Janus rounded on her. “We summoned a god,” he hissed. “The rites and rituals said we had to prove our worth, so we did! We solved the puzzles, made the prayers, offered the sacrifices…and our god appeared!”
Emily looked down at the scrolls. Master Wolfe had created something wondrous and terrible, a series of spells designed to create a powerful entity…without, perhaps, needing powerful and experienced sorcerers to start the ball rolling. Someone from Whitehall would have had more sense, she suspected, than to cast the spells without working out precisely what they did first. Janus and his comrades lacked even a basic magical education.
The warnings aren’t at the back of the scrolls, she thought. There weren’t any warnings at all!
She forced herself to think. “So you summoned a god,” she said. She might as well humor him, for the moment. “And then…what?”
Janus smiled. “Vesperian’s project was doomed,” he said. “It was easy to calculate that he would eventually run out of money. And yet, more and more people were being drawn into the whirlpool. All that imaginary money--” he laughed, briefly “--looked so tempting that people chose to ignore the warning signs. They should have stayed with gold and silver. I did try to warn my guild, you know.”
Emily blinked. “You did?”
“I saw trouble coming,” Janus said. “It was obvious. I didn’t get a chance to look at the books, of course, but I could pick up enough of the wider picture to see disaster looming. It wasn’t really anything new, you see. Only the scale was far larger than anyone would have believed possible, Lady Emily.”
“I know,” Emily said, quietly.
Something clicked in her mind. “Your guild,” she repeated. “You were an accountant, weren’t you?”
“I trusted my guildmaster,” Janus said. “I didn’t realize just how badly he’d exploited his position until we were being spat at in the streets. No one had time to worry about Vesperian when we were fighting for our survival.”
Harman is an accountant, Emily thought, numbly. And he was right next to us when we made our plans.
She gritted her teeth. She’d have to warn General Pollack, once she got out…if, of course, it wasn’t already too late. Sienna’s spells should have revealed any spell-controlled traitors who entered her house, but if Harman had betrayed them willingly…
“You made the disaster worse,” she realized. She’d worry about Harman later, if she had time. The real problem was still Justice. “You encouraged people to buy his notes.”
“We didn’t need to,” Janus said. “We just watched and waited.”
“Until the bubble finally started to burst,” Emily said. “And when you knew it was going to happen, you used your god to kill people who were connected with the project.”
“Justice passed judgement on them,” Janus said.
“But he didn’t,” Emily pointed out. “Antony wasn’t his father.”
“Justice passed judgement on Antony,” Janus said. “It was what he deserved.”
And whatever you used to target Emil wasn’t perfect, Emily thought. She wished that she had a few hours to go through the scrolls. Choosing the entity’s target – one man in a large city – wouldn’t be easy. A blood connection? Or something more subtle? You got his son instead.
She gritted her teeth. A mistake? Fathers and sons were definitely linked by ties of blood – Antony wouldn’t be Emil, but he’d be close enough to be affected by blood-bound magic aimed at his father. Or were the Hands of Justice already losing control of their creation?
“He was a young man,” she said. “He didn’t deserve to die.”
Janus laughed. “Clearly, you’ve never been a young man.”
Emily rolled her eyes in annoyance. She’d never been particularly well-endowed, but still…no one would mistake her for a man unless she used a glamour. She opened her mouth to point out that Janus had been a young man himself once, but she knew it would be futile. Janus had convinced himself that the entity was a real god, therefore nothing it did could be wrong by definition. Justice could slaughter children in their cradles and Janus would rationalize it away, somehow. And the other true believers would follow him.
“And then you killed Vesperian,” Emily said. “And when the bubble exploded, you were ready to take over.”
“And build a truly just world,” Janus finished. He leaned forward. “Lady Emily, surely you can see that we should be on the same side.”
Emily shook her head. She could see their point – she’d seen too much of what passed for justice in the Nameless World – but they’d gone too far. Their creation would eventually consume the entire city, even if they didn’t lose control sooner or later. And even if they somehow overcame that problem – a dispelling spell might stop Justice before the entity could do any more damage – they’d still be crushing anyone who disagreed with them. One nightmare would be replaced by another.
The Shah of Iran wasn’t a very nice man, she recalled. But the Mullahs weren’t an improvement.
“You’re not about justice,” she said, quietly. “You’re about power.”
“Power to set things right,” Janus said.
“No,” Emily said. A dozen arguments rose up in her mind, but she knew none of them would make a difference. Janus was a fanatic. He wouldn’t listen to logic and reason. “You might have started out with good intentions, but you’ll wind up twisting them into a nightmare.”
“We have a god,” Janus insisted.
“A creature who is incapable of telling the difference between a man and his father,” Emily said, sharply. Justice, if she’d reasoned the scrolls out correctly, wouldn’t be particularly intelligent. That would come, in time, but for the moment he’d be no smarter than the average dog. “A creature who is incapable of understanding subtle points…”
“There are no subtle points.” Janus darted to his feet, glaring down at her. The affable pose was gone. “There are no excuses.”