Victòria is here to investigate the Rights Committee's latest idea for actually punishing wizards who break the law. She hadn't been expecting the palace would actually let her look at the antimagic cells, but she's not about to turn down the chance, and she's definitely not about to leave just because the Evil nobleman who wants to ban Calistria is here. If he decides to murder her or something it'll just prove to everyone how much he sucks.

When he has her killed, it will be a public execution for the numerous capital crimes she has committed, and certainly not when the archmage will just bring her back. He's just going to ignore her presence while he considers the number of people that can be safely held and various floor plans for dividing it into multiple cells, as long as your definition of ignoring includes the occasional disdainful and dismissive glance.

Unfortunately, that programme is a rather large ask for his self control. "Here to examine your future lodgings? I'm afraid your abilities don't merit enough respect for it, so you'll have to settle for the ordinary cells."

That's — bizarrely upsetting, actually — it would be fine, she'd be fine, nothing bad even happened to her last time, it's just for some reason it feels like the walls are pressing in around her and she's sitting alone in the dark waiting to die—

"I know this isn't how things worked under Asmodeus, Delegate Curto, but it's not a crime to say Evil nobles shouldn't be allowed to do whatever they want to people."

Wow, that insult kind of sucked. She should really get better at coming up with good comebacks, it keeps coming up.

"I wouldn't know what nonsense the usurpers let you get up to, because I would die a hundred deaths before I ever bent the knee to a Thrune, but treason is a crime in every civilized country on golarion."

He's not evil, either, but protesting would miss the point; it's not her place to question her betters.

Oh, she sees where he's going with this, he's trying to get her to admit to breaking the law. ...She's a little tempted to admit to breaking the law under the Thrunes, since it's not like they can actually have her killed for it, but it'd be really stupid to admit to that for no good reason.

"Good thing for me, saying that Evil nobles shouldn't be allowed to do whatever they want to people isn't treason either."

"No, but encouraging the masses to rise up and revolt against their rightful rulers is, and all the more so from a rioter and arsonist. It's the perfect illustration of everything wrong with Calistrians - when Hell itself rules the country, they're too scared to ever leave the shadows, and when they're finally freed from infernal yoke they repay their benefactors with treason and murder. For all her flaws, at least Wain had the courage to do both."

She is not going to confess to murder to win the argument, even though it'd be awfully satisfying. It would be awfully satisfying, though.

"And what exactly were you doing when Hell ruled Cheliax?"

He's outraged at being questioned, of course, but as it happens he's also rather embarrassed at having not participated in the four day war and his defensiveness over that wins out. 

"I helped support the glorious reclamation for years before the war, for thousands of solidus, and then spent most of the last year and a half hunting down diabolists and putting them to the sword. And unlike you, I did not spit on Her Majesty's heroism with rebellion."

...She doesn't actually have any idea how much money a solidus is, that could be anywhere between an unfathomable amount of money and a still-pretty-large amount of money that's small for a noble. And hunting down and murdering diabolists is actually good, even if he could stand to stop complaining about Calistrians for... also murdering diabolists. Though "Not as bad as he could have been" is still pretty terrible here, he still wants to ban Calistria.

"Maybe you've got me and Valia mixed up with someone else!" she says brightly, like she thinks he's just very confused. "See, when Valia told Evil nobles to repent and go to the Worldwound, and specifically told people not to just go out and kill innocent people, that's actually the opposite of what the rioters did. Personally, I spent the evening of the third talking to an azata."

He gives her a withering glare.

"Your attempt playing coy is facile, avenger, when we all heard your call to rebellion on the floor of the convention. From your lips to the rabble's ears, and from there good men slaughtered in their beds and burnt alive in their own homes. Or perhaps you think you deserve more acclamation for that? You've certainly done more harm to Cheliax and Her Majesty than most of her enemies, though you still fall short of the Thrunes or Rugatonn or-"

He pauses in confusion mid sentence, as his pacing takes him outside the antimagic field.

Victòria is not sure what all those words mean but she's really very confident that she was not secretly telling people to go murder innocent people for no reason. Not that she'd expect him to be able to tell the difference.

...Why did he just stop talking? She glances out the door at the corridor outside. It is... literally just a normal corridor, as far as she can tell. She raises her eyebrows pointedly and goes back to looking at the cell.

He has no idea, and needs a few seconds to catch his train of thought.

"Or Manohar," he continues, as though that's not an absolutely deranged third example to include alongside the Thrunes and Aspexia Rugatonn.

Victòria has not actually heard of Manohar. Admittedly she also hadn't known Aspexia Rugatonn's name until after Asmodeus had already been kicked out of the country, but still. And normally she would just ask, but she's not about to admit to Delegate Curto that she doesn't know who Manohar is. He gave a single name for him, like he expected that's all anyone would need to recognize him, so probably he's someone important? But there's probably loads of important people that she's never heard of, that doesn't really help.

