so far, and I'm eager to do more of it. What are we hashing out today?"

A visible leader who isn’t associated at all with Valia. Enric is starting to see why Jilia wants to make Korva the spokeswoman. Though he hopes Jilia is still willing to organize things behind the scenes.

He’ll ask after the committee. For now, rights.

”With all the ideas and things still on the table, is there anything urgent, like the pamphlet law was? That we should focus on and get done in the next day or two?”

"We should prepare a new amendment to the bill for public theatrical performances. Songbird Solandra was right that we failed to consider it, and we should include some role for it. Also, formal protections for a right of petition."

Nod nod. "I don't know if this is urgent, but me and Delegate Bainilus and Delegate Porras" and Valia and Lluïsa "had some thoughts about rights for people who've been arrested, besides the ones we've already voted on."

"All good thoughts. I think I would prefer not to cover rights of the arrested today, but dealing with them soon is a good idea. ...And I think one of the ex-Lastwall Reclamation paladins might be a good choice to add to the committee, for their perspective on what rights a Lawful Good state includes. Particularly for the judicial process, where I think being sufficient for paladins to approve it is about the highest praise possible. For proposals of my own, I'd like to pass a version of Count Ardiaca's resolution that there ought to be another convention in forty years. I'm not sure I'll bring it to the floor immediately but I'd like to have it ready if no one else does."

”Bringing a paladin in also helps with making sure we don’t accidentally bump into judiciary. I’m in favor.”

Paladin will also help with another person who knows what evil is and not to do it. 

Enric isn’t sure why theatre is the one we need to hurry to get? Archdukes and their priorities. Maybe it’s a strategy, get the nobles on board by protecting noble things like libraries and the opera with rights. So they’re used to the idea when it’s time for real rights like no serfdom and no torture.

"In addition to... theater..." Soler did not literally learn the word 'theater' today but it's a surprisingly near thing, "perhaps we can also, now that we are in less of a dire hurry, un-ban the Parables."

Because they told the Songbird that it was a mistake and they meant to fix it, and you ought to follow through on that. And also because Jilia's second-longest-standing ally in Kintargo is an opera singer and she is personally embarrassed by making the mistake at all.

"They should absolutely be unbanned, the only question is whether it is us or the Virtuous Churches that do it. Are they meeting today?"

"It didn't look like it."

"For the theater part, do we maybe want to send someone to go find Delegate Solandra so she can make sure that whatever we come up with works? Delegate Soler can tell us whether we've come up with something that'll let people copy the Parables but as far as I know no one here is an actor or anything."

"We don't have to vote on it today. But we can talk about something now, and take it to the church of Shelyn after hours. We don't actually have to limit ourselves to other delegates as experts at all."

Victòria kind of thought the reason they were focusing on "urgent" things was so that they could vote them through today and be ready to bring them to the floor tomorrow, but maybe this is more complicated noble politics or something.

"I think I'll see if she's free now, but that's true. I do, though, feel some duty to clean up our mistakes promptly, both the one to her and the one to the Sower. It doesn't have to go to the floor tomorrow but if it's later than the day after I'll feel I've let them down."

Everyone knows that Parables of Erastil are stored in the surviving grandparents, but the Sower thinks it’s important to write them down in a book like Aroden and Iomedae did. Well. Soler is the one Erastil picked, so he would know. 

“If we’re making an exception, is there a way to tell which books are truly the parables? So people can’t just write those pamphlets where Abadarans insult commoners, and say they’re parables. 

"If we can't use the foreign versions, and they don't already exist, the easiest way is probably checking whether anyone is willing to publish more through a publishing house."

She's not optimistic about most things, but come on. It's Erastil's holy book. ...... admittedly it's apparently a different holy book than all of his other holy books, which possibly means it's something some random collection of clerics are going to write, which isn't exactly a holy book as she's used to thinking of them and is not really wholly unlike a speech given by a random select of Iomedae.

Still.

"There's nothing wrong with the foreign versions, but the tradition is to add on bits for a locality, and we haven't already got lots of Chelish ones approved in foreign parts while we're rebuilding the church today."

"My suggestion would be for one version to be published - I'll ask Chelam about her merchant's press, or get started on my own - and a chosen Sower to sign his name and village or circuit to the changed version, and to give Erastil special status that this is allowed for His Parables. Let the royal censors give equal status to other churches if they want, when they exist. This doesn't need to be broad, I don't think anyone else does it."

“My guess, in most places the crown probably only bothers people in cities about books, leaves the Sowers alone.”

"Yes, I agree, but it's better for the book to be made legal than to simply be permitted against the law."

Nod.

She looks at Delegate Requena i Cortes. He did turn out to be right that they needed the ridiculous price to let anyone start a publishing house for their law to pass, even if he still kind of seems like he doesn't understand how much money that is for a normal person. "If we write the law like Delegate Bainilus said, do you think the vote would pass? Erastil has a lot of priests here, so I'd assume so, but I know there's a lot of noble politics going on."

Enric nods at the Archduke. Better to actually make it legal, since the floor won’t actually pass ‘have complicated laws in cities, leave the villages alone’.

“Could a publishing house go on circuit? To get to the Sowers in villages or on circuits far from here?”

"I expect so," he says to Victoria. "Erastil is a god with no enemies, and it's a narrow exception."

And to Enric "- They could send representatives, certainly, but that would be a large expense, and I don't know if they will, or will for every village. I'm not a publisher myself."

"I think if we make it narrow for Erastil and let no one short of the Queen or her royal censors expand the list, even those who would rather have everything be limited by the royal censors will have little room for arguing against it, though I'm quite sure they would do so to deny our law a victory, if they could find an excuse. I'll write up language."

A Publication Statute for the Holy Books of Virtuous Churches.

Certain holy books, particularly the Parables of Erastil, are written with variations and not permitted by other Publication Statutes. For these books, it is permissible to make substantial changes to the text, so long as a chosen priest of the god is willing to sign their name and where they may be found - a home village, ministration circuit, or similar - to the modified version. These modified copies may be copied as though they were the original and further modified and so on, and they are considered permitted under the same statutes as those original texts, if marked with this Statute in addition to the one authorizing the original.

The Queen or Her Board of Censors may designate other virtuous churches and their holy texts to receive equivalent status, if they judge such status necessary. When first passed, this Statute applies only to the Parables of Erastil and the Sowers of Erastil.

"Read it for me, if you please?"

Enric will say nothing about whether Erastil has enemies or not, because he only talks about laws and not people. So he’ll listen to them read this law, then talk about it.

Txell is here to help and will read the whole bill to them.

"Yeah, all right."

"Let's have a vote, then. I'm in favor."

"Aye."

"In favor."

"Aye."

"Aye."

“Aye.”

"Aye."

"Passes unanimously. The performance licensing, then?"

Enric wants to celebrate a right agreed on with no debate, and one for Erastil too. Even if it’s just a book. But not yet, it still has to pass the floor. 

“Before we go to performances. We bringing this to the floor tomorrow? Who’s introducing it?”

"I'm happy to bring it myself, but if you or the Sower would like to, you're welcome to it."

"I think the Sower would have the best odds, as he is a priest and so it is rightfully his domain." Of making it not a political battle.

Whoever brings this to the floor looks good to anyone who worships Erastil. If Enric brought it, might give him a reputation. But he didn’t help with this one, wouldn’t be right to take credit. If Jilia brought it, all the decent peasants might think a bit better of her and worse of everyone calling her radical. 

No. It’d be wrong to do politics with Erastil’s holy book. 

”Agreed. Easiest if Sower Soler brings it.”

"It'll look a little self-interested, won't it?"

“Right, that might look bad. Like we’re using rights to give ourselves special privileges.”

"Clerics of Erastil are respected, trusted. Nobles may think they're inexperienced with politics and so prone to make bad decisions, but they certainly don't think they're schemers. I think a great many of the delegates, noble and religious and even some sortition alike, do think the Archduchess and I are schemers, and would watch this proposal for some sort of Mephistophelean trick. Sower Soler they might think was a fool, but never a rogue. If this bill fails, which I do not expect, it will because someone thinks it is a smokescreen for a plan to do evil under the cover of Erastil's work, and convinces others of this."

"Well, I can say it but I'd have to memorize it or else not get it said exactly as it was written."

“Could introduce it, then have one of the scribes read the whole thing out from the paper.”

Enric gives the note-takers a look of ‘if it isn’t imposing too much to ask’.

"If the President's convention staff weren't already told to do this for illiterate delegates they ought to have been and I will bother the President about it." Actually now that she thinks about it, he's the person whose view on whether factions are actually ruinous she would most trust and she might bother him anyway. "But if they won't, one of us will loan you someone to do it, Sower."

"Very well then. Hopefully it's less busy tomorrow, on the floor."

