She has a domestic spy network. It's ostensibly a network for reporting on business matters in the other ports of Cheliax (AKA all the major cities which aren't Egorian) and actually also keeps close track of riots, along with whatever they can tell her about the causes. It's not like anyone except The Paraduchess actually hears accurate reports of which ones were about bread and which ones were about the lords doing something absurd and which ones were rebels moving way too soon to succeed.

That would make the lords mayor look bad, and she's the only one who would rather look bad because you need to have something you care about more than being kept in place and avoiding the ire of Her Infernal Majestrix. (And of The Paraduchess. Most of the lords mayor haven't heard of Paraduchess Lilia de Montero and do not especially worry about coming to the imperial spymaster's attention or especially consider who the spymaster might be. Jilia envies them this.)

There has not yet been an uptick in riots, though there was one in Corentyn that was ostensibly about banning radios. (Her factor thinks it was probably going to happen anyway that month, the guard's been busting heads in the more combative neighborhoods. It's being reported accurately up the chain for once.) But she's waiting for it.

She'd be setting her affairs in order, if there were affairs she could set in a way that would survive her execution. The end of her war is in sight.

Okay, that's not quite true. She has staff to fire.

On an insignificant Toilday, she calls two women and a man, only one married and with no living children, into her working office. (As opposed to her mayoral office, which is better for meeting people and being found and not much else.)

"I'm firing you three. Effective Fireday evening, wrap up everything and hand it off. I have all your back pay today and a month's severance will be ready Fireday. I have references ready if you want to use them. My decision's final."

"Milady?"

"You've done nothing wrong and have all, in fact, done excellent work. And I no longer want to employ you doing it. I suggest you put some of the money toward transit on a ship. Corentyn or Ostenso, if you can't get international passes. Or inland. If there's anyone else who decides to leave you might all go in on passage."

"...Is this about...?"

"Something it would be illegal for you to have been listening to, or reading my transcripts of?"

They look to each other and then don't reply.

"Thank you for everything you've done. I couldn't have run Kintargo as well without you, in the past. But your services are no longer required."

They were bright people. And the double meaning wasn't, actually, at all subtle.

"We'll tell everyone else," Young Mateu said, "Thank you for your unnecessary consideration, milady Jilia."

"Archdevils honor you," Ivette added. Mostly Geryon and Mephistopheles, in this case.

"Let no one say I don't reward my staff well for good service."

A week and a half later there's another three. And then two more a week after that, along with four who chose to leave themselves when they saw the way the wind was blowing.

If they stayed, they might save their souls at the cost of their lives. But those eight were the ones she knew, or close enough to knew, wouldn't take that trade. Not that many, on a staff, on a staff of over a hundred. She's proud of them. Even those twelve.

She's legally allowed to listen to the radio. She had the authority to grant herself a pass, as a lord mayor of a port city who needed it for both business purposes and to know what incitement to dissent exists, and Kintargo's ranking priest, Demibishop Romà Serrat, complained, but she granted him authority to judge all further requests on condition she have a full record of all requests and his decision.

She hears Freedom debate with Erastil. She likes this girl. Someone she would have protected with all her might, if she found her in Kintargo. Someone who could lead a rebellion into the teeth of Hell, without losing sight of what needed to be done and what didn't.

They'll never meet.

Jilia's life was not previously empty of reasons to be happy, but the more it looks like her amorphous deadline is approaching, the harder it is to appreciate them. It's dark humor and breaks to listen to the radio keeping her sane most weeks.

Her people are still living their lives, and graffiti referencing Freedom is popping up often enough that she knows they're listening. Some parts of Cheliax are too tired and beaten to rally to her words... most parts, probably - but Kintargo is still awake enough. She did her job.

Somehow, when the background fear of being caught has gotten supplemented with the looming decision that she'll have to pull the trigger, and choose the best time for Kintargo or for Cheliax, that doesn't help nearly as much as it used to.

Maybe the most surprising thing she's heard on the radio since it started is that she has an immediate strong personal dislike for Andira Marusek. She's not even sure why, but something about how the woman talks about her country puts Jilia off, even with the easy questions and friendly topic. They'd work toward most of the same things if they could, and she's not surprised that Marusek would dislike her, for collaborating, but she's surprised it goes the other way.

...There's something about solving her people's problems quietly and reliably that Jilia can't see Andira doing. That she'd never earn loyalty or admiration the hard slow way. She might be wrong, but that's why she dislikes the woman, she thinks.

It still leaves her with as good an impression of Andoran as she expected. But she gets a little maudlin about being disappointed in the chief Eagle Knight. Ah, well, it helps to be able to say that she finds Marusek contemptible with relatively minimal deception underneath it, if she's asked about it.

Codwin's sort of the opposite. He's sensible. She doubts he would feel anything negative for her but maybe pity - legitimate, granted - and vice versa except for frustration if his vows got in the way. But Andoran comes off much worse, and he makes a valiant effort defending it but Freedom's coming at it from an unfamiliar angle (as she usually is) and he does not really succeed.

Jilia cares less about orphan urchins than she might. She finds a lot of good staff from them, really, and she'd fund an orphanage selfishly if she thought her superiors would believe her that it was selfish. Thieves train urchins as pickpockets over years and she'd do the same if she could. It's still something interesting to think about, a way that, if she got a miraculous victory, she'd want to make her own culture and not just let the same revolution she and a lack of local archmage have kept stalled for fifteen years run its course in the west as it did in the east.

She doesn't. Think about it, that is.

When she hears about the man in Kenabres and Freedom's reactions she... pines, is almost the right word. To help this girl who's never had to live with a world as muddy and brutal as reality, who clearly (well, clearly to an expert) desperately wants it to be an aberration and is not at all sure it will be.

