Aspexia has the Andorens brought to her at breakfast on the morning of the 10th.

"The problem that We have is that if We charge you with attempting to burn down the port of Westcrown, then for the next week the Convention will be petitioning Us to invade Andoran instead of writing a constitution like they're supposed to be doing. We do not wish to conquer Andoran. We would gain nothing from it and lose much. There are no good reasons for Cheliax to conquer your country, and We would be obliged if you would stop giving Our people bad ones.

...So We are going to offer you parole. Deal with one of the empire's problems, return a third of the plunder - if there is any - to the crown, and you'll have your freedom. If you decline - or if We think you won't keep to the deal - you can sit in jail for another week or so, have a hopefully very quiet trail for sabotage, and likely have all the possessions you were arrested with confiscated to cover the fine."

"What problem do you have in mind?"

"There's a list, you can take your pick. Adventuring problems that need a group like yours but aren't big enough to rise to the archmages' attention yet... You're fifth-circle? Not Athervox, then - I'd recommend the badger-lich, but another group got her last night. There's a charybdis off the western coast and rumors of a hag coven north of longacre and a hydra near Swiftrun, in Isger - off the top of my head."

"Always happy to help people out with monster problems." She's not very willing to say aloud that this is in exchange for anything in particular, and she flatly disbelieves all the geopolitical claims, but - if you assume that none of the words mean anything, there's still plenty of reason to go fight a charybdis. 'this country that recently ended halfling slavery has a monster problem' is sufficient reason all by itself.

"Your Majesty."

Glare.

What. He's absolutely not from Andoran and in other places they call tyrants "your Majesty".

"I am very glad to hear it, as I am sure will be the neighbors of whichever creature you choose to deal with. If it's the hags I think the archmage Naima might want the heads, and that can be your third.

Since we still have some time, tell me, where do you intend to go after your parole? Cassomir? Demirah? Katapesh? Or would you stay in Cheliax, or go back home?"

Presumably what she means is 'get out of my country and don't come back', which would be easy to agree to if Cheliax had in fact abolished all slavery. Not that they can admit that's relevant. "There's lots of problems all over, your Majesty."

"More of 'em in Katapesh, though."

Cat wrote a letter to the Queen and is less confident that's what the Queen is asking. "I think my question is, is the situation in Cheliax that the Empire's been restored and can of course handle all its business, it being an insult to an Empire to think it'd have missed any, or is the situation that there's a real convention that can really choose freedom for its people? I'm just a mercenary from Absalom but I've taken jobs in both kinds of places and they're pretty different, see."

"The convention is very real though I don't know if you'd characterize it as consistently choosing freedom."

"So there's this problem people sometimes have, in places that used to be ruled by Hell, where the only freedom they're accustomed to is what sprung up where the 'Queen' and her people weren't looking, and it doesn't occur to them that you can build freedom on purpose, much less that you're supposed to, and wherever they see freedom they take it for incompetence." 

Liberty kicks her under the table. 

They're not going to get some other opportunity to talk to Catherine who freed Cheliax from Hell! And it's quite possible no one's done it since she immediately styled herself a tyrant!

"If you're not thinking of every pamphlet that doesn't stir up any riots and is actually pretty hilarious as an achievement of Good, as spitting in the face of Asmodeus, then why not ban them once some start stirring up trouble, right? People here know that they're supposed to choose Good over Evil now but I don't think they know they're supposed to choose freedom over tyranny."

"I agree with your assessment of the problem, though I would quibble that 'supposed to choose freedom' seems, perhaps, a slight contradiction in terms - but I have yet to find a better solution than the ones we are trying now. Do you have suggestions?"

"No, no, see, it works great. You tell people they're supposed to choose freedom over tyranny. And some of them listen to you and support a free press and ban slavery and stuff, because they don't quite have the spirit yet but it turns out slavery's just as banned whether they have the spirit or not, and the pamphlets are hilarious even if someone originally only allowed them because they thought they were supposed to.

And some people hear you say they're supposed to choose freedom over tyranny and go, and who are you to tell me what I'm supposed to choose? And those ones have it all figured out."

"Have you tried, like, going around in disguise as a blind beggar and then the first person who helps you gets all of their life problems magically fixed as a reward for their Goodness? People love that stuff and it's not, like, 'I the Good Queen order you to be nice to beggars because Iomedae says so', it's just, hey, have it in the back of your mind, yeah?"