"I sincerely wish it will, but that's been wrong every day of the convention so far so I'm less hopeful than I might be. Urban Order and Judiciary will pass something that starts another loud fight, more likely than not. But we'll all have to carry on and hope events outside the hall slow down as well."

"So, uh, if we're all agreed that Delegate Soler will introduce that one, what's next on the list?"

She should probably figure out whether it makes sense to say anything about the natural resources committee she wants to introduce tomorrow. She was pissed about Coeliaris bringing her education proposals before the floor without talking to the education committee at all, and this isn't really the same thing, but she doesn't want anyone else to feel the same way about her. She just also doesn't want the secretary to write it down and for everyone to know about it before it happens. Is that stupid? Maybe that's stupid. She can ask just the Archduke Requena right after committee, however terrifying that feels, but - ugh. Maybe she can ask everyone? After the committee is officially over? Maybe it'll work?

She'll plan to do that and see if she's brave enough.

"Somebody was going to talk to the Songbird? That one definitely shouldn't be me."

"I sent a messenger to find her. Hopefully she'll be found soon and be here to consult. We can get started drafting something for performances while we wait, I think."

Laia is eventually dragged in, complete with her new shadowy defender. "Hello everyone!" she says cheerily. (She's an actress.) "I'm so sorry about the misunderstanding earlier, if I had only known - but it's all to be resolved now, yes?"

"Songbird, thank you for coming. As best we can, yes. Really I was terribly embarrassed I didn't think of it myself; one of my oldest allies in Kintargo is an opera singer and she would never forgive me if I didn't get this fixed. My initial thought was a performance license for a venue, with a deposit - I think it would have to be large, like for publishers, the floor seemed pretty clear about keeping those high - and then work out terms to make clear that changing the scripts is fine."

"So a trouble I have with the model where you pay a deposit is that - so we're used to the censors, right? And they were dreadful, but almost always, once they approved something, you were good to go. The exception was Pezzack, and you can tell from how dramatically that blew up that it wasn't happening everywhere all the time! Whereas - if I write a play, and there is no one in the world who can tell me, yes, I am sure this play is fine, then I must take on the task of the censor myself, and I must be right every time. If it's fine for a week and then there's a change in the weather and the eighth night someone takes it amiss? I'm meant to have predicted that and staked the deposit on it. If the principal actor for the villain is unprovocative but the understudy delivers a song a bit differently and remains in some hooligan's mind when they take to the streets? Again my responsibility. There is no point at which I can relax and go on with the work if the deposit is held hostage forever against my accurate divination. Possibly you have some scheme involving Abadarans but I've never met an Abadaran and have no idea how their own divine powers extend here."

"The law we passed this morning says anything approved by a censorship board was fine, right, it just also said it wasn't making a censorship board? Could we pass a new law that adds a censorship board without getting rid of the other parts of the law that mean you don't always need to go past a censorship board?"

"The problem is that Cheliax is very large and to have a censorship board with enough literate men - let alone decent men with reasonable judgment - to staff it would take money, and as much as I would like us to be able to have one that can approve so quickly that even pamphlets could get published in a week if they were reasonable, I think orphanages, administering justice, whatever we do for education, and an army that both could stand up to invasion and can be brought into cities in case of riots without doing more damage than the riots, are places we need to spend a great deal of money we do not really have. So I don't think we can fairly devote, to a board of censors, the gold they'd need to do their job well, or anything close to it. Not this year or next, and my guess is not much better than yours on how many years it will be."

Thoughtful frown. "What if there were a censorship board but only for theater and things like that? So it wouldn't need to spend all its time reading the pamphlets, and you wouldn't need to pay as many people, and you could maybe do it city by city so the costs are more spread out — how much would that cost? —Sorry if that's a stupid idea, I'm not trying to have stupid ideas, I just... don't know how much it costs to have a government."

"It's hard to have precise numbers; it was the Crown and the Rack that paid for it before, which is to say, Hell paid for it. I considered local censors before I talked with the Archduke, because you're right, it would divide the work and the cost and put it in those places benefiting most from it, but he convinced me it would be an ugly confusing patchwork in practice. It might work better for performances, but it would make it very difficult to have a play or opera tour - for something very significant or heavily favored by the Queen or the Archmages might be approved statewide, like Wraxton's new play from Pezzack, but anyone else would need to send an agent ahead to each city by months to negotiate and be sure they'd be allowed to perform. I'm not sure, Songbird, would that be easier than I think?"

"It sounds difficult but not insurmountable at least in my region."

"I think the case for performances being licensed on a city-by-city basis is stronger than for books, because performances are not, as books are, copied out by the dozen and transported at the bottom of a cart, but far more individual, but it would make touring companies' business near-impossible and have a dreadfully disunifying effect on the nation. But, as the Archduchess says, we have a great shortage of literate, wise men with experience in lands beyond Cheliax who could be trusted to staff a censorship board, and most of them are urgently needed for other work. I'd want to talk to friends of mine outside the committee and outside the convention about the censorship bill, to see what clever ideas they have to protect the theater."

Enric doesn’t care much about this himself. Never been to a theater, wasn’t around that one time a traveling show was in town. But he sees one important part.

”To me, looks better to have the censorship board, by crown or by city, even if they only have a few people and take a long time to approve shows. If something is being put in front of a crowd, better to have someone working for the law to look at it and say if it’s legal and won’t cause trouble.”

”Because of what Laia said, how it isn’t fair to the theater people to never be sure if they made a mistake and are about to get arrested. Especially with new laws that haven’t been tested yet.”

Enric doesn’t mention that, as far as he’s heard, a few specific people read the law about what’s legal to say and still got it wrong. He doesn’t say things about specific people.

”But it also because having someone who is the law checking will work better to stop trouble. Especially if it’s by city. People know their homes best, someone from a city will know what kind of things could start a riot, better than someone who’s never been there. 

She nods at Enric's comment about it being unfair if the actors can never be sure if they're going to be arrested. "In Pezzack the Asmodeans tried to kill a bunch of actors for putting on a play that the censors had already approved, when we write the law we should definitely make sure that people can't be executed for putting on a play that the censors said was okay if they don't break any other laws doing it."

"We might say the smaller censor jurisdictions are by duchy, and the dukes can give people in their cities authority to be a censor board, but it still covers the whole duchy. That still has some disunifying effect and restriction on touring, but much less, and it could put a duchy at the mercy of whichever city is most permissive, but the duke doesn't have to trust all of them. I certainly wouldn't let anyone set a censor board up in Vyre, for example. Other perspectives would be helpful, though; I'm inclined to be quick, but mostly because I feel I promised, on the floor, to handle correcting the oversight promptly; a few days or a week would do little harm in the bigger picture."

"Perhaps more relevantly, Songbird Solandra, what are the most important things to explicitly protect? We want to be sure we cover prose and poetry, speech and song. Sheet music for instruments is likely on safe ground. But what should be thinking about around that? Modifying scripts, you mentioned. Is distributing them tricky? What else are important steps from buying a foreign script to putting it on?"

"We almost always get them via Isger if we don't have them already or write them in-house or get them from elsewhere in Cheliax, though sometimes they got them from somewhere else so they've already been through a pass of edits. We could start getting them from somewhere else but we'd have to figure out how and haven't yet, and I don't know how long it will take though I'd hope in a perfect world to go through my church. The cast needs copies, and the crew and orchestra needs versions marked up for their own cues. We usually want to be able to sell programs but losing that wouldn't be as awful."

"Isger is fine, I was just trying to draw the net broadly to avoid missing anything. So, let's see:

Reusing scripts; seems fine as we have it.

Writing new scripts; has the same problems as any other publication but not any more immediately.

Passing on modified scripts to another cast and crew; not currently covered. Might be tricky.

Importation from elsewhere; not an immediate problem, and while I would personally love to give the Church of Shelyn an easier path to approval I don't think the floor would.

Copies for the cast; does need to be included in the rights granted.

Marking up scripts; likewise, and I would guess we need to stay quite generous in how many different versions are allowed.

Programs; probably ought to go through normal publishing rules, and if they're handbills or posters for advertising I think definitely must, but for within the theater only we might work an exception.

Does that sound about right?"

"The thing that most concerns me is - scripts often have very sparse stage directions. There's a deep layer of interpretation on top of the written dialogue - am I smirking, do I sob, do I pause dramatically, are all the other characters hanging on my every word or ignoring me while I monologue and make a fool of myself? - and that's the main thing I expect will give a petty-censor pause. He'll say, I can't just stamp this approved and then be safe, if one of the actors rolls his eyes I'll be liable for every stupid thing the audience does. And the old censor boards would tell us where to be careful but the new publishing houses won't have that experience."

