Once, I might have balked at the thought of doing what I knew I must, but those who balk at justice and shudder at its retributive nature are fools—as all young men are. Justice, by its very nature, must be retributive. Punishment must follow crime, and cannot precede it. Criminals cannot be brought to justice before their crimes, because before

There are things stronger than our words for them. Have I not said so? Or perhaps I will have said so when all is done. In some other place. But it is so, regardless. Time and space. Death. Stone. Sea. Things that are and would be even without us. Things that are in nature and belong to it.

But there are things weaker than our words. Many things.

justice is punitive. That it must be so to be at all just. Without number are the voices raised throughout time in opposition to this principle, and the ink they have spilled in that opposition might drown the fabled seven seas of Earth. I understand their objections. Those who set their pen against the sword and the gallows and the firing squad

but what is justice? Only a statue in Chantry, her eyes blinded, a balance in her hands. Thus the cynics would have it. But I am no cynic. That what is right and just is often difficult to see and more difficult to know does not mean there is nothing just or right in creation, only that we are ourselves inadequate in its pursuit.