en, when she glanced at the scythe, she could see that his eyes were open and watching her.
She froze, knowing she was caught, knowing that putting the ring down now wouldn’t change that.
“Would you like to try it on?” Scythe Faraday asked.
“No,” she said. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have touched it .”
“You shouldn’t have, but you did.”
She wondered if he had been awake this whole time.
“Go ahead,” he told her. “Try it on. I insist.”
She was dubious, but did as she was told, because in spite of what she told him, she did want to try it on.
It felt warm on her finger. It was sized for the scythe, so it was too large for her. It was also heavier than she imagined.
“Do you worry that it wil ever be stolen?” she asked.
“Not real y. Anyone foolish enough to steal a scythe’s ring is quickly removed from the world, so they cease to be a problem.”
e ring was getting noticeably cooler.
“It is a covetable object, though, don’t you agree?” the scythe said.
Suddenly Citra realized the ring wasn’t just cool, it was freezing. e metal, in a matter of seconds, had grown white with frost, and her finger was in such intense pain from the cold, she cried out and pul ed the ring from her hand. It flew across the room.
Not only was her ring finger severely frostbitten, so were the fingers that had pul ed it free. She bit back a whimper. She could now feel warmth flowing through her body as her healing nanites released morphine. She became woozy, but forced herself to stay alert.
“A security measure I instal ed myself,” the scythe said. “A micro-coolant chip in the setting. Let me see.” He turned on his nightstand light and grabbed her hand, looking at her ring finger. e flesh at the joint was pale blue and frozen solid. “In the Age of Mortality, you might have lost the finger, but I trust your nanites are already mending the damage.” He let go of her hand. “You’l be fine by morning. Perhaps next time you’l think before touching things that don’t belong to you.” He retrieved his ring, set it back on the nightstand, then handed her the empty glass. “From now on Rowan wil bring me my evening milk,” he said.
Citra deflated. “I’m sorry I disappointed you, Your Honor. You’re right; I don’t deserve to bring you your milk.”
He raised an eyebrow. “You misunderstand. is is not a punishment.
Curiosity is human; I merely al owed you to get it out of your system. I have to say, it took you long enough.” en he gave her a little conspiratorial grin.
“Now let’s see how long it takes Rowan to go for the ring.”
Sometimes, when the weight of my job becomes overwhelming, I begin to lament al the things lost when we conquered death. I think about religion and how, once we became our own saviors, our own gods, most faiths became irrelevant. What must it have been like to believe in something greater than oneself? To accept imperfection and look to a rising vision of al we could never be? It must have been comforting. It must have been frightening. It must have lifted people from the mundane, but also justified al sorts of evil. I often wonder if the bright benefit of belief outweighed the darkness its abuse could bring.
There are the tone cults, of course, dressing in sackcloth and worshiping sonic vibrations—but like so many things in our world, they seek to imitate what once was. Their rituals are not to be taken seriously. They exist merely to make the passing time feel meaningful and profound.
Lately I’ve been preoccupied with a tone cult in my neighborhood. I went into their gathering place the other day. I was there to glean one of the cult’s congregants—a man who had not yet turned his first corner. They were intoning what they cal ed “the resonant frequency of the universe.” One of them told me that the sound is alive and that harmonizing with it brings inner peace. I wonder, when they look at the great tuning fork that stands as the symbol of their faith, if they truly believe it to be a symbol of power or are they just joining in a communal joke?
—From the gleaning journal of H.S. Curie
No Room for Mediocrity
“e Scythedom is the world’s only self-governing body,” said Scythe Faraday. “While the rest of the world is under underhead rule, the Scythedom is not. Which is why we hold conclaves three times a year to resolve disputes, review policy, and mourn the lives we’ve taken.”
Vernal Conclave, which was to take place during the first week of May, was less than a week away. Rowan and Citra had studied enough of the structure of the Scythedom to know that al twenty-five regions of the world held their conclaves on the same day, and that there were currently three hundred twenty-one scythes in their region, which encompassed the heart of the North Merican continent.