“They said the convention was private even if it’s more than eight people, could we do that for a theater? Let them pass papers around so long as no copy gets to anyone outside?”

"I don't think so; the problem, after all, is that a theatrical performance can start a riot, and any bill that passes the floor will be one that tries to approve only those that won't and not those that will."

nod “That’s all I have.”

Though now he wonders if they could get a bigger group declared private in another way. Let a nobles staff count as private, let a church use internal documents without having to publish, then eventually it gets to theaters and… lawyer nests? Enric isn’t sure on the details, he’ll have to ask his friends who actually know writing. 

If the problem is that theater causes riots and nobody knows how to prevent it from doing so, that seems like a reason not to prioritize having theater performances. Given that, you know, Chelish theater sucks. 

This would probably be impolitic to observe.

"I think saying that the passing of the theater's bills within its bounds is private might be achievable even if it can't be considered private in any more general way, which I agree it definitely can't. It's probably not worth it, though."

"People want to bring their programs home, but again not being able to sell programs won't cripple the industry as much as not being able to perform."

"Indeed. And I think if this means that programs become relatively dull and not worth making for shorter runs or in smaller towns, then they will, in places which are not already very tense, be publishable by ordinary publishing licenses. I think we can pass on from that topic."

"So there's the matters of copies and emendments for the cast and crew, selling onward marked-up scripts, assuring those who publish scripts in the first place that they won't be responsible for performances which are inflammatory, and assuring those who perform that the law won't suddenly call them inflammatory despite keeping the performance stable. I think the first two are matters of wording properly, now that we know to consider them, and the latter two are much more difficult."

"...Probably it's not wise to include in whatever we write that any exceptions we make don't apply to blood opera or anything else like it. It's mostly symbolic anyway, those ought to be illegal for the ordinary reasons."

"What's, uh, blood opera? I'm not from the cities." 

"We didn't do it in my company, but it's an opera where you enlist a convict as a character who's to be killed and then actually kill them. I'm not positive you couldn't do it in a beneficial way, giving someone a redemption arc to play their way through and try to believe in - if they're going to be killed anyway, I mean - but this is neither the time nor place to get into that."

"Wow, what the fuck."

He isn't going to say it but he really thinks "actually you could do blood opera if you fixed a few things" is an idea that ought to disqualify you from the convention and also all Good alignments.

"It is an Asmodean perversion," he agrees.

Enric has heard of this one. Mostly as one of the many, many, many, stories about young men or women who believe a stranger who promises a good life in the city. The man says he’ll make her an opera star, and then he does… for one night.

If Shelyn renounces her on the spot for her notion then she doesn't indicate this in any way!

It's not like he didn't know Shelyn was falling down on the job.

"If we're really worried about the murder opera we could explicitly say in the law that it doesn't make it legal to do actual crimes as part of your theater performance. Which would also cover the case where someone tries to use a play to get people to go commit murder or something."

"I don't think we need to specify that, merely to not specify that the theater is protected from charges of committing normal crimes."

"I've seen it more common to just place the convict as an... understudy, who is dressed up in a matching costume and only brought on stage for the death scene itself. Seeing it performed was excellent practice in concealing feelings of disgust so no one near me could detect them. But I am not, actually, truly worried, and if a few bloodthirsty votes vainly hoping this would relegalize it would be lost by explicitly banning it then it is not worth doing so."

And if they're reading the minutes of this committee they're intelligent enough to realize it won't, and no loss.

The theater is bad! News to follow... never, because they've re-instituted censorship without also re-instituting government news.

Victòria spent half the weekend expecting to be tortured to death and on some fundamental level finds the prospect of being executed by drawn-out opera performance more horrifying. If they'd just brought her out to die at the end that's — less upsetting, probably — but it still feels like it's treating executions like some sort of stupid game for rich people. Which to be fair they kind of are, sometimes, but just because this is kind of a stupid and pathetic way to feel about being executed doesn't mean she doesn't feel that way.

Oh yes it was absolutely making them entertainment for rich people. If somehow no one had been recently convicted who looked similar enough, one would be mysteriously found to have committed high treason. (Not in Kintargo. Restraint of her disgust only went so far. But the few blood opera venues noticed this and went outside the city to do it, because her power only went so far too.) That was the point. That the amusement of the high was more important than the lives of the low.

Fuck Asmodeanism.

Oh, it's not that she has any doubts that blood opera was entertainment for rich people, she just expects there's plenty of entertaining rich people you can do just by executing people the normal way with normal types of torture.

But yes, fuck Asmodeanism.

"The traditional policy practiced in most countries outside the reach of Asmodeus" that permit theater "is that an Office of the Censor, based in either the capital or with branches in every major city, has the duties of issuing licenses to each approved theatrical troupe and approving each script individually, charging fees for both to defray the costs of his position. The reason we would expect to do worse is that we have neither the men nor the money to carry this out effectively, and the chief question is if there is some innovation in the law" innovation in the law is not a dirty word in the lands of Aroden "we can design that would hope to do better."

"I don't know how to find the people, but if the money is an issue, could they just charge more to check the scripts? Or is it, like, they're already charging the most that would be fair to charge, and that's still not enough to cover the costs?"

"No, I think that can be done. A partial refund in the case of a rejection, perhaps; that would discourage turning it into licit bribery by requiring nine variations rejected before considering anything seriously, which I suspect would be the naive result. Getting the men and getting them together, to establish a shared understanding of what is permissible and then train any future additions, however, is still a cost which is harder to defray, and one which must be paid upfront. ...We might be able to prevail on the Queen's consort to allow us to import some of his censors; I've heard it said he attends the theater religiously, every week when not on campaign."

"A very insightful idea," he says, making a note of it.

Quietly, “Who do we mean by queen’s consort?”

"Emperor Cyprian of the Galtans, Her Majesty Aspexia's husband," whispers an aide to him, because Her Highness likes this one and didn't wave her off when she moved to answer him.

“Thank you.”

Enric still isn’t sure what it means to call someone’s husband a consort. Maybe just a noble word or maybe it’s something scandalous. But if Cyprian is helping with theatre… still not sure what to think, but seems helpful.

"The man who ended the chaos in Galt, and the finest general and statesman of our age," says Xavier, "though of course a ruler can only truly be judged by the grandchildren of his subjects."

Wow, by this metric Gaspodar fucking sucked.

"How much would it actually cost to pay them to agree what's allowed and train more people? More like sixty gold or more like six thousand?"

“Not sure on the number, but would it save money to find whoever was doing censorship before? They’d need to know the new laws, but already know the right way to read, and how to stop plays causing riots.”

"I would expect hundreds or thousands of crowns a year for each city, not tens of thousands, with costs that could be offset by taxing script submissions and theaters?" He looks at Laia, who might know this at all. "This is not my field of expertise." 

"I'm afraid I have no idea how much money the censors made; talking to them at all was generally the producer's job."

“If we bring in the old censors, one thing they won’t know is how to tell which plays are good and which are evil. Maybe we can bring in more Shelynites and ask for help with that part?”

"Could we find someone from the Westcrown playhouses to ask about the cost? Maybe not in time to finish writing the law today, but enough that we can get it done tomorrow?"

"I didn't track the censor's costs, but I did know the taxes paid by the theaters and their companies. I would estimate most of them made about two thousand gold a year, before the taxes, their actor's salaries, and all their other expenses. If a twentieth part of that had to go to censors, in most years, that could fund about a hundred gold of censors per troupe, which could approach a thousand a year in large cities but would stay well below that in the towns. I'd guess a dozen new plays a year per theater, give or take a doubling, and I don't know how many were rejected for each one approved but I'd expect maybe a third as many never approved with an average of two tries each before giving up, and for the successes to take something like three tries each to get their success."

"So that says that a censor - or a team of two if we follow Delegate Porras's suggestion - would see about, let me do the sums, eight scripts from the failures and thirty-six from the successes, call that forty scripts a year per company, of which they'd approve ten and return the other thirty for revisions or flat rejection. Maybe as much as eighty, or as low as twenty. And receive about a hundred gold from the troupe for that labor. That's on the very low end of the Archduke's estimate but I think one script a week for a hundred gold a year is... possible, and if two censors or teams can cover at least three companies it looks likely to be sustainable."

A hundred gold is kind of an astonishingly large amount of money. On the other hand, Delegate Ardiaca paid more than that to get the azata to talk to her, so maybe it's just that everything you might spend money on is astonishingly expensive when you're a noble or the government.

An ordinary laborer makes five gold a year, though he'll rarely see as much as one gold in one place. A competent clerk, twenty, and likewise. A good clerk, one who does things you didn't ask for yet and does them well, forty or so. One who also needs needs specialist experience or has to be imported from Absalom because we don't have very many Shelynites and they could be selling spells and enjoying life more anywhere other than Cheliax? Yeah, you get up to a hundred pretty quickly.