"It kinda sounds like you're just listing everyone you can think of who worked for the Asmodeans and saying I'm less bad than them," she says. "Which, I mean... yes... but, uh, no offense, it kinda breaks the rest of your argument." She is not even slightly trying to pretend that the "no offense" is supposed to be taken seriously.

He'd suspect her of having messed with him somehow, but the fact that she's in an antimagic field makes it completely impossible. 

"Anyone? Not hardly. You might not have reached the very top, but there are plenty of asmodean clerics who never managed as much as you, to say nothing of the usurpers' other lackies."

It only pales in comparison to people like the changeling. Which would have been a great third example, why didn't he just use them? The harlot wouldn't have known who he was talking about, but it's not like she knew who Manohar was either.

Wow, he's not even bothering to pretend. You would really think that anyone could manage not to start defending Asmodean priests. What do you even say to that?

...Apparently she is... failing to say anything at all. She should probably fix that. 

"I have to say, it's been a while since I've heard anyone trying to defend Asmodean priests." Well, apart from Chosen Artigas, but that's not really the point.

"Then you should understand how little patience everyone has for your protestations, now that you've started competing with them."

His thoughts are really disorganized today and he has no idea why; dealing with the Calistrian is obnoxious but it's hardly the worst circumstance he's been in, that doesn't explain it by half. And it's still happening, with every effort to hunt down the cause worsening it.

...Does he think he can somehow trick her into thinking she's as bad as the Asmodeans just by saying it a lot? Victòria is giving him such an unimpressed look.

He is ignoring her unimpressed look to focus on more important things! ...Mostly ignoring her unimpressed look to focus on more important things!

Eventually though, he has enough of a stretch in the antimagic field to put together what happened. Someone cast a spell on him to mess with his memory, and neither he nor any of the magic users he employed had noticed anything. Well within her supposed capabilities, if it really was the changeling, but what that left unanswered was why. Was he a target of opportunity? Was there some law he would otherwise be passing at the convention that would hurt her interests? Had she, inheritor forbid, been hiding out in his territory and made sure he couldn't find clues? Even looking back at his memories while inside the field, he couldn't notice any discontinuities where he suddenly stopped being able to think about her, so it could have been months or even years, and gods alone knew who else he couldn't remember properly. It could have even been some other infernal spy entirely covering the tracks of their entire organization.

"Helldamned bitch."

Blink blink.

...Victòria is pretty sure the only way she could possibly end up in Hell is if she was Maledicted? She's a priestess of Calistria, even if she were Evil she definitely isn't Lawful.

"Uh, what?"

"Not you, the damned changeling."

He's about halfway between irritable and furious, but even when he's talking to her it's clear she doesn't have his full attention.

"...You're mad at... an invisible fairie?" she says, in a tone rather like she's talking to a particularly dim child. "I'm pretty sure the Antimagic Field would turn their invisibility off."

Unless they were just always invisible, not by magic? Would that even work? She kind of thought all fairies were a little bit magic. Though actually, now that she thinks about it, maybe they just couldn't go into an Antimagic Field at all. ...Probably that's not actually relevant.

Acevedo is struck with a burning desire to have her whipped until she screams herself hoarse, and then some more for good measure. He reminds himself that she'll be tortured to death just as soon as the convention ends and she loses the archmage's protection, sooner if they can find proof of her other crimes, and it still doesn't go away. 

"No, the infernal spymistress." You could tack 'you moron' onto the end of most of what he says to her, but it's a particularly blatant addition there. Even normal changelings aren't fairies anyway, and if there was a fairy in the room fucking with him he'd have stabbed them. "Now be silent for once in your life, I'm dealing with something actually important."

Victòria does, technically, know who the previous infernal spymistress was. She came up briefly when everyone was confronting Delegate Ibarra about how he was an Evil murderer who burned down houses full of innocent kids. Just, she doesn't know every nickname anyone has ever given her. Or... any of the nicknames anyone has given her, really.

"...Isn't she, uh, dead?"

The Queen might not have managed to get rid of all the Evil nobles and Asmodean priests but she would really have expected she'd kill someone like that right away. And it's not like Victòria doesn't spend plenty of time being mad about dead people, but she doesn't, like, make random comments about dead people that have nothing to do with anything and then get mad when people don't know what she meant. 

"Evidently not as thoroughly as she should be."

Is there anywhere in his county that he can't remember in enough detail that might, say, have some hidden Asmodeans hiding out there and them made him forget about it? Not on a first pass, but he didn't spend much time in that one village because he had to make time to catch the nearby bandits before they got away and in retrospect that might be a bad sign.