“e MidMerican Conclave is an important one,” Scythe Faraday told them, “because we tend to set the trend for much of the world. ere’s an expression, ‘As goes MidMerica, so goes the planet.’ e Grandslayer scythes of the Global Conclave always have their eyes on us.”
Scythe Faraday explained that at each conclave they would be tested. “I do not know the nature of this first test, which is why you need to be as prepared as possible in al aspects of your training.”
Rowan found he had a mil ion questions about conclave, but kept them to himself. He let Citra do al the asking—mainly because the questions irritated Scythe Faraday, and he never answered them.
“You’l find out al you need to know when you get there,” the scythe told them. “For now al your attention must be on your training and your studies.”
Rowan had never been an exceptional student—but that was by design.
To be either too good or too bad drew attention. As much as he hated being the lettuce, it was his comfort zone.
“If you apply yourself, I have no doubt you could be at the top of your class,” his science teacher told him aer getting the highest grade on his midterm last year. He had done it just to see if he could. Now that he knew, he saw no great need to do it again. ere were many reasons, not the least of which was his own ignorance about scythes in those days before his apprenticeship. He assumed that being a stel ar student would make him a target. Supposedly, a friend of a friend was gleaned at eleven because he was the smartest kid in fih grade. It was nothing more than an urban myth, but Rowan believed it just enough that it kept him from wanting to stand out.
He wondered if other kids held back for fear of being gleaned.
He had little experience with being so studious. He found it exhausting, and there was more than just poison chemistry, post-mortal history, and journaling. ere was metal urgy as it applies to weapons, the philosophy of mortality, the psychology of immortality, and the literature of the Scythedom, from poetry to the wisdom found in famous scythes’ journals.
And of course, the mathematical statistics that Scythe Faraday relied upon so heavily.
ere was no room for mediocrity, especial y now with conclave coming up.Rowan did ask him one question about conclave. “Wil we be disqualified if we fail the test?”
Faraday took a moment before answering. “No,” he told them, “but there is a consequence.” Although he would not tel them what that consequence was. Rowan concluded that not knowing was more terrifying than knowing.
With just a few days before conclave, he and Citra stayed up late studying in the weapons den. Rowan found himself dozing, but was quickly awakened when Citra slammed a book.
“I hate this!” she announced. “Cerberin, aconite, conium, polonium—the poisons are al running together in my head.”
“at would sure make a person die faster,” Rowan said with a smirk.
She crossed her arms. “Do you know your poisons?”
“We’re only supposed to know forty by conclave,” he pointed out.
“And do you know them?”
“I wil ,” he told her.
“What’s the molecular formula for tetrodotoxin?”
He wanted to ignore her, but found he couldn’t back away from the chal enge. Perhaps a bit of her competitive nature was rubbing off on him.
“C11H17N3O6.”
“Wrong!” she said, pointing a finger at him. “It’s O8, not O6. You fail!”
She was trying to rile him up, so she wouldn’t be the only one riled. He wasn’t going to oblige. “Guess so,” he said, and tried to return to his studies.
“Aren’t you the least bit worried?”
He took a breath and closed his book. When Faraday first began teaching them, Rowan found the use of actual old-school books very off-putting, but over time, he’d learned there was something very satisfying to the turning of pages, and—as Citra had already discovered—the emotional catharsis of slamming a book shut.
“Of course I’m worried, but here’s the way I look at it. We know they won’t disqualify us, and we already know we can’t be gleaned, and we’l have two more chances to make up for any screw-ups before one of us is chosen.
Whatever the consequence of failing the first round of tests, if either of us fail, we’l deal with it.”
Citra slumped in her chair. “I don’t fail,” she said, but didn’t sound too convinced of it. ere was this pouty look on her face that made Rowan want to smile, but he didn’t because he knew that would infuriate her. He actual y liked how she would get infuriated—but they had too much work to do to indulge in emotional distraction.