"All right, that sounds feasible. Do we need to draft language now, or is there additional research to be done tonight first?"

She's not antsy about the meeting ending and Laia leaving. Nuh-uh. Not her.

City types and their coins. Enric knows what a story and a song cost, it’s being friends with someone who sings or tells tales. Or, sometimes, putting up a traveler for a few days. 

"We'll want to try to produce a quick draft so our friends can tear it to pieces when we show it to them this evening, I think," Xavier says.

“What’s happening this evening? Who is tearing what to pieces?”

Enric showed up late to the morning meeting, on account of not knowing there would be a morning meeting. Is this something they mentioned during the morning before he showed up? Or is he just in the dark?

"- My mistake. I mean that we should consult sensible people we know as our schedules permit before reassembing tomorrow, to get their opinions on whether the bill is a good one and what flaws exist in our first draft."

Oh, that's a good idea, she should try to remember to ask Alicia when she tells her about the pamphlet.

Okay that makes sense. Nothing to be irritated about.

”Thank you. Another question. Does this mean we’re meeting in the morning again? Or just the normal time. And is it legal to show the draft to people, or only if they’re delegates?”

"No more morning meetings unless something else comes up where we want to be very fast and have a proposal early in the morning floor session before someone else proposes a worse solution for the same problem. I wish I could promise that won't happen again but I'm not sure even the gods could. I think it is extremely unlikely anyone would try to prosecute you for showing the draft to people outside the building, and quite likely the Queen or President would intervene to protect you if they tried, but keeping yourself to discussing it with a handful of others at a time and not involving a whole roomful in the discussion would keep you on the safe side."

"Well, if you should need me to consult again I can generally be found at my temple," says Laia, getting up to see if anyone stops her.

Enric nods. Queen and Aroden are protecting him, but still be careful. Got it. Draft won’t get shown at the cafe. If there even is a cafe, now. 

Though, if he has to bring people to his room to talk about laws, they really need to recruit more men to the radicals. For decency. Other than him, it looks like it’s girls, and an archduke and lawyer both in the form of women. 

If you organize Theo's going to take your side but he has not actually decided that because he's not quite sure what the main issues will be and the moderate nobles other than Chelam haven't offended him.

None of us have any idea how being a political party works, and the one ally who does know says she isn’t going to be our leader. We also do not have a big house to have a dinner party in. Organizing might take a while. 

"Thank you for your willingness to come here and explain the situation to us," Xavier says to Laia. "May the righteous gods smile upon you."

"And on you as well!" And off she goes.

Jilia will also nod her thanks but she thanked her on the way in and two archducal thanks from different sources is enough for anybody. (And too much for some.)

"So, as I said before, we have the wording problems of copies and emendments for the cast and crew, and of selling onward marked-up scripts, plus defining the censors and fees."

A Publication Statute for the Purposes of Theater, Song, and other Performances

The theater, opera, and other forms of performance being highly valued in ours and other virtuous countries, and not being well covered by the laws governing text publications; and performers having admirable talents for recognizing works which will have great impact on their audiences but considerably less talent for assessing whether those great impacts will cause public unrest; we recognize the necessity of establishing another body to approve and reject performances within Cheliax. Therefore:

A board of censors for performed works, including theater, song, and opera, shall be established, its personnel divided among the cities and towns of Cheliax but its remit of approval stretching across the country. Any script, libretto, sheet music, etc., which is meant as the basis of a performance may be submitted to this board for approval. The statute shall refer to all of these as 'scripts'. Scripts approved for performance by this board are also approved for publication as text by the Fourth Publication Statute.

This board of censors shall initially be staffed as teams of two, of which one shall be hired from the censors employed under the infernal law, who have expertise in which scripts are likely to be dangerous to public order, and one shall be a Songbird of Shelyn or individual personally vouched for in this capacity by a Songbird censor, for their expertise in Good and promoting it via art. The authors of the statute expect that such Songbirds will be found primarily in other nations of the Inner Sea in the first years. Approval or rejection of a work requires agreement by the two.
This composition shall be reconsidered in ten years from the statute's passing by Her Majesty, or by an appropriate body she has granted legislative authority to, if such exists at that time.
Other statutes or acts of the Queen may designate individuals or groups trusted with the expertise and judgment to reject scripts which are dangerous to either public order or public goodness and give those people the right to act as performance censors without assistance even before this point.

A script being submitted for approval requires a fee of six gold pieces. If the script is rejected, either entirely or with proposed revisions for resubmission, four gold pieces will be returned to the submitter; if it is approved the censor (or pair acting as a censor) shall keep the fee to support himself and his work. If it cannot be reviewed within one month five gold pieces must be returned and an accurate count of the number of times each censor (or pair) has done this per month must be submitted to their superiors to demonstrate the scale of need for more censors to be hired in the area.

And to limit misuse for graft, but you don't need to come out and say that.

Approved scripts may be performed freely by any theater company, dancing company, musical group, combination of any of the three, etc. This statute shall refer to any of these as a 'performing company'. If a script's approval is revoked by some legal means not here provided, it shall not be criminal to perform it until such revocation is duly promulgated. Any unrest or crime which results from a performance, by the audience or by others beyond it, is not the fault of the performers or authors unless it is determined it was anticipated and intentional.

Scripts may be edited, rearranged, marked up, abridged, translated between dialects, and subject to modification in other ways, and distributed about the performing company and those staff necessary to facilitating the performance, without losing these protections, and copies made for this purpose may omit the Arcane Mark and be considered private use. If this privilege is abused, it may become criminal, either in the case that the results in contravention of the censorship laws are anticipated and intentional, or if they were unintentional but those responsible are told to desist, and then fail to do so.

A work, once approved, is permitted anywhere in Cheliax where this knowledge has reached. In order to facilitate this, copies of approvals should be sent to repositories in the archducal capitals and these repositories kept current with each other, with all appropriate swiftness.

An edited copy of a script which was performed without issue may be sold to another performing company for their use without violating the statute of approval which requires that it match the version approved by the censor exactly. (Care should be taken that this is truly for another performing company but unintentional violation which is not willfully violating or circumventing censorship law is not criminal.) Purchasers who suspect the modifications may be extensive or drastically change the meaning should request a comparison with the approved version of the script from their local censor, for which there shall be no fee, and while failure to do so is not proof of intention for untoward results it may be considered supporting evidence for untoward intention.

 

This statute shall place no restrictions on music without words or performed without sheet music, traditional mummer's plays without scripts, or other performances not already governed by the laws of censorship established since the overthrow of the infernal regime. These remain legal unless they violate other existing law not specific to publications or performances.

"I... think I have everything, there. I tried to be narrow, since I ought to present it myself."

This is too big of a law to remember, but theater people can memorize a lot more words at once, so it’s probably fine for them. 

“I have one question on the songs part. Does it have anything to do with teaching people songs without writing the words or music on paper? Or are there still no laws against that?”

"Still none, like the very last part says. I don't think I needed to say it, but I thought I should anyway."

“Okay, good. Wasn’t sure if it also meant songs without paper but with words. There’s a lot of important ones that have words and weren’t approved by anyone, I don’t think.”

Some songs have to be changed anyway, now that the queen isn’t evil and the good gods already came back. Aroden already did from the halls of power to the fortress tower, not a stone will be left on stone so maybe they can change it to ‘was left’? 

"I should tweak that to be a little more clear, but yes, for certain. If you don't write it down, this shouldn't touch you. This is purely a town and city law. Though I might invite you all to share a box of seats with me before we head home, if there's a performance in Westcrown that would show how enthralling theater and opera can be and why why the cities like it so much."

"I don't see any issues, but I can ask around this evening in case someone's thought of things that I haven't." Six gold is still a lot of money to spend on having someone do one thing for you but at least it's a comprehensible amount to spend all at once.

"I doubt I can find anyone this evening but I believe I have a second-hand connection to the proprietor of one of the smaller theaters in the city, I can possibly talk to him tomorrow at lunch."

Songs are safe. Enric feels a bit embarrassed at being worried, if it wasn’t at all a problem. 

The offer of the opera also doesn’t sit right. First, because it feels almost like the thing small nobles sometimes try to do, where they offer nice things from the manor to whoever cooperates with them. Second, because it’s accepting a gift from without understanding exactly what it means. If it was any archduchess or archduke except Jilia, he would have to be really careful about it. But she’s a normal person turned into an archduke, so he thinks it really is just to show why city people like the opera, and should be safe. 

“Thank you for the invitation, if there is a performance.”

It's actually scheming, in that her invitation would also be going to everyone else she wants to join the Party of the Commons as one of its notables (and she'd warn Xavier of this and expect not to see him). Politicians are equally fey as lawyers.