And he's randomly bringing her up because he... thinks she might be here invisibly? That doesn't really feel like a very good guess. He... decided to actually fight Evildoers for once instead of complaining about Calistrians, and he's trying to figure out if the antimagic cell is strong enough to keep her there? And he's yelling about her because he thinks it might not be? That doesn't really feel like a very good guess either. Maybe he's... trying to trick her into technically breaking the law? The new decree about getting together to plan crimes with your friends might technically apply if she says it'd be good to murder her, and obviously the Queen wouldn't actually have her executed for that, but she would still rather not have to deal with getting locked in a cell for however long it takes to sort that out.

The walls kind of feel like they're pressing in on her again, which is stupid and pathetic but knowing that it's pathetic won't make them stop.

"Well, I hope our Lawful and Good queen has her Lawfully executed, then," she says with a straight face. (She is not particularly trying to convince him that she cares about it being Lawful.)

He'll settle for just thoroughly dead.

Mind made up, he scribbles down what he's figured out on a piece of paper, walks out of the antimagic field, and stops in confusion again. He's... holding a paper for some reason? With illegible writing?

Is he stupid. If he wants to leave he can just leave, it's not like it's hard. Instead he's... looking at a piece of paper like he's forgotten how to read? He was writing on it just a moment ago, it can't be that he's illiterate.

Right, he was here about examining the antimagic cell. And it's been a while but he hasn't gotten much done, he needs to get back on that to make up for lost time.

Once he crosses the border of the field he's suddenly back from confused to furious, like someone flipped a switch. Victoria may have seen him mad before, but this is something new.

Her hand goes reflexively to her holy symbol before she remembers that she's in an Antimagic Field, she can't even do anything, she's got a dagger but it's not going to help if he tries something. ...And also him murdering her wouldn't even actually be bad, only for some reason her heart is still pounding.

Oh, there's someone he would absolutely love to murder right now, but it's not her and even acknowledging Victoria exists would be a distraction from his unfathomable fury at this latest indignity he has been dealt. One hand absentmindedly crumples and tosses the paper as Acevedo paces angrily, muttering ever more dire imprecations.

Is he saying anything specific? Or just making it really clear that he's randomly decided that now's a good time to be mad about leftover Asmodeans?

He seems to think she's done something to him, but he's more interested in being mad about it than helpfully monologuing.

Honestly, being mad about the Asmodean spymistress apparently being back from the dead is just about the most reasonable thing she's ever seen from him, it's just that the timing is really confusing.

Is there a way to point out that the Queen has teleporting enchanters to help her go after people for things that are much less bad than "being the Asmodean spymistress" without giving anything away about the school? ...She's not sure, and it'd be unfair to Raimon to risk it. It's not like he doesn't know about the archmages, anyways, and they could definitely handle it.

She's going to... keep taking notes on the anti-magic cell, how about that. She's pretty sure she's noticed everything there is to notice by now, but she doesn't want to leave first while he's being like this, that's just letting him win.

She might be stuck for a while, because in the next five minutes he tries walking out of the antimagic cell in a huff three more times before stopping in confusion each time. It's like clockwork, especially as each attempt makes him more and more coldly furious. The paper's probably an important part of whatever it is, because after each false start he tries another one.

It's kind of incredible that nobles can afford to treat paper like it's garbage just because they're mad. She's been spending part of the stipend on paper for notes but she wouldn't just randomly destroy it, not even with the stipend being as big as it is.

...After enough rounds of this she's going to try surreptitiously glancing at one of the papers.

The one she picks up is... a list of instructions? Or maybe a plan would be a better word; it involves him finding the Archmage Naima and paying for a remove curse and a break enchantment, and then seeing if he can get a limited wish if that doesn't work, and then going back into an antimagic field after, and it lists what is in context presumably several other epithets belonging to the old spymistress.

...Why is he mad at the paper. It's not like the paper ever did anything to him. Admittedly it's not like she did anything to him either, but getting mad at a piece of paper that he wrote seems a lot stupider.

If he's still not leaving she'll attempt to measure the cell again. (She is doing this by walking the length and width, putting her feet directly touching each other.) She already did this once but it feels less pointless than just standing around waiting for him to leave. Maybe she can figure out a decent way to measure the height, it's too tall for her to just compare it with her own height.

Eventually, it gets late enough that Acevedo has other things to get to. He's not sure where all the time has gone or what happened to all his paper, but if it was actually important he'd remember it.

Instead of walking back into the antimagic field, he walks off out of the royal dungeons, leaving a dozen unintelligible papers behind.

Oh good, he's finally gone.

...She's going to grab his notes before she leaves, just in case they give away any of the Evil nobles' plans. And then she'll leave.

Wow, that took way longer than she was expecting. She's barely going to have any time to grab dinner before she ought to head back to the temple, and she probably won't have time to look over the committee transcripts at all.