Rowan put away his toxicology book and pul ed out his volume on weapons identification. ey were required to be able to identify thirty different weapons, how to wield them, and their detailed history. Rowan was more worried about that than the poisons. He spared a glance at Citra, who noticed the glance, so he tried not to look at her again.
en out of nowhere she said, “I would miss you.”
He looked up, and she looked away. “How do you mean?”
“I mean that if disqualification was part of the rules, I’d miss having you around.”
He considered reaching out to take her hand, which rested gently on the table. But the table was big, and her hand was too far away for it to be anything other than insanely awkward. en again, even if they sat closer, it would be an insane thing to do.
“But it’s not part of the rules,” he said. “Which means that no matter what, you’re stuck with me for eight more months.”
She grinned. “Yeah. I’m sure I’l real y be sick of you by then.”
It was the first time it occurred to Rowan that she might not hate him as much as he thought she did.
The quota system has worked for over two hundred years, and although it fluctuates region to region, it makes it crystal clear what each scythe’s responsibility to the world is. Of course it’s al based on averages—we can go days or even weeks without gleaning—
but we must meet our quota before the next conclave. There are those eager ones who glean early, and find themselves with lit le to do as conclave draws near. There are those who procrastinate and have to hurry toward the end. Both those approaches lead to sloppiness and unintentional bias.
I often wonder if the quota wil ever change, and if so, how much. Population growth is stil off the charts, but it’s balanced by the Thunderhead’s ability to provide for an ever-increasing population. Renewable resources, subsurface dwel ings, artificial islands, and al without there ever being any less green or a sense of overcrowding. We have mastered this world, and yet protected it in a way that our forefathers could scarcely have dreamed.
But al things are limited. While the Thunderhead does not interfere with the Scythedom, it does suggest the number of scythes there should be in the world. Currently there are approximately five mil ion people gleaned per year worldwide—a tiny fraction of the death rate in the Age of Mortality, and nowhere near enough to balance population growth. I shudder to think how many more scythes it would take, and how many gleanings would be required, if we ever need to curb population growth altogether.
—From the gleaning journal of H.S. Curie
Vernal Conclave
Fulcrum City was a post-mortal metropolis toward the very center of MidMerica. ere, by the river, set low between the skysoaring spires of graceful city living, was a venerable structure of stone, impressive if not in height then in solidity. Marble columns and arches supported a great copper dome. It was an unyielding homage to ancient Greece and Imperial Rome, the birthing grounds of civilization. It was stil cal ed the Capitol Building, for it was once a state capital, back when there were stil states—in those days before government became obsolete. Now it had the honor of holding the administrative offices of the MidMerican Scythedom, as wel as hosting its conclave three times a year.
• • •
It was pouring rain the day of the Vernal Conclave.Citra rarely minded the rain, but a day of gloom coupled with a day of pure tension did not sit wel with her. But then, a bright sunny day would feel mocking. Citra realized there was no good day to be presented to an intimidating elegy of scythes.
Fulcrum City was only an hour away by hypertrain, but of course, Scythe Faraday saw hypertrains as an unnecessary extravagance. “Besides, I want scenery rather than a windowless subterranean tunnel. I’m a human being, not a mole.”
A standard train took six hours, and Citra did enjoy the scenery along the way, although she spent most of the trip studying.
Fulcrum City was on the Mississippi River. She recal ed that there was once a giant silver arch on the riverbank, but it was gone now. Destroyed
back in the Age of Mortality by something cal ed “terrorism.” She’d have learned more about the city if she weren’t so focused on her poisons and weapons.
ey had arrived the evening before conclave, and stayed in a downtown hotel. Morning came much too quickly.
As Citra, Rowan, and Scythe Faraday walked from their hotel at the awful hour of six thirty a.m., people in the streets ran to them and handed them umbrel as, choosing to get wet rather than see a scythe and his apprentices go without one.
“Do they know you’ve taken two apprentices instead of just one?” Citra asked.
“Of course they know,” said Rowan. “Why wouldn’t they?”