Oh no she’s been transformed into an archduke more thoroughly than expected.

"If there's no immediate comments, let's get copies of that made." the last line says no restrictions on music without words, music performed without sheet music, traditional mummer's plays... etc. "And I have one last thing, which I expect will be quick up or down. Count Ardiaca had the non-binding proposal for a second convention in forty years, but if it doesn't go through a committee it can't be law. There's no obvious committee for it, but Rights is reasonable enough, and I'd like to have that ready tomorrow if he hasn't found a better place. Here's my wording:"

In recognition that future generations will be more recovered from Asmodeanism than the present generation, and have just as much right to decide the structure of Her Majesty's government as it,

We affirm that there shall be, beginning the first week of Sarenith 4754 unless an earlier date is set by Her Majesty, another Constitutional Convention, with the right to revise, add, and overrule the Constitution of 4714,

And that it shall have either the same structure as the present convention, or another structure set by Her Majesty no later than Kuthona 4753.

"Having another convention in forty years sounds good to me."

"Yes," he agrees "- Her Majesty or her heir, perhaps?" Tragically there's no way to be more obscure.

"It's hard to imagine anything dangerous enough to kill the queen, but she'd be approaching eighty by then, and no one's found a preventive for age that works on anyone but the caster last I looked into it. Probably best."

This is actually a massive understatement in that he did an entire research prospectus in which age resistance, while not a central feature, was a significant element. He's also omitting entirely the fairly confident belief that, well, she doesn't need it to work for anyone but the caster. Probably the archdukes already know that.

“We aren’t getting it right this time, are we. Future generations more recovered from Asmodenism… I hope they’re more ready than we are.”

“Is there politics to this? If this comes from our committee, is this taking a side in the nobles arguing, and will it make us seem more radical or less radical?”

"This will make the bill seem more radical," he agrees, "but since the Forms of the Convention committee failed I don't know if there is a more appropriate place for it." 

"I think we may do reasonably well, Delegate Porras. I am sure that even if we do, our children and grandchildren will do better. We will make mistakes, even if we on the whole succeed. And they will learn from them."

"I intend to ask the Count to immediately take the floor after me, ask him to propose any amendments he likes to it and then immediately accept them, and then hand over the position of the motion's defender to him as much as possible. We, and I, may be radicals in the eyes of many, but I think we can avoid that dominating perceptions of it."

"...which count?"

Same question.

"The Count of Gandisa, Joan-Pau Ardiaca i Cerda, who proposed the non-binding motion for a new convention this morning. He was the first to speak after President Cotonnet, before the arguments started, if you remember?"

"I remember the man, there's just so many counts, you can't say 'the count' the way one could say 'the archduchess' as there's only one of you."

"I believe the Count of Gandisa is only considered radical by men from the northern reaches," he agrees.

"Which ones are, uh, the northern reaches — I don't know where most of the nobles are from —"

"- Molthune province," he says, "and the other areas north of Menador acknowledging His Grace the Lord Protector Ferran Nefol y Artegas de Villec as acting regent of the Chelish throne. Among the more, hmm, closer in mindset to the Lord Protector of the northern nobles, he is spoken of rather the way the more conservative noblemen of the south might refer to Valia Wain."

"...but the Queen is the Queen of Cheliax? Why do they think someone else is in charge of Cheliax? ...also, I thought Molthune was a country, not just a province, Feliu said it was a country."

Thanks, Feliu. "Molthune was a province of Cheliax during the Great Chelish Civil War that placed the Asmodeans in power. However, it was never conquered by Asmodean armies, and served as the last fallback of the armies of the Royal and Imperial Army of Holy Cheliax, the anti-Asmodean coalition formed in the last years of the war, who finally agreed to an uneasy truce with the Asmodeans to build up their forces. Since then it has been governed as an independent country by a sequence of Lords Protector who carried out the duties of the sovereign, awaiting the reclamation of the rest of Cheliax before settling the matter of who they would recognize as the rightful heir to the Chelish throne, but at no point did Molthune ever formally declare independence from Cheliax. His Grace the Lord Protector has sent Her Majesty the Queen congratulations on her victory, but neither he nor this convention have yet come to a final decision as to whether Molthune will rejoin the Empire in fact as well as in name or attempt to actively secede outright from Her Majesty's realm."

"A number of its nobles were invited back by the Queen, to take up their ancestral titles. The Archduke de Sirmium here is one; Count Ardiaca is another; Ser Feliu I suspect would have been eligible but refused, though he is a close friend of Count Ardiaca and accompanied him on his journey here. All of those, naturally, have very strong opinions on the subject of reunification, and most of those who chose to come here rather than remain are not very pleased with the Lord Protector, and the Count is definitely one of those. There is a dispute within Molthune province initially about independence for the far northern parts of Molthune but which became particularly loud in the cities as well when the Lord Protector did not assist in the Four-Day War. Count Ardiaca took men from both sides of that dispute and came here anyway to try and help regardless; much like Select Wain, his intentions were certainly Good but many people objected intensely to the way he did it and called it anarchic." Because it absolutely was. She's never going to offer to let him take her rapier for a moment, because Cayden might not let him give it back. "He is on a far end of a political dispute most of us have remained entirely uninvolved in, and a moderate in most of the ones in which we are involved."

Wow, that all sure is context she didn't have about the guy.

"Indeed. Should he return to Molthune Province while the present Lord Protector reigns I believe he will be hanged for piracy." There's a pamphlet someone put out this morning summarizing the events, probably Joan-Pau, but he's really not sure he wants to mention that.

"...Well, I don't know about all the noble politics, it sounds pretty confusing, but I think it's good that he came to help, even if he was Chaotic about it. Why do people think he shouldn't have, are they — the sort of person who thinks you should always follow the laws even if the laws were made by Asmodeus—"

Enric remembers that count, thought he was called Arcadia. Took his idea for the judiciary committee, but to stop the nobles and Wain arguing. Was arguing with the Acevedo noble about which gods they didn’t like, and agreed that virtuous churches should decide. Against slavery, in the way where slavery ends today not next week. Wanted to put that Ruben guy in charge of the convention rules and being bribed committee, so for honest peasants and against the greedy selfish bastards. Maybe a secret radical, but only the nobles from the north think that. 

Sounds like someone already sort of on their side, so if proposing a new convention helps him out, that’s good. Unless he gets hanged for piracy, then he won’t be able to help out in return. Enric hopes this Molthune place is really far north and if they have a war about whether they’re a province, it stays very far away.

"There are principles of Law I have never broken, despite working in an Asmodean hierarchy, and which he has. And while I would do the same, very few military men would. I would be happy to explain in more detail in a private setting without an audience."

"Back to the bill, let's change it to 'Her Majesty, or her duly-confirmed heir' in both places?"

Noble politics is so confusing!!!

"That change sounds fine to me."

Nod nod nod.

That's maybe sneaking a little bit of radical implication in, Archduchess. In that it's asserting that someone else other than her needs to do the confirming. But you'll probably get away with it.

"Sounds good to me."

“Sounds fine to me too, new convention and the words.”

"Mm-hm."

"Yep, seems fine."

"Alright, let's vote. Aye."

"Aye." They could probably skip this, but it won't take a minute.

He just said mm-hm. "Aye."

"Aye."

"Aye."

“Aye.”

"Aye."

"Unanimous again. Thank you. Anything else before we finish up for the day?"

"—Oh, I almost forgot! I asked the azata about the skeletons thing and it said raising criminals as undead to make them work the mines is definitely Evil — uh, it didn't think Delegate Requena i Cortes was being Evil on purpose, exactly, it said he was doing, uh, a thing that a lot of mortals do where they really want something and they have a way to get it by hurting people so they convince themselves it's not really that bad to hurt people. And that this was a, the words it used were 'horrible tragedy,' but that you probably weren't like Delegate Ibarra or anything. —I'm not sure if you already heard about that, I tried to get some people to pass a message along, when I — wasn't sure I'd be able to tell you myself — but I don't know if they actually did."

Well, looks like that’s getting picked back up from off the table. Will this be every day of rights committee? Enric knew the azata would take his side though, never heard of an angel being in favor of skeletons.

"Avenger, I do not, did not, and did not say I did, support the law. I said it was law in Molthune, and explained why. I acknowledge it is Evil; I did this during our last conversation as well, as you may well recall." We are being recorded, here. "But I cannot say that the duty of a legislator is to avoid ever doing Evil. It is said in the Acts of Iomedae that she kept an hourglass in the main training hall of the Knights of Ozem, whose every grain of sand - thirty thousand of them - was a person dying, and turned it over every day to show the Knights all the people in the world they had failed to save. The Judge may not count those I fail against my soul, but my duty is not to the judge but to all the people of Cheliax alive today and all those who will be born in the future, and I do not think we can simply do nothing that an angel would tell us was wrong without far more of our nation's citizens living and yet to be born finding themselves impoverished, slain and damned than if we had been willing to accept that sometimes the least bad option would make a paladin fall. Let us avoid doing evil because it will betray our responsibilities, because it will damn our people, because it will increase suffering, not because Pharasma disapproves."