It doesn't remind her of herself when she was younger, because she knew better by the time she took up the family sword. That brutality was an eternal constant at the level of nations and great families, and almost never escaped at ground level either.

Jilia wonders extensively about whether the man is right, that Iomedae doesn't care. Iomedae is ruthless; this is one of the few things you can learn, in Cheliax, about Iomedae. She wants the destruction of Hell and all Evil. Would she sacrifice all pretense of fair trials? Cayden wouldn't. She's reasonably certain he's displeased every time she allows unfair trials, or his proxy is, with the very rare exceptions where she can afford to rig something in the defendant's favor. That doesn't seem like a Chaos thing. Maybe a mortal thing about Good, maybe Good in general, but she'd expect Law to care about it. She's only occasionally interacted with Abadarans but they, she thinks, would care.
Probably Iomedae cares. But she allows it to continue. That's life, apparently, even as a god.

She has Lady Sofia look up Kenabres. Mendev, a city directly along the wardstone line. Ah. Yes, that's somewhere you might have to buy good with a really astonishingly large amount of ruthlessness.

When an episode comes two weeks later with a magistrate of Lastwall explaining how they conduct investigations and trials, and how Kenabres is falling short, Jilia may be one of the few as relieved as Freedom herself.  Ruthless, yes, but She cares about it where she can get it. If Iomedae ruled Kintargo, Jilia's ghost wouldn't revolt.

It's interesting, the reaction the city has to that one. There aren't riots; she's been keeping a firm hand on riots, this year, appeasing people with minor problems solved to get them to discourage anyone from gathering any steam for any. But the looks people have at executions, and when criers declare someone a fugitive from the law, changed. Maybe not for a long time, but for a few weeks. And especially so the closer you get to the Harbor District, so the cause isn't her imagination.

"Sofia, some time soon, likely this year and maybe this month, I may hand you a letter and tell you to leave for Vyre."

"Jilia?"

"Be ready to do that, and to bring resources to pay for a long stay. And if I do: Go quickly. A day at most before you take ship. Do not read the letter until you are in private at the Eighth Mockingbird. And do not return while I live."

"The sword?"

"It would pass to you by right. And by rite."

"...Yes, milady."

"I'm proud of you, cousin."

This is Freedom Radio, with some exciting news. The liberation of the last five archduchies of Cheliax has begun! We're going to be switching for a weekly schedule to a daily schedule from now until the end of the war, to bring you the news about the fight for Chelish liberation.

The afternoon Jilia hears this, listening in private, she nearly has a panic attack.

This ought to be good news. The Reclamation wouldn't be intervening if they didn't think it would work. The time is coming. Kintargo is going to have its chance. Cheliax will have its chance, too. And it's close enough that she can safely think about it, when she knows she'll have time before she gets checked by a Church wizard.

Only she doesn't like those thoughts once she's thinking them.

She knew she'd die for Kintargo. She hadn't quite realized she wouldn't die for Cheliax.

And so now she notices she's going to have to pick, isn't she? Between Good and what she cares about.

This will be the most important decision of her life, when she chooses to give the signal, and Nirvana help her she doesn't want to do the right thing.

The sword is cool in her hand. That hurts. But if she reluctantly focuses on giving the order immediately, that makes it colder. With what she knows, then, it really wouldn't be wise. She can wait. Put it off a little longer.

It takes her an hour to collect her thoughts. Put that all in the back of her mind and collect herself for the business of a running a city that's going to be more rebellious than ever. Make short-term tradeoffs that keep things calm that will make it worse in a year or two.

But she can manage. For weeks, even.

Demibishop Serrat, as usual for her local high priests, is bad at Church politics and not incredibly bright. Romà specifically is kind of a brute. Normally that makes him easier to handle, but it's harder right now, he knows what he wants and it's terrible for the city. Fists of the Church brutalize some mobs. Only mostly ones which are rioting. There's not much she can do but crack down slightly sooner with less brutal city guard when she gets wind of it.

For the first time in a decade, Jilia is covering up riots in her official reports. Better not to let on how much they're stirred up by Freedom.

The head Crown wizard tries to press Chuko, a weapons merchant who's dealt in Alkenstar guns occasionally, into explaining how guns works. Jilia suspects he knows reasonably well, but not enough to know about the Reclamation guns. Maybe more importantly, he used to adventure with Shensen and has rebel sympathies. Fortunately she presents the situation to one of the merchant guildmasters in such a way that they ask her to intervene and negotiate with the wizard, and this delays him enough that he's called away to the front lines before he learns anything useful.

An inquisitor finds traces of the Irorite history monks. In an ordinary year she'd deflect him and give them time to hide and limit the damage, but she can't afford it. Cayden disapproves. She expected that.

Serrat tries to enlist the Order of the Torrent to keep order. (She egged him into it subtly.) They refuse categorically. He orders her to enlist them and put them at his command. She does. The Lictor reminds her that she doesn't have that authority either, which she asks him to repeat to the priest's face. He does. (Success on all counts.)

She attends the opera and shares a box with Lord Rexus. He carefully doesn't ask what she's heard of Freedom, and she carefully doesn't answer. He's a good man, and cheers her up as best as he can. If she leaves him alive to run the city it will be in good hands.

Shensen really is a wonderful singer. For an hour or two Jilia's almost content.

"This is Freedom Radio, and a lot of new developments here for you since yesterday's broadcast. The first and most important is that, three days ago at dawn, the Glorious Reclamation teleported their whole army to outside Kantaria, where they engaged and very easily defeated the army of the archduke of Menador. 

The sword is cold.

A letter comes from Rexus. The words are pointless. They ask no questions. She doesn't answer the question he really meant.