But Scythe Faraday’s silence on the matter was a clear red flag to Citra.
“You did clear it with the High Blade, didn’t you, Scythe Faraday?”
“I have found that with the Scythedom, it is better to ask forgiveness than permission,” he told them.
Citra gave Rowan an I-told-you-so look, and he cocked his umbrel a slightly so he didn’t have to see it.
“It wil not be a problem,” Faraday said, but he didn’t sound very convincing.
Citra looked to Rowan again, who was no longer eclipsed by his umbrel a. “Am I the only one who’s worried about that?”
Rowan shrugged. “We have immunity until Winter Conclave, and it can’t be revoked—everyone knows that. What’s the worst they could do?”
• • •
Some scythes arrived at the Capitol Building on foot, as they had; others in publicars, some in private cars, and several in limousines. ere were ropes to hold back spectators on either side of the wide marble staircase leading up to the building, as wel as peace officers and members of the BladeGuard—the Scythedom’s elite security force. e arriving scythes were protected from their adoring public, even if the public was not protected from them.
“I despise ‘running the gauntlet.’” Scythe Faraday said, referring to climbing the steps to conclave. “It’s even worse when it’s not raining. e crowd on either side is a dozen people deep.”
Now it was only half that. It never occurred to Citra that people would come out to see scythes arriving at conclave, but then, al celebrity events drew onlookers, so why not a gathering of scythes?
Some of the arriving scythes gave obligatory waves, others played to the crowd, kissing babies and randomly granting immunity. Citra and Rowan fol owed Faraday’s lead, which was to ignore the crowd completely.
ere were dozens of other scythes in the entry vestibule. ey removed their raincoats to reveal robes of al colors, al textures. It was a rainbow that summoned forth anything but thoughts of death. is, Citra realized, was intentional. Scythes wished to be seen as the many facets of light, not of darkness.
rough a grand arch lay a grander chamber beneath the central dome—
a rotunda where hundreds of scythes greeted one another, engaging in casual conversation around an elaborate breakfast spread in the center. Citra wondered what it was that scythes talked about. e tools of gleaning? e weather? e chafing of their robes? It was intimidating enough to be in the presence of a single scythe. To be surrounded by hundreds was enough to make one crumble.
Scythe Faraday leaned over and spoke to them in a hushed voice. “See there?” He pointed to a bald, heavily bearded man. “Scythe Archimedes—
one of the world’s oldest living scythes. He’l tel you he was there in the Year of the Condor, when the Scythedom was first formed, but it’s a lie. He’s not that old! And over there . . .” He pointed to a woman with long silver hair in a pale lavender robe. “at’s Scythe Curie.”
Citra gasped. “e Grande Dame of Death?”
“So they say.”
“Is it true she gleaned the last president, before the underhead was given control?” Citra asked.
“And his cabinet, yes.” He looked at her—perhaps a bit wistful y, Citra thought. “Her actions were quite controversial back in the day.”
e woman caught them glancing her way and turned to them. Citra chil ed when her piercing gray eyes zeroed in on her. en the woman smiled at the three of them, nodded, and returned to her conversation.
ere was a group of four or five scythes closer to the assembly chamber entrance, the doors of which were stil closed. ey wore bright robes studded with gems. e center of their attention was a scythe in royal blue
whose robe contained what appeared to be diamonds. He said something and the others laughed a little too heartily for it to be anything but sycophantic.
“Who’s that?” Citra asked.
Scythe Faraday’s expression took a turn toward sour.
“at,” he said, not even trying to hide his distaste, “is Scythe Goddard, and his company is best avoided.”
“Goddard . . . isn’t he the master of mass gleanings?” Rowan asked.
Faraday looked at him a bit concerned. “Where did you hear that?”
Rowan shrugged. “I have a friend who’s obsessed with that kind of stuff, and he hears things.”
Citra gasped, realizing she had heard of Goddard, not by name, just by deed. Or, more accurately, rumor because there was never any official report.