"Delegate Requena i Cortes, when you were a child in school, did they have the student who did the best on a test or an essay or sometimes just a normal homework assignment whip the student that did the worst? —Just yes or no is fine, I have somewhere I'm going with this."

"They did not."

"In Cheliax every school I've ever heard of did that. And I assumed that was just — normal, that they did that everywhere, that you couldn't have a school if you didn't do that. But it turns out that actually it isn't normal, in places that aren't being ruled by Asmodeus. When I mentioned it to the azata it, uh, freaked out and told me I should leave the country. 

And I think your skeletons thing is a little like that — uh, not exactly like that, I'm not saying people in Molthune are anything like Asmodeans, but — I think it is something that sounds to you like it's basically normal, and so you're not really thinking about whether you could just not raise anyone as undead. Lastwall gets its metal from somewhere." If it turns out that Lastwall is raising people as skeletons she's going to feel really stupid but Lastwall is Good so she's pretty sure they aren't.

"Feliu told me that in Molthune people thought they needed to do the skeletons thing so that they could make weapons to kick Asmodeus out of Cheliax. Except first of all, their weapons weren't even what kicked out Asmodeus, second of all, Asmodeus got kicked out already. We don't need metal weapons to fight Asmodeus anymore, we won, there's obviously still a lot that needs to happen but having lots of metal weapons won't fix all the broken laws, or make the orphanages not suck, or save the souls of people who count as Evil even though they haven't done anything really bad." Technically it could help with the Evil nobles but she has enough sense not to say so.

"And it also sounds like you're thinking of it like — whipping a child, where there's sometimes a good reason to do it, and not like sacrificing someone to a demon, where everyone knows you should never do it to anyone ever. Or, uh, I guess maybe you don't think there are things you shouldn't do to anyone ever. I think most people who are trying at all to do the right thing think there are things like that, I am literally a priestess of the goddess of vengeance and I think there are things like that — uh, I'm not saying you aren't trying to do the right thing, just, like, there are people that aren't and I wasn't counting them. Anyways. I think the skeletons thing is the sort of thing you shouldn't do to people ever.

...but I also think that, even if you don't think it's that kind of thing, uh — I'm not sure if I understood your last point right, but — I think you'd have to do the courts really really well to make it so it didn't... cause a lot of suffering and betray a lot of people? Like — I don't know how to explain this right, it might be a stupid argument — but if you say that people who do bad enough crimes get executed, then if the magistrate isn't an Asmodean or something they're not going to have very much reason to want to convict innocent people. Like, maybe sometimes they'll get bribed to do it, or someone powerful will accuse an innocent person of a crime, or something like that, but that won't happen most of the time. Whereas if they can send the innocent person off to be raised as a skeleton in the mines, it's kind of like... they're being bribed every time to find them guilty? Maybe that's silly, I don't know. And there's ways around it, like if the paladins stay around, or the Queen enchants all the magistrates in the country to follow the laws, or we make the magistrates say under Truthtelling whether they decided wrong on purpose and execute them if they say yes, but I don't want to count on any of those things." Maybe she'd've counted on them before the Judiciary Committee got taken over, but not now, not when she basically has to count on paladins knowing about all the ways powerful Chelish people get away with hurting innocent people.

"And I know this is going to sound kind of pathetic, and I know it's not the sort of reason anyone should be making laws, but — you seem remarkably decent for a nobleman, and I might be wrong about that, but if I'm not wrong I wouldn't want you to accidentally end up in Hell and be tortured forever because you were trying to make it allowed to turn people into skeletons." Wow, that sounded incredibly pathetic. Why did she say that. "...If you weren't actually saying that it should be legal to turn people into skeletons for doing crimes then I'm sorry for thinking you did, I thought that's what you were saying on the first day but maybe I misunderstood." 

(From her tone of voice it sounds like a sincere apology. It has not even slightly occurred to Victòria that Delegate Requena i Cortes might be worried about his comments from previous days making it into the record. He made them in a room full of people and didn't even tell them it was secret, that's not how anyone handles things they don't want people finding out about. As far as she's concerned it's totally possible that she misunderstood him for complicated noble politics reasons.)

"But — uh, I know I just said a lot of things" some of which were incredibly pathetic "at once, but — mostly I was trying to say the first thing. That if your country is raising people as undead all the time, it probably seems normal, the way it seemed normal when I got whipped for doing badly on a math test. And rather than saying 'turning people into undead is super Evil, but they do it in Molthune, we've got to get metal from somewhere, we'd better put in a special exception to our right to not be made into an undead,' we should figure out a way to not be super Evil, and take it as seriously as you'd take a country sacrificing people to demons, where you wouldn't just say that as long as they're getting something useful out of it it's the least bad option." Victòria has never heard of a country that lets you sacrifice people to demons so hopefully Molthune doesn't either.

Aaaaa! She's actually kind of proud of Ferrer for a bunch of thoughts in there, but aaaaa!

"Archduchess, may we break?"

"I think that both the Archduke and the Avenger made very good points just now, and this is an important isssue, and also when I said that we would benefit from a paladin of Iomedae on the committee this was at the top of my list of issues where I want their input. So yes, I would like to set it aside and break for the day."

"I am prepared to break." He'll start gathering papers, but not stop talking to Victoria, "Avenger, I understand. And I appreciate that you do not want me tortured forever." Is the official recording over? He's ready to keep talking. "I have responses to all of your points, which seem well-thought-out to me, but to start with I think the chief case for it being possible to make it legal to make undead - though, of course, only after due process of law - is that reanimating powerful Evil wizards and clerics as undead is one of the only ways to render resurrection of them impossible, I think the only way for spellcasters who have already been killed."

(Both Jilia's staff and the Convention's have indeed put away quills, and they are clearing everything else away.)

Victoria is right about this, and it sounds like she’s doing better alone than he would if he tried to help. His own arguments and suggestions about the problem go on the table for now. Those two are doing something more complicated than just skeletons, now, and it seems like it’s getting better not worse. 

Enric is proud of her. She stands against evil without hesitating; it’s obvious why Iomedae’s cleric worked side by side with her. He’s also scared that she isn’t being careful. She isn’t watching her words to never say anything about people, or thinking about when the scribes are writing things down, or noticing that Jilia just tried to give everyone an excuse to back off. Even if Aroden is protecting the convention, that isn’t for life. Eventually she’ll get herself killed. 

"Before about a week ago I thought of bringing people back from the dead as, like, the sort of thing that happened in stories." Meaning that she doesn't know how if he's leaving off non-skeleton options that are almost as good. Maybe she can ask someone else for more details — no, wait, most people will totally assume she wants to know so that she can murder people. "Do you know what Lastwall does when they execute powerful Evil spellcasters?"

It really seems like there should be options that don't involve skeletons at all. Final Blades, she guesses, they talked about that last time, except then you're putting people in Final Blades, which — maybe it's better than them going to work for Asmodeus, maybe it'd even be okay if you tried hard enough to give them what they deserved before you executed them — but still isn't something she'd just suggest.

"If they capture them in advance, they petrify them. If they don't, I suspect they either use necromancy or destroy the body and hope they aren't up against a cleric powerful enough to resurrect someone without one - almost no clerics are, but Asmodeus had an exception and Zon-Kuthon might."

"...If there's only a couple clerics that strong, could the archmages and the Queen just kill them?"

"Not in Nidal. Iomedae herself and the whole Shining Crusade asked about Nidal and were told they'd fail and it wouldn't be worth it. The Everwar was the whole Chelish Empire at its height trying, and the best they could do was forcing them to terms after a century even without their undead sorcerer-priest-kings intervening in their defense. Which they didn't, very suspiciously, and then the culture of Chelish nobility got slowly more tolerant of Evil until the Age of Glory failed and Nidal came in as a Thrune ally. And for once I believe their church when they say that was the intended result."

"Everywhere else, well, gods can elevate new ninth-circles. Also powerful wizards have ways of cheating death without those spells, at least the archmages and probably some seventh-circles."

Enric notices that this is a very different reason to make undead than because people want cheaper metal weapons. He suspects trickery. 

Victòria has also noticed this. 

"I think probably I need to learn more about magic before I can say for sure what we should do about Evil wizards." It'll be easier to persuade people not to do the skeletons thing if she has a non-skeletons proposal that isn't stupid. Maybe she can ask Lluïsa, Lluïsa is a wizard, and Lluïsa was defending her against the people who thought she was a murderous radical so hopefully she won't assume Victòria wants to know so that she can do murders. 

