“Tell me,” she managed. “How do you know you’re Justice?”
The entity seemed surprised by the question. “I WAS THE LORD OF JUDGEMENT WHEN BALOK THE MANY-HUED WAGED WAR AGAINST SOLARIS, KING OF THE GODS. I HAVE PASSED JUDGEMENT SINCE I WAS BROUGHT INTO THE WORLD. I REMEMBER EVERY JUDGEMENT. I AM JUSTICE”
Emily frowned, wishing she knew more about the gods. She’d never paid enough attention to the myths and legends of her new world. She certainly didn’t know enough about the stories, particularly the ones Janus and his comrades would have believed, to argue with Justice. And yet, there were options…
She pushed her mind out, trying to sense the ebb and flow of power. “Do you remember every last detail of every last judgement?”
“YES.”
“Then tell me,” she said. “What did Balok look like?”
Justice hesitated. “BALOK THE MANY-HUED WAS JUDGED FOR WAGING WAR AGAINST SOLARIS, KING OF THE GODS. HE WAS CONDEMNED TO A MILLION ETERNITIES IN THE PITS OF…”
“You said,” Emily agreed. “But what did he look like? What was he wearing? Who watched the trial? Who cheered your judgement?”
She reached out with her mind again, carefully touching the magic. Justice drew power directly from Marian now, his last true link to anything outside the spell nexus that had created him. Emily gritted her teeth as she parsed the lines of power, realizing that killing Marian would solve nothing. Justice wouldn’t run out of power and die quickly enough to save the city, let alone the rest of them.
“I…DO…NOT…RECALL,” Justice said.
Emily felt a hot flash of triumph, mingled with fear. Lady Barb had talked about subtle magic and how it could warp a person’s mind…and how a victim could respond with fear and anger, if the mental framework started to crack. They’d lash out at the people trying to help them, just to avoid the pain of breaking free. Justice wasn’t human, but he might easily go the same way.
Marian screamed. Caleb hurried back to her and started to fiddle with her bonds, but it was starting to look as though she couldn’t be freed in a hurry. Justice had a direct link to her magic, to her very soul…Emily paused as a thought struck her. Perhaps, just perhaps, the link went both ways.
“Tell me about another judgement,” Emily said. It would keep the entity talking while she thought. “Who else have you judged?”
“I DESTROYED THE CITY OF GRAYREN FOR SIN AND DEPRAVITY,” Justice informed her. “THE INHABITANTS WERE EXECUTED FOR THEIR CRIMES AGAINST THE NATURAL ORDER.”
Emily nodded. “And what were those sins?”
There was another pause. “I…DO…NOT…RECALL. I PASSED JUDGEMENT ON THEM…”
“What did they do to deserve it?” Emily asked. “Did you find all of them guilty? Was there not a single innocent man, woman or child in the entire city?”
The entity said nothing. Emily pressed her advantage.
“How could a child have committed a crime worthy of death?” she asked. “How could you destroy them all?”
Justice peered at her. “THEIR PARENTS WOULD HAVE TAUGHT THEM TO SIN. THEY WOULD HAVE SINNED IN TIME.”
“But they would not be guilty themselves.” Emily risked a glance at Caleb, still struggling with Marian’s bonds. “How can executing them be just?”
She felt the presence grow stronger, again. Logically, Justice stood condemned by its own rules. It could not execute children because they might grow up into criminals. But if it was learning to think, it might manage to evade that argument by reasoning that the children would grow into criminals and it was merely executing them before they committed a crime…a crime they certainly would commit. It made no logical sense, but if Justice needed to believe it to survive…
“THEY WOULD HAVE SINNED. I EXECUTED THEM FOR SIN.”
“But they never had the chance to sin,” Emily pointed out. “How can that be just?”
Justice made no answer. She tested the power again, then carefully strode around the entity and walked to the altar. Marian looked weak, her strength slowly draining into the creature’s insatiable maw. She didn’t have long to live, Emily realized. At some point, she’d be too far gone to recover, whatever happened. Caleb looked at her, his eyes despairing.
