"My main goal is understanding; regardless of whether you pinned it on me, it did end up pinned on me, and I am rather concerned about this. I suspected it was you, because coincidences don't exist, but I didn't tell the Lord or the inquisitors and I'd like to know why."

"Do you plan to? Telling them I know something about who did it would be nearly as bad as telling them it was me. If you'd promise not to cause anyone to suspect me I'd be happy to cooperate."

"That's a dangerous promise, though, isn't it? I don't want to tell, but if you go and say you're planning on a ritual to sacrifice the city to some demon or other it would have been a rather dumb promise to have made."

She laughs. "Fair point. I don't know much about you in particular, but I can say I don't think there's anything a person in your position would consider a non-obvious downside."

"I'm not sure what a person in my position would consider an obvious downside, I'm not exactly well-versed in diabolism."

"If I could tell you the name and nothing else, would you go to the authorities with that? As far as I know they don't have any plans that threaten the city, nor are they in some position where the existence of the secret matters. Like Lord."

"I would not. And... I'm honestly curious. Extremely so. If diabolism is as evil as everyone says it is, why do people do it? What are the costs, what does it do, why does it exist? There are things I don't know and I wish to know them. So if I'm convinced you're not going to kill anyone in a situation other than self-defence or defence of others I promise I won't tell."

"Does it count as convinced if you have no reason to think that I'll kill anyone? Most people probably can't actively convince you that they definitely never will."

"It does, and I don't mean never, it'd be a fairly stringent standard I wouldn't hold even myself to."

"Good enough for me.

The first answer is I framed you for being a diabolist, not for any incident of diabolism. It's the kind of splitting hairs that you have to get used to in...some contexts. I'll have a lot less reason to be evasive about your other questions, if you still want them answered."

"...not for any incident? How about the grey stuff?"

"The inquisitors were after whoever summoned a particular demon to do something unknown, with that side effect as proof that it happened. I summoned something else, not a demon, specifically to fake the proof. Framed for an incident that didn't exist, maybe."

"Okay. Why."

She looks down. "I needed a distraction. The inquisitors found out there was a diabolist but weren't on my trail yet, so I laid a false one. They find out it's not you, and I doubt I'm on anyone's list of people who know you're in town.

Now that might depend on what you mean by us having met ambiguously before."

"We have not met in the past."

"Not the past but "before" depends how you mean it. All right. Do the inquisitors know about whatever hair you're splitting?"

"They do, but this particular hair does not lead to you specifically, or even to Jacob's Bell without some very guided digging."

"Okay.

This is a pretty good example of diabolists' reputation, incidentally. Many, maybe most are downright evil, but almost all get desperate."

"Being downright evil doesn't sound... psychologically plausible."

"People who have options and become diabolists are selected for it. Less so for the people who are born into it or, I don't know, are faced with an insoluble problem and have a how-to guide fall on them out of the sky. But any time you summon a demon you're benefiting two sides: yourself, and an enemy of the entire world. Diabolists tend not to mind that second bit."

"...I guess. You're in the 'born into it' camp, what do you think about the whole deal?"

"I think– Everything's winding down. Deteriorating, falling apart. Diabolists are probably in the best position to oppose that and lock up the demons behind it. We need some, even if most are far more trouble than they're worth."

"...I think you're both oversimplifying stuff and assuming a lot more background in diabolism and demons than I possess."

Rose nods twice. "I've been assuming you know everything that's generally known. But generally doesn't mean without exception. I can back up.

Demons are destruction. They cause it, or they represent it, or something, doesn't really matter how you phrase it. Not all do it the same way, maybe one demon drives people to insanity and another goes in for outright deletion, but they're all irreversible. And they're winning. It's easier to destroy than create, so on balance things don't look good in the long term. A greater angel can defeat a lesser demon, but that leaves the greater demon unopposed.

If you follow physics, there's a debate about whether the universe is permanent or if it eventually winds down to a flat space filled with nothing. Practitioners know. It's a matter of time until everything gets consumed—a lot of time, but time. It's one of the reasons why some people put so much stock in longstanding traditions. Those are harder to topple, and everything topples eventually.

Demons eating the universe might or might not matter on a human time scale. We don't know yet. If it does—and even if it doesn't—we'll wish someone had bound more demons or gotten them to agree to cause less damage."

"Where do demons come from, and angels? And why is there an imbalance between angels and demons? Just because it's harder to create than destroy?"