"But even if we can't come up with any other way to stop Evil wizards for good, I don't think — last week we were arguing about whether everyone should have a right not to be turned into a skeleton, or everyone except criminals, and even if we can't figure out another way to stop powerful spellcasters we should say 'no skeletons unless they're really powerful Evil spellcaster criminals,' not 'no skeletons unless they're criminals.' Most criminals are not Evil spellcasters. ...Also I still think we should try to find something else to do with the Evil spellcasters before we just assume it has to be skeletons."

He brought it up last time!

"For a moment, let me see if I understand your arguments correctly - am I correct that you are viewing this from the perspective of assuming that magistrates will seek to do evil because of the inherent wickedness of people in power, and must be restrained by the law?"

Well, almost everyone is wicked, so probably, but getting useful resources out of finding people guilty probably doesn't help things.

Not picking fights about this at this moment.

Wickedness is a nice way for him to phrase it, it covers the people who have done a lot of horrible things but technically don't count as Evil for some stupid reason. She frowns thoughtfully.

"...I think a week ago I'd have said that was exactly right, about people with power being wicked, or at least some kinds of power, whether or not they started out that way. But I think I was wrong about that, I don't think that's true of everyone anymore. Like, it turns out the Queen is Good, not just in the sense that it was really good to kick Asmodeus out of the country but in the sense that — she won't have people executed just for making her life inconvenient, even if they aren't powerful or important and even if no one would blame her or think she did anything wrong.

But — I don't know how to say this right, but — I think magistrates under Asmodeus tended to be a lot worse than normal people? Because they were all appointed by people who sucked a lot, and they were enforcing Evil laws, and obviously they were Asmodeans, and also if you take the sort of person who gets chosen to be a magistrate and give them the power to hurt innocent people if they want they're... just obviously going to hurt a lot of innocent people. And probably there's a way to find different magistrates that suck less? But I don't know how you'd make sure you didn't get anyone who sucked, apart from paladins or mind control or those sorts of thing.

And, like, ideally we wouldn't just want magistrates who aren't as wicked as actual Asmodeans, we'd want magistrates who won't take bribes, and won't automatically rule one way just because a nobleman or someone else powerful wants them to, and won't just make up reasons to convict people even if they really don't like them. All of which are also wicked, even if they're not as wicked as just deciding to have someone tortured to death for fun even though you know for sure they're innocent, but I think they're... the kind of wicked thing some people will do whether or not they're in power? If that makes sense? And — I don't want to have any magistrates who'd do that sort of thing, but I don't want to assume the Judiciary Committee will definitely come up with a plan that stops that from happening." The paladins wouldn't do it on purpose but they might not manage to stop it from happening by accident.

"...and no matter what kind of magistrates you have, I still think the law should — I mean, I don't know what kinds of rules you're thinking of when you say 'restrain' — but there should be some things they aren't allowed to do. But you'd need them even if the magistrates were basically just normal, you'd just need more if some of them might really suck. ...Does that answer your question?"

"Yes, I think so. And - I think I agree with you of today and disagree of the you of the week ago," he says, "but I think that you may still be underestimating the level of decency among normal people outside Cheliax; I for one am hardly a paragon among the nobility, and Asmodeus deliberately appointing wicked magistrates to damn his populace seems to me one case where experience in Cheliax may serve as a poor guide for experience where Asmodeus is not attempting to damn the entire population."

"...Maybe. How does Molthune stop magistrates from doing that sort of thing? What happens if a nobleman or a priest or a powerful wizard commits a crime, or accuses someone else of a crime that they didn't actually do, or if someone tries to bribe the magistrate?"

"Zone of Truth is the standard means to determine if someone is lying. In isolated enough territories it won't always be used in court cases because we don't have enough priests for the entire realm, but the magistrates who judge them are put through Zone themselves once every four years when their term comes up for renewal, and if they're found to have accepted bribes, or overlooked crimes, or perverted the law, or ruled unjustly for personal or political reasons they're sentenced to hang, unless they plead off to the mines. The spell is beatable, but not if you do it regularly and they watch for people trying to cheat it with magic. You can't stop a powerful evil wizard or sorcerer from enchanting the magistrate, but the government tries to keep enough of an eye on all the powerful wizards to know if they try something."

"I think I lost track of what you were arguing. I think we both want there to be some rules about what magistrates can do, saying they can't take bribes is a rule, and you just... think there don't need to be as many? Because you don't need as many if the magistrates aren't Evil?"

Enric wants to let Victoria do her thing, but also he is now confused and a bit worried. "Are we arguing about whether there should be things they can't do to people, just in general? I thought that was the whole idea behind rights?"

Honestly Jilia is not sure Xavier is right about the 'not a paragon' thing, she's met ordinary Taldane nobles on trips to try to arrange more shipping trade with Oppara. She's had negotiations with Nidalese recaptors which were more pleasant. Not a paragon of their current, hand-picked high nobility? Maybe. But she's not going to joggle his elbow.

Xavier continues to live in ignorance arguably blissful and arguably self-deluded about how unusually moral a nobleman he is! 

"Of course it is," he says. "No, there should be things that can't be done, and I wouldn't have volunteered for this committee if I didn't think so. As I said, I don't support the practice of necromancy for mining.

"But there are two things we need to balance, and this is true in any policy. One is the evil we prevent, and the other is the good that we do. For any topic, this is the case. A magistrate who can be condemned by his superiors for ruling unjustly against his enemies can be condemned by his superiors for ruling justly against their friends. A lord who can protect his people from abuse by bandits has the might to abuse them himself. We should seek ways to minimize the harm caused by these tradeoffs, but that tradeoffs exist cannot be avoided. Transport criminals to the Final Blade or hang them and lose their souls? Everything must be paid from tax money and tax money comes off the dinner-table of Enric Porras and all the other farmers like him. Some things shouldn't be done, but everything we agree has a cost, and that cost, ultimately, must be paid in lives and souls. Every rule one mask ask not only what evil it prevents, but also what good it prevents as well."

"And I think there is more than this. We do not stand alone, but at the head of an army reaching back into history. The people of Cheliax were saved from Hell, and they were not saved from Hell by any one man, or any ten. They were saved by Civilization. It was not only Her Majesty the Queen or the Archmage Cotonnet, it was the smith who forged Her Majesty's first training sword and the bookmaker who wrote Archmage Cotonnet's first spellbook, by the logger who cleared the land that would one day house the libraries they learned and by the farmer who grew the food that fed in them in their infancy, the fencer who first practiced the light sword and the man who taught him speed, Aroden who saved the knowledge of Azlant from the wreck of the world and all the Azlanti before him who first devised the spellbook and the spells that would allow the rebirth of the world, and before them the elves and dwarves who first broke the earth for the plow and that early man who first tamed cattle. All these people worked to save us, to forge the might that could stand against the devil-hosts of the Thrunes and their fiendish sorcery, and I think there is a duty and it is a duty to continue this work, to build up the works of civilization until, in the end, we can destroy Hell and all it has done.

"The battle is not yet over. Cheliax held the Worldwound for seventy years before an archmage finally arose who could close it, and the demons it brought forth are still there. Tar-Baphon was stopped by the Empire united, Cheliax and Taldor and Andoran and Galt in unison, and the Empire held it until it could produce and aim Iomedae to defeat him. Should he reemerge from Gallowspire in a hundred years when the archmages have passed on to greater things, who will stop him? I would have it be Cheliax as it was before, and every law I ask - does this help the birth of an Iomedae, or harm it?

"I want to outlaw arbitrary acts of wickedness and cruelty - If I did not, I would not be here - but there is a price for every law we pass without careful forethought, and it is that all we do which delays the rescue of the souls of Hell who await liberation. The Chelish state exists to protect its people from evils, and I want it to do that, but it is also the latest champion of civilization, an engine to use to build up the prosperity of our people and to throw down all the evils of this world and the next and that is needed as much as it ever was. We have beaten Asmodeus. We have not destroyed him. And if he tries for another land than Cheliax, next time, they are not less in need of defense against devils than we are here."

That's a very pretty speech, somewhat undercut by the fact that half of those people were employed by hell in the pursuit of hell's aims. If the smith forged a weapon for her majesty, well, he forged many more for Cheliax's armies, or for other Chelish nobles who used them to peel the skin from children. If the bookmaker wrote a spellbook for Cotonnet, well, he did so in the act of shaping Cotonnet to be a Chelish soldier, alongside a hundred other children who were ripped from their homes to serve the state and have their consciences torn to shreds. The logger - was probably a slave, forced to serve by the lash, and those who first curated the library were quite possibly literally devils. Perhaps the farmer was only an ordinary sort of person, but the reason Cheliax tolerated ordinary sorts of farmers was because the mortal armies of hell must eat.