But like Rowan said, you hear things. “Is he the one who gleaned an entire airplane?”
“Why?” asked Faraday, giving her a cold, accusing eye. “Does that impress you?”
Citra shook her head. “No, the opposite.” But she couldn’t help but be a bit dazzled by the way the man’s robe caught the light. Everyone was—which must have been his intent.
And yet his was not the most ostentatious robe on display. Moving through the crowd was a scythe in a lavishly gilded robe. e man was so large, his robe seemed a bit like a golden tent.
“Who’s the fat guy?” Citra asked.
“He looks important,” said Rowan.
“Indeed,” said Scythe Faraday. “‘e fat guy,’ as you cal him, is the High Blade. e most powerful man in the MidMerican Scythedom. He presides over conclave.”
e High Blade worked the crowd like a great gaseous planet bending space around it. He could have tweaked his nanites to eliminate at least some of his girth, but clearly he had chosen not to. e choice was a bold statement and his size made him an imposing figure. When he saw Faraday, he excused himself from his current conversation and made his way toward them.
“Honorable Scythe Faraday, always a pleasure to see you.” He used both his hands to grip Faraday’s in what was meant to be a heartfelt greeting, but
“Citra, Rowan, I’d like you to meet High Blade Xenocrates,” Faraday said, then turned back to the large man. “ese are my new apprentices.”
He took a moment to appraise them. “A double apprenticeship,” he said jovial y. “I believe that’s a first. Most scythes have trouble with just one.”
“e better of the two shal receive my blessing for the ring.”
“And the other,” said the High Blade, “wil be sorely disappointed, I’m sure.” en he moved on to greet other scythes that were just now coming in from the rain.
“See?” Rowan said. “And you were worried.”
But to Citra, nothing about the man seemed sincere.
• • •
Rowan was nervous, he just didn’t want to admit it. He knew admitting it would make Citra more worried, which would make him more worried. So he bit back his fears and misgivings, and kept his eyes and ears open, taking in everything that happened around him. ere were other apprentices there. He overheard two talking about how this was the “big day.” A boy and a girl—both older than him, maybe eighteen or nineteen, would be getting their rings today and become junior scythes. e girl lamented about how, for the first four years, they would have to get approval from the selection committee for their gleanings.“Every single one,” she complained. “Like we’re babies.”
“At least the apprenticeship isn’t four years long,” Rowan interjected, as a way to get into the conversation. e two looked at him with mild disgust.
“I mean, it takes four years to get a col ege degree, right?” Rowan knew he was just digging himself deeper, but he had already committed. “At least it doesn’t take that long to get a license to glean.”
“Who the hel are you?” the girl asked.
“Ignore him, he’s just a spat.”
“A what?” Rowan had been cal ed many things, but never that.
ey both smirked at him. “Don’t you know anything?” said the girl.
“‘Spat,’ as in ‘spatula.’ It’s what they cal new apprentices, because you’re not good for anything but flipping your scythe’s burgers.”
Rowan laughed at that, which just irritated them.
en Citra came up next to them. “So if we’re spatulas, what does that make you? Safety scissors? Or are you just a couple of tools?”
e boy looked like he might slug Citra. “Who’s your mentor scythe?” he asked her. “He should be told of this disrespect.”
“I am,” said Faraday, putting his hand on Citra’s shoulder. “And you don’t warrant anyone’s respect until aer you receive your ring.”
e boy seemed to shrink by about three inches. “Honorable Scythe Faraday! I’m sorry, I didn’t know.” e girl took a step away as if to distance herself from him.
“Best of luck today,” he told them with a magnanimous gesture that they didn’t deserve.
“ank you,” said the girl, “but if I may say, luck plays no part. We’ve both trained long and have been taught wel by our scythes.”
“Very true,” Faraday said. ey nodded respectful good-byes that bordered on bows, and le.
Aer they were gone, Faraday turned to Rowan and Citra. “e girl wil get her ring today,” he said. “e boy wil be denied.”
“How do you know?” asked Rowan.