“Get your mother and brother out of here,” she whispered. She didn’t want Caleb to see what she might have to do. “Hurry.”
She looked up at the entity. “How did their parents sin? Why do you not remember?”
“I…DO…NOT…KNOW,” the entity said.
“You should know,” Emily said. She studied the threads of power, trying to work out how they fit into the spell matrix. Justice was changing even as she watched, the spellwork growing more and more complicated. She hadn’t seen anything like it since she’d created the wards at Heart’s Eye. “If you don’t know your own history, how do you know you are Justice?”
The entity glared at her. “YOU ARE TRYING TO MAKE ME DOUBT.”
“An unquestioned belief is not worth having,” Emily quoted. “In fact, it is positively dangerous.”
“IT IS WOMEN WHO LURE MEN FROM THE PATH OF RIGHTEOUSNESS. IT IS WOMEN WHO MAKE MEN DOUBT.”
Emily lifted her eyebrows. Justice wasn’t human. Why would it embrace a misogynist attitude? Janus hadn’t struck her as particularly misogynistic – she’d met far more unpleasant people in the past, when women had been second-class at best, property at worst. Perhaps the doctrines Janus had used to shape Justice were twisting the entity, now that it was thinking for itself. Or perhaps it was merely grasping at straws to keep her arguments from forcing it to question itself.
“And if a woman says something,” she said, “does that make it automatically wrong?”
Justice said nothing. Emily watched, wondering just how far the entity could question itself before it had an existential crisis. If it was Justice, it should remember everything; if it wasn’t Justice, then how did it know it was doing the right thing? She had no idea just how advanced – how intelligent – Justice’s spell matrix had become, but it might figure out a way to justify its memory gaps to itself.
Marian screamed, again. Her fingers twitched. Emily looked down at her. The bonds were made of something that looked like plastic, but couldn’t be. There was no plastic on the Nameless World…she tested one and discovered it was practically unbreakable. Breaking the altar itself might be quicker, if she wanted to get Marian away from Justice. But the entity was connected to her.
“And if you can’t answer that question,” she said, carefully resting her fingers on Marian’s chest, “how do you know you’re a god?”
Justice howled in rage – and doubt. Marian screamed…Emily hesitated, then thrust her mind into the spellware linking Marian to Justice. It was strange, an elaborate mixture of advanced spells and crude incantations that should never have held together for more than a few seconds, but they worked. Marian twisted, trying to push Emily away, as Emily forced her way up the link. Justice was powerful, but vulnerable. She could see his weaknesses now, see all the places where the spellwork was fraying…
He’s trying to evolve, she thought, numbly. And it’s working.
She was tempted to watch, even though she knew she shouldn’t. It was very much like Whitehall’s wards, but they’d had nearly a thousand years to grow. And they had an unlimited power source to draw on. Justice was evolving so rapidly that he might not make it out of the temple before he collapsed, even if he did manage to drain everyone else. She took a moment of grim relief in knowing that Janus’s madness probably wouldn’t get any further, then reached for the matrix. Here, inside his core, Justice was defenseless. The pressure on her mind was gone.
Goodbye, she thought.
Marian screamed. A hand caught her and yanked her back. Emily recoiled, her mind struggling to cope with the sudden transition. Her legs buckled…someone was holding her, holding her back. She tried to kick out, but her body was weak…
“You’ll kill her,” Caleb said.
Emily’s head spun. C
aleb had grabbed her…was he a Fist? Had Justice overwhelmed his mind? Or…she looked at him and knew the truth. He was terrified for his sister…Marian was screaming in pain…pain Emily had caused.
“Let go of me,” she snapped. Something was trickling down her nose. It took her a moment to realize it was blood. “I have to stop him.”
“You’ll kill her,” Caleb shouted. “Let her go!”
Emily stared at him. “I won’t kill her,” she said, although she wasn’t sure if that was actually true or not. Justice might drain Marian completely before Emily managed to stop him…coming to think of it, if he did she’d lose her chance to reach inside his defenses. “Let go of me.”
