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 little 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…”