The things before that point, you might think were not evil, but... well, who was the first fencer, or the first to develop magic? Not a human, and not a dwarf or an elf, either. The devils had swords and magic long before humanity.

You can say a lot of things about civilization and its benefits. But civilization, as a whole, does not oppose Hell. Hell is, of all places, the very most civilized of all.

....there's really no good way to ever observe that to anyone.

"I don't have an answer to the question of whether it's ever a good decision to turn people undead. But I've been thinking about the mining part of this question. I think regardless of what we decide about the right not to be made undead, mining is actually a pretty specialized topic. There are probably a lot of other concerns related to it that none of us know enough to comment on, or notice in the first place. If no one thinks it's a terrible idea, I'm considering suggesting a committee devoted to natural resources tomorrow, especially metals. I don't know how much they'll have to contribute to the constitution directly, but they'd also be useful for submitting questions, too. I've got a potential chair, but I know you were also looking into this question, Archduke.”

"I think this is a sensible idea," he says, "and I would support it, though I doubt I would have the time to join such a committee."

That is kind of a lot of different arguments all at once and she is not sure she's managing to keep them all in her head at once. She is really pretty sure that there are lots and lots of topics where you don't have to make tradeoffs, you can just decide not to allow people to do super Evil things. Maybe that's not true in Molthune, it's not like she's ever been, but if you make rules against torturing innocent people in the name of Asmodeus the only people it hurts are Asmodean torturers. (Like Chosen Artigas — that's not relevant to Delegate Requena i Cortes's point but somehow that doesn't help at all—)

(—it is kind of hard to focus on what everyone is saying when she's thinking about how she might never be able to avenge what Chosen Artigas did, he might just get away with it forever — she really really wishes she could find out exactly what he did to his victims and force him to undergo the same thing but since she doesn't know she is mostly imagining doing some of the things her priest used to do to people, probably it wasn't that different — she is not going to think about that right now, she needs to focus — okay, her chest is still burning but she's pretty sure she's managing to follow the speech—)

She doesn't think it's okay to do things that are super Evil just because they might let you do other things that are Good, but maybe she's misunderstanding and he's talking about things more like passing the writing law to stop other people from passing a worse one than like the skeletons thing.

Also she's pretty sure that if you start saying that it's sometimes okay to do things that are super Evil, people will take it as an excuse to do way more things that are super Evil. People should just not do things that are super Evil.

Also she's not sure how a country full of humans is supposed to destroy Asmodeus, the only time she's ever heard of a god being destroyed is when Asmodeus killed Aroden, and Asmodeus was himself a god. For that matter she's not sure about "rescuing" people from Hell, lots of the people in Hell deserve it — or, maybe they don't deserve to be tortured forever, but they haven't gotten what they deserve yet. Maybe it would be okay if you stole them from Asmodeus so he couldn't turn them into devils and then gave everyone exactly what they deserved? That sounds hard but maybe not as hard as killing a god.

Also she's not really sure what any of that has to do with making more Iomedaes? If you want more Iomedaes you don't need spellbooks and land and civilization, you need... she's not actually sure. You need to not kill everyone who gets picked as a priest of a god that doesn't suck, and you need to teach women how to defend themselves even if lots of them won't be any good at fighting, and you need people to realize undead are bad so that she thinks to actually go fight them rather than just deciding raising people as undead is fine sometimes. And you need the Starstone but she's pretty sure the Starstone is still around, isn't that what Razmir used?

Also she still feels angry at Chosen Artigas. This doesn't actually have anything to do with what Delegate Requena i Cortes was saying.

...Probably she doesn't actually need to figure this all out right now.

"Having a committee for natural resources sounds reasonable to me. ...Someone should make sure the committee knows that it's Evil to raise people as undead. The azata said sometimes people don't know things are Evil even if they're really really obviously Evil."

"There's a cleric of a minor dwarven goddess who's here formally representing the church of Torag. She owns a spell silver mine, so I doubt we'll do better for a combination of good judgement and relevant expertise. I'm going to recommend her for chair, and then assume people can join if they have something useful to say. I don't think I will, but I certainly intend to submit some questions for them to discuss, and I think anyone else who wants to should also be able to send notes without needing to actually join." She mostly wants to know what banning both orphan indentures and undead would do to the metal supply.

"Anyway, that's all I've got."

Enric is now more confused, because if no one here wants to use skeletons for mining, where did several days of arguing about it come from?

The speech was a good one, very Aroden, but also being careful about what actually happens when someone makes a rule. That’s respectable. Though he still thinks theres some evils a decent man never does, or allows if he can stop them. 

One more tradeoff. The stronger civilization is, the more good things it can do, but also the more evil things it can do. The things Aroden built in Cheliax, Asmodeus then used to hurt people. Thats why Erastil gives everything new a suspicious look and makes you ask if the good is really worth the ways it could hurt you. Like cities, they probably seemed like a good idea at the time, but then they made people forget how to have families and love each other, and now the streets are full of abandoned children. Enric wants to just trust that Aroden will stay in control this time, and not worry, but he did listen those speeches about how rights and a constitution protect the commoners from civilization. It’s complicated, and he needs to think more.

As for a committee on mining, that sounds good. “It’s sensible, agreed. I still don’t understand most of what goes into mining; your cleric who owns a mine will. Might want to invite a paladin too, if we have enough.”

Well, meeting having technically been over for quite some time, she'll in that case begin getting up to leave.

Oh they're allowed to leave now? Oh good.

"It's a good idea. Get people with more knowledge to debate the tradeoffs. ...Would you stay a few minutes more, Miss Tallandria? There's some unofficial business you should hear about."

Wow, they sure are doing a lot of unofficial business today. Maybe that's just an all the time thing.

"Oh. Sure."

Xavier can bow his way out.

"The nobility in the convention are organized, as I think everyone could see this morning. Just before the committee, Delegates Porras, Ferrer, and Barrister Oriol approached me, asking me to lead the 'radicals', those who would rather the non-nobles are able to live their lives in peace without fear of the law being enforced on them capriciously or the noble's privileges crushing them, that Republicanism might not be a terrible idea and bringing sortition delegates was probably unfair to them but good for the country. I turned them down, Miss Tallandria. I think it ought to be done, but I'm not the one to lead it."

(Victòria had not actually realized at the time that Enric was planning to ask Delegate Bainilus about leading a faction, but by the time he'd started the conversation she hadn't been sure how to say "actually, I was wondering about the thing where you thought Pezzack should keep being Asmodean? Enric thinks you meant something less awful than it sounded like you meant?"

In any case, Korva seems mostly reasonable, isn't even slightly a noble, and presumably doesn't think Pezzack should have just kept being Asmodean, and she's good at making speeches.)

"I see."

She does not see. She can tell that the Archduchess is hinting about who should be the leader of such a group, and it has not yet entered her head that it might be her.

"To be clear, I was planning to praise you just as much regardless. You earned all of it, and deserved to notice that; people are already looking to you, and they will keep doing so, unless you go out of your way to stop speaking. You're one of the twenty most influential people in the convention already, and will be whatever you do. But here are people asking for a leader, and it ought to be you."

Of course that's where she was going. Well, he's probably onboard.

" - oh."

...well, they should pick a name other than 'radicals', first of all, that's like the least sympathetic name possible for 'what if you didn't destroy normal people's lives'.

"Well - " she'll turn to Enric, actually - "What exactly are you looking for?"

“I don’t know exactly what it looks like. Never done one of these before.”

He asked Jilia first because she knows things like ‘what does the leader of a politics faction actually do’ and has the resources to actually do it. But he’ll try his best to answer.

“I just see that, right now, the… party for the Commons, I think that’s the new name, is running around with no direction. There’s noble groups who have goals and make plans and then work together on those plans. Half the time we’re basically just throwing tiny rocks at these big plans, and the other half of the time we’re mistakenly flailing at each other. Sometimes someone, usually you, stands up and makes a speech that changes things. But that’s all in the moment. I don’t know how someone fixes that, but I think having a leader helps.”

"I'll help. I'll give you advice on what to do, and resources, and staff, and tell you when there are fights I think it won't help to pick. But you should be the spokeswoman, and I think you should be making the final decisions. Should I explain why?"

"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."

She's really beginning to worry that she has spontaneously developed some kind of sorcerous enchantment that causes everyone around her to give her offers of employment. She won't cancel on the duchess immediately, but - this is a better one to have in her back pocket than Ardiaca.

She bows politely. "Thank you, Archduchess. I appreciate that, and I'll remember it."

And so they'll emerge and Jilia will get to arranging a trip to a 'dress'maker for measurements and fitting and so forth.