Caleb held her, tightly. She’d always known he was stronger than her, physically, but it had never mattered before. Now, she didn’t have the strength to resist. Her body felt weak and frail. She tried to knock her head back to strike his nose, but it didn’t have any effect at all. Frustration bubbled up within her, mingled with rage and terror. Caleb wouldn’t save anyone, not even his sister. They were all doomed…
She fell forward, suddenly. Caleb gasped in pain. Emily managed to turn, just in time to see Frieda clinging to Caleb’s back. As Frieda’s hands clawed at his throat, Caleb stumbled back, trying to stop her before it was too late. Emily stared at them for a long moment, then forced herself back to Marian. She’d just have to hope that Frieda could distract Caleb long enough to let her finish the job.
I’m sorry, she thought. She knew Caleb would never forgive her for risking his sister, even if Marian had betrayed them. He’d do whatever it took to stop her. I’m so sorry.
Justice loomed over Marian, his dark eyes growing larger. “I AM JUSTICE. AND I SHALL JUDGE YOU ALL.”
“This girl is an innocent,” Emily said. “And you are killing her.”
“SHE CAME TO ME OF HER OWN FREE WILL,” Justice informed her. The entity didn’t seem to notice – or care – when Emily touched Marian’s chest again. “SHE IS MINE.”
“You cannot explain the gaps in your memory,” Emily said. If she could distract it for a few more seconds, she might just be able to put an end to it. “Can you…?”
“THEY ARE OF NO CONCERN. I AM JUSTICE.”
He’s decided to deal with the problem by ignoring it, Emily thought, as she reached for the threads. How very human.
“No,” Caleb shouted. “Emily, stop!”
Emily ignored him as she plunged her mind back into the maelstrom. Justice was growing ever more powerful, yet his spellwork was simplifying as she watched. Maybe he could make it out of the temple after all. He would become a god-king, she realized, if he managed to gain more power. And he would be unchallengeable. No sword could harm him, no spell could hurt him…his followers would spend the rest of eternity under the rule of an utterly inhuman entity. A computer ruler could hardly be worse.
Enough, she thought.
She reached for her magic, for the last scraps of power. Justice was draining her, even now…but it gave her access to his core. The spells were resilient, designed to cope with vast influxes of power, yet not to cope with an attack from the inside. Emily noted, as she took hold of the spells and pulled, that the staffs should have worked. Quite why they hadn’t was a mystery.
Or maybe the drain went through the link too, she thought. Justice was fragmenting, pieces of spellware splintering off in all directions. Its presence rose one final time, then collapsed completely. The parchments were drained before they could be triggered.
Justice screamed, a sound that tore at her ears…and exploded with light. The spellware flared with power, collapsing in on itself. Emily fell backwards, her mind falling back into her body…she landed on the floor hard enough to hurt. Her body ached, her head throbbed…she forced herself up, just in time to see Justice shatter into thousands of luminescent pieces.
And then, they were gone.
Marian was crying, soft hopeless sobs that tore at Emily’s heart. But she was alive…the spells were gone completely. Emily tugged at the bonds, somehow unsurprised when they came free easily. The power that had been holding them together was gone forever. Marian felt light in Emily’s arms, flopping around as though she was too tired to move. And yet, she was alive.
Frieda coughed. Emily turned to look at her. Frieda’s face was bruised – Caleb didn’t look in any better shape – but she was alive. They were both alive.
“Is that it?” Frieda stumbled to her feet. “Is it over?”
“Yeah.” Emily leaned against the remains of the altar, trying to gather what remained of her strength. The headache was already fading, but she was exhausted. And yet ... given time, they’d all get back to normal. “It’s over.”
And the horror in Caleb’s eyes told her that they, too, were over.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
“WHAT A MESS,” MARKUS SAID.
Emily nodded in agreement as they stood on the roof, looking down over the city. The streets were slowly returning to normal, but it would be a long time before Beneficence recovered completely. Hundreds of people had collapsed, badly shocked, after Justice’s death; thousands more were starving, searching desperately for something to eat. The last two days had been nightmarish, even after the fishing boats had started plying their trade again. She was surprised that so many citizens had worked together to save their city.