"Well, I do sometimes go around in disguise, but never as a blind beggar yet."

"It doesn't help if you don't tell people afterwards and they need to recognize a Mind Blank to figure it out."

"It scares people, if there are rumors of it. That's the opposite of freeing them."

"Yes, it seems that it would. Blind beggar, kindness repaid a hundredfold - I'll take it under advisement."

"You could also try not being a Queen. People usually feel more sure they're supposed to be free if they haven't got a Queen."

Kiiiiick.

Look, if she were going to kill me she would have already.

"If the convention finishes their constitution and it institutes a full republic and tells me I'm not wanted, I will strongly consider accepting it."

" - huh, really?" She beams at her.

"Do they know that?"

"Nah, nah, I'm with Cat on this one. That they've got to figure out for themselves, to have it at all."

"I do reserve the right to reject the constitution if the rest of it is terrible."

"Mmhhmmm, and normally I'd figure that no matter what came out you'd definitely find it terrible and decide you should be in charge instead, but -"

Yes because that's obviously what is going to happen.

"I dunno. I believe her."

She Charmed you.

Did not. 

Did too.

Did not.

"Lib, did you read my letter?"

"No! You sent a letter? I told you to let me send letters!"

"Yeah but I was really bored. I was in an antimagic field! I haaate antimagic fields. And I didn't even get to hear the announcement, and you did, and I was jealous. And I was thinking, and I thought, you know, if they really ended slavery, then - we got it wrong. We got it wrong the way that, in Andoran where I have never ever been in my life, it is understood to be particularly bad to get it wrong, assuming that - someone can't even be reasoned with and irredeemably sucks and is working towards evil even when it looks like they're actually trying, and doesn't make sense even from inside their own head, and that the project of civilization will have to proceed without them."

"I think Andoran where you've never been has diplomats, Cat, who very much haven't done that thing."

"The diplomats haven't, no! But I did! And it's hardly a satisfactory answer that some other people didn't, especially since I'm not from Andoran so its diplomats don't represent me in any way."

There's not actually any need to keep up the 'definitely not from Andoran' act, but Cat seems to be having fun.

"So you decided to write a letter to the Queen of Cheliax."

"I'm a Teleport wizard, that's kind of like being a country myself, those can write diplomatic letters. A small country, and not a particularly nearby one, maybe a River Kingdom or a Free City of the Padishah Empire. And no. I wrote a letter to Catherine, the great adventurer who freed Cheliax from - actually, Cat, have you got a copy, he's going to mock every single line so it'll save a lot of time if I can give it to him to read instead of trying to recite it from memory."

"I didn't bring it with me to breakfast, no, but I can send someone for it if that's not too tyrannical."

"Do you pay them?"

"Of course I pay them."

Well, they could've been orcs! Orcs aren't free yet! 

"I would appreciate it if someone went and got the letter and assume I'll cause all kinds of trouble if I go try to find it myself."

It would! She dispatches a servant to fetch the letter, then pours herself some coffee.

Coffee sounds nice. No sugar.

It's terrible how actually coffee is undrinkable without sugar.

There's honey, maple syrup, and faerie-sweet, if she'd rather.

She would! 

Liberty is not really in a snacking mood.

Well, that's fine, it means his hands are free to read Cat's letter and his mouth is free to react to it.

When he gets the letter he reads. In silence. Wincing every few seconds.

Then he sets the letter down. "All right," he says to Cat. "You're an idiot. And you're right. I hate it when you're an idiot and you're right."

"An idiot I don't need persuading of, but what do you mean she's right?"

"Well, firstly that the Queen means it, because the kind of person who doesn't mean it also doesn't tolerate letters like this, and secondly about what she says in the letter, which is that - we could've helped."

"Could've helped.... repaint the temples? While they still had slavery? Off a promise that they'd hold a vote in a year and a fucking half -"

"Could've sped it up!"

"Oh."

"Or like. At least said, 'hey, as soon as you get to it, you'll be glad you did'."

"I guess I kind of figured Codwin was doing that, isn't it his entire fucking job?"

"I don't know!! But he doesn't speak for me, so I should have said it my own self."

