“There is a difference between a man who steals because he wants gold and a man who steals because he needs to feed his children,” Emily pointed out. Janus was far too close to her for comfort. “One is a criminal…”
“It makes no difference,” Janus insisted. His eyes bored into hers. Emily could sense, again, something peering at her though his eyes. “Both of them are thieves!”
He stepped back, his face twisting as if he’d smelled something vile. “That’s how it always starts,” he hissed. “Excuses! He needed to steal because he has a family to feed! He beat his wife bloody because she nagged! She killed her husband because he beat her! Excuses, excuses, excuses…they’re nothing more than ways to escape responsibility for their actions! And yet, the goods are stolen or a person is dead…”
Emily winced, inwardly. On one hand, she knew he had a point. An excuse was nothing more than an excuse. But, on the other hand, some excuses were valid. She would have felt sorry for a man who needed to steal to feed his family or for the woman who killed her abusive husband. And yet, that didn’t excuse their crimes…did it? She knew people who would have supported the husband for beating his wife, if the woman was a nag. They would have happily accepted the husband’s shitty excuse.
And that’s why we want to believe in an omniscient judge, she thought. God, who sees everything, would be able to weigh the excuses in the balance and come to a perfect judgement.
She closed her eyes for a long moment. She could see Janus’s point. The Nameless World had never been a just place. She’d seen countless people abused because they were peasants, because they lacked magic, because they’d been in the wrong place at the wrong time…
…But she also knew Janus was wrong. His theocracy could no more create a perfect state than anyone else. And the entity he’d created would turn into a monster.
“I understand how you feel,” she said, opening her eyes. It was true. “But this is utter madness.”
“You punished a couple for abusing their servant,” Janus said. He stepped back into view, his eyes quizzical. “How is this different?”
Emily shuddered. A young girl, younger than Frieda, had risked everything in coming to her baroness for justice. Emily knew, all too well, that her predecessor would have kicked the girl out of his castle – if she’d been lucky. But Emily had heard the case and passed judgement in the girl’s favor. And yet, she knew people had muttered that she’d taken matters too far. Paying for the girl’s medical treatment was one thing – and organizing that had been tricky – but turning her former master and mistress into serfs was quite another.
“You can’t judge everyone.” Emily flinched as she heard another scream echoing through the walls. “And you can’t see everything. You cannot determine if an excuse is valid or not…”
“Justice can make those judgements,” Janus insisted.
Emily shook her head. Justice couldn’t even begin to judge fairly. Janus might think he was asking a god to pass judgement, but instead he was sending a monstrous entity out to kill. No doubt he thought everyone was guilty of something. In hindsight, Alba had been amazingly lucky. Justice could have killed her as easily as it had killed Antony.
She felt a twang of regret, mingled with a grim determination to stop Janus – whatever the cost. He didn’t know what he was doing. How could he? He’d found the scrolls, but it was clear he lacked the background to do anything beyond taking them for granted…
“He can’t,” she said.
Janus lunged at her. His hand was wrapped around her neck before she could react.
“Justice is a god,” he snarled. Emily had to fight to avoid panic. “And he will pass judgement on you!”
Emily gasped for breath as he released her. “Where…where did you find the scrolls?”
“They were hidden under the temple,” Janus started to pace again. “We uncovered them two years ago, when we expanded the lower levels. The note on the scrolls said they would only be discovered when we needed them.”
And if Master Wolfe managed to turn himself into a Mimic, Emily thought, he might have come up here after escaping the castle.
She considered it, briefly. A Mimic would never grow tired, as long as it had a constant supply of magic. She shivered as the implications sank in. Master Wolfe had been a skilled magician, yet even he would have had to resort to necromancy to live if he’d become a Mimic. His sanity would have eventually slipped completely, even though he no longer had a human brain to warp. But, before then, he could have founded the city. Beneficence was old, yet there were no reliable stories from the days before the Empire. God alone knew what might have happened between Master Wolfe’s apparent death and the rise of the Empire.
A thought struck her. Were those notes left for me?
Janus turned back to face her. “You will join us,” he said. “Surrender your will. Embrace Justice.”
Emily snapped the freeze spell, then hurled a freeze charm of her own at him. Janus looked surprised, but somehow managed to use his staff to block the spell. Emily sensed a wave of magic surrounding the wood, pulsing out in all directions…Janus might not be a magician in his own right, but he’d somehow learned to manipulate magic in ways no mundane should be able to match. She promised herself that she’d figure out how he did it afterwards.
Janus snapped out a word. A wave of force struck Emily, throwing her back. She barely had a moment to wrap protections around herself before she smashed through the glass and plummeted to the chamber below. Someone shouted, loudly, as she drew on her magic to land as gently as she could. The shock of the impact still hurt…
“Justice,” Janus shouted. “Come!”