Community isn’t an empty word here, she thought. People do spend their lives with their neighbors.
She looked down towards the makeshift gallows, feeling sick. Some of the surviving Fists of Justice had managed to shed their uniforms and escape, but most had been caught by outraged citizens and killed, either beaten to death or hung in the streets. Emily knew, all too well, that some of them had been innocent, that they’d been sucked into something they didn’t understand or overwhelmed by Justice, but she hadn’t been able to do anything to save them. The citizens had demanded their piece of flesh. And really, how could she blame them?
Markus gave her a sidelong look. “What happened to the scrolls you found?”
Emily shrugged. Sienna had insisted on searching the remains of the Temple of Justice for the scrolls – and anything else the Hands of Justice might have hidden away – but they’d found nothing. The scrolls might have been destroyed, during Emily’s first encounter with Justice, or they might have been taken before the entity was killed. She hoped they’d been destroyed, but she had no way to know for sure. The secret was out and spreading. It was sheer luck that most people believed Justice had been nothing more than an illusion.
And Janus an incredibly powerful sorcerer, she thought. But better they believe that than the truth.
“I wish I knew,” she said, reluctantly. The thought distracted her from the dull ache in her heart. “If they were taken, they could be out of the city by now.”
“Some of Janus’s comrades were never found,” Markus said. “They might try again.”
“They might,” Emily agreed. “But we know how to stop them now, if they do.”
She shook her head, tiredly. Beneficence would never be the same again.
Markus cleared his throat. “I heard about you and Caleb,” he said. “Are you all right?”
Emily snorted. “I’ve been better,” she said. She’d never felt quite so rotten before, even after the Grandmaster’s death. “I don’t…sometimes I think I should never have started to court him, and sometimes I think I should never have come to his city.”
“Perhaps not,” Markus agreed. “I suspect he reasoned that he could go with you, if necessary, and his family would be fine. It was a little different when he became the Heir.”
“You were the Heir,” Emily pointed out. “And you gave it up for Melissa.”
“I knew my brother would take my place,” Markus said. He shrugged. “They were teaching me how to be Patriarch from the day I was old enough to string two words together. I knew what the job entailed before I went to Mountaintop. Caleb, on the other hand…I think he was probably a l
ittle overwhelmed. It isn’t easy to cope when you find that you’re suddenly expected to be the family’s next head.”
“Ouch,” Emily said. She didn’t really want to talk about it. “Is it that hard?”
“Think about it,” Markus said. “Caleb and you met at Whitehall, right? You spent most of your time in an environment where you could both be yourselves. Here…before Casper’s death, Caleb could come and go as he pleased. No one really expected him to be anything more significant than just another magician on the family tree. Now…Caleb has all sorts of new responsibilities…”
He sighed. “It would have been harder for us, perhaps, if we hadn’t made a clean break. Caleb…didn’t want to give up his family.”
He didn’t want to give up his family for me, Emily thought. It was a bitter thought. But how could she ask him to give up his family? And I didn’t really want to marry into the family.
Markus looked pensive. “You outgrew him.”
Emily glanced at him. “What?”
“When you met him, you were seventeen,” Markus said.
“Eighteen,” Emily corrected. She wasn’t entirely sure of her precise age, but she had been sixteen when Shadye had kidnapped her and she’d spent somewhere between four and five years on the Nameless World. “It was at Cockatrice.”
“And you were ready for him, at the time,” Markus added. “But as you grew older, you started to see his flaws too. Maybe you could have overcome them, if things had been different, but one of you would have had to give up something important.”
Emily scowled. “You seem to be good at giving advice.”
Markus stuck out his tongue. “I was Head Boy. Do you have any idea how many youngsters I consoled after emotional break-ups? How many young men and women I helped to come to terms with their relationship issues? How many gifted magicians I helped to steer their way through betrothal and marriage contracts?”
“No,” Emily said.
“A lot,” Markus told her. “And let me tell you, Emily, that you and Caleb have been very lucky, compared to some of the others. You can end your relationship without fear of familial repercussions.”
Fists of Justice (Schooled in Magic Book 12) Page 36
