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 the priest 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.