She is not going to comment on the quality of communication she's had with Codwin so far. It would be counterproductive, as far as her plans for the next Andoren election go.

"Why only halflings?"

"I didn't write the law, but at a guess - The committee was a third halflings. Halfling slavery was the most salient example - and the vast majority of slavery in Cheliax last week - and so they focused on that first. Serfdom might have been an oversight. Orcs definitely weren't, the man who drafted the law is an orcish ex-slave, but others can probably speak to the internal committee dynamics better than I."

"Serfdom might have been an oversight," she says, a bit incredulous.

"Writing laws is one of those things that's actually very hard and requires a lot of expertise and thought and care. Which is why it can't be left to the nobility."

"I tried to sign up for the convention!"

"You ran for election? I didn't get the impression you considered yourself Chelish."

"Oh no, I just showed up. Asked them who made the rules about who got in the building and who put that person in charge of making the rules and they said 'no Andorens'."

"Well, to get into the convention you have to be a Chelish priest of an approved deity, or be a count, or be elected by the people of a county, or have attended a public school, paid taxes, been counted in the census, or been sold, within Cheliax. The archmages and I made those rules, and we put ourselves in charge when we decided to host a constitutional convention."

"It would've been indecent to run for election. Not because I'm not Chelish, I don't really think you can put labels like that on people anyway. It would've been indecent because that's saying to people - I'm going to go there on your behalf, in your service, and do what you charged me to do.

I'm not making a promise like that to a bunch of slavers who're still wiping Hell off their whiskers like a cat caught in the cream. There are people for whose sake I'd want to be there, but not the ones who voted in the elections."

"Very reasonable of you. Perhaps next year."

"Didn't most of the electeds just bribe or threaten people -"

"Certainly more than we'd prefer. It's why Élie wanted to do sortition."

"So I don't see how you'd've been worse."

"Oh, I wasn't saying I'd've been worse! I'd've been better! Just, I'm not gonna do shit like that."

"Well, you should've said that was why, because I might've."

"I really do not think that having more Andoren electeds without political experience at the convention would have caused things to go better. Observe that they already ended slavery on the third day of voting."

" - sure but any of us could've shot down Valia Wain -"

"As could a great many of the people who were actually present so one assumes it was difficult in some manner that is different from 'knowing the right answer'."

"It seems entirely possible that they just all sucked!!!"

"Pretty sure even in Asmodean Cheliax you couldn't assemble a room of six hundred people who all sucked."

"It's a country of twenty million people."

Liberty frowns consideringly. "Maybe six hundred. I don't know. Sometimes you think someone has absolutely nothing going for them and then you try dropping them off on a different continent from their drug of choice and their horrible ex and -"

"Let's not make this personal."

"She says in the letter she has terrible taste in men," he says to Milani.

"And even worse taste in women!"

"I could turn you both into toads."

"Not during breakfast, please."

"I'll defend my taste in women. - I absolutely won't defend my taste in men."

"You date men who are bad to you and women who are bad for you."

"I'm pretty sure we were talking, here, about what we can do for Cheliax, not what we can do to provoke me into turning you into toads. That's probably a crime here or something. You're going to make this nice Lawful lady feel very awkward."

"I don't think that prosecution would be politically complicated at all."

"Cat I'm getting nervous that your new friend is a cop."

"Her? Nah."

"If you're not a cop," she says to the Queen, "explain why Iomedae sucks."

Stage-whispered: "cops can't handle that one."

She is not going to say any of the dozens of things she could say here, where she can speak from personal experience that nobody present would expect her to have.

"Iomedae's church thinks that everyone should be a paladin. Sure, they pay lip service to the idea that there are other worthy callings, but ultimately they think paladins make the world better, not worse, and if everyone was a paladin the world would be great. And - they're not entirely wrong, it's true that if everyone was a paladin there'd be no murderers or slavers or thieves or diabolists, but - there's more to a good world than the absence of evil, let alone the absence of crime."

She frowns consideringly. "Undecided if your friend is a cop."

"I can fix her."

"My take on Iomedae is that when I was born there was one country in the world where every fucking kid is born free and dies free and I'm not going to give them shit for also being grouchy sticks in the mud."

"The paladins will come around on Republicanism as soon as we actually end the slave trade in the Inner Sea and they have to go redo all their calculations."