“I have friends on the bejeweling committee. e boy is smart, but too quick to anger. It’s a fatal flaw that cannot be tolerated.”
As annoying as Rowan found the kid, he couldn’t help but feel a twinge of pity. “What happens to the apprentices that get denied?”
“ey are returned to their families to take up life where they le off.”
“But life can never be the same aer a year of training to be a scythe,”
Rowan pointed out.”
“True,” said Faraday, “but only good can come from a keen understanding of what it takes to be a scythe.”
Rowan nodded, but thought, for a man of such wisdom, that seemed very naive. Scythe training was a scarring endeavor. Purposeful y so, but it was scarring nonetheless.
e rotunda became increasingly crowded with scythes, and the marble wal s, floor, and dome made voices echo into a cacophony. Rowan tried to hear more individual conversations, but they were lost in the din. Faraday had told them that the great bronze doors to the assembly room would open promptly at seven a.m., and the scythes would be dismissed at the stroke of
seven p.m. Twelve hours to accomplish any and al business. Anything le
undone would have to wait four months until the next conclave.
“In the early days,” Scythe Faraday told them as the doors opened to admit the throng, “a conclave would last for three days. But they discovered that aer the first day, it became little more than arguments and posturing.
ere’s stil plenty of that, but it’s curtailed. It behooves us al to move through the agenda quickly.”
e chamber was a huge semicircle with a large wooden rostrum at the front where the High Blade sat, and slightly lower seats on either side for the Conclave Clerk, who kept records, and the Parliamentarian, who interpreted rules and procedures if any questions arose. Scythe Faraday had told them enough about the power structure of the Scythedom for Rowan to know that much.
e first order of business, once everyone was settled, was the Tol ing of the Names. One by one, in no particular order, the scythes came to the front to recite various names of people they had gleaned over the past four months.
“We can’t recite them al ,” Scythe Faraday told them. “With over three hundred scythes, it would be more than twenty-six thousand names. We are to choose ten. e ones we most remember, the ones who died most valiantly, the ones whose lives were the most notable.”
Aer each name spoken, an iron bel was rung, solemn and resonant.
Rowan was pleased to hear Scythe Faraday reciting Kohl Whitlock’s name as one of his chosen ten.
• • •
e Tol ing of the Names got old very quickly for Citra. Even reduced to ten names each, the recitation lasted for almost two hours. It was noble that the scythes saw fit to pay homage to the gleaned, but if they only had twelve hours to complete three months worth of business, she didn’t see the sense of it.ere was no written agenda, so there was no way for her and Rowan to know what came next, and Scythe Faraday only explained things as they happened.“When is our test? Wil we be taken somewhere else for it?” Citra asked, but Faraday shushed her.
Aer the Tol ing of the Names, the next order of business was a ceremonial washing of the hands. e scythes al rose and lined up before two basins, one on either side of the rostrum. Again, Citra didn’t see the point. “Al this ritual—it’s like something you’d see in a tone cult,” she said when Faraday returned to his seat, hands stil damp.
Faraday leaned over to her and whispered. “Don’t let any of the other scythes hear you say that.”
“Do you feel clean aer sticking your hands in water that a hundred other hands have been in?”
Faraday sighed. “It brings solace. It binds us as a community. Do not belittle our traditions because one day they may be yours.”
“Or not,” goaded Rowan.
Citra shied uncomfortably and grumbled. “It just seems like a waste of time.”
Faraday must have known her real gripe was with not knowing when they would be presented to the conclave and taken away for their test. Citra was not a girl who could endure being in the dark for long. Perhaps that’s why Faraday made sure that she was. He was constantly poking at their weaknesses.
Next, a number of scythes were singled out for showing bias in their gleanings. is held some interest for Citra, and gave her some insight as to how it al worked behind the scenes.
One scythe had gleaned too few wealthy people. She was reprimanded and assigned to only glean the rich between now and the next conclave.
Another scythe was found to have racial ratio issues. High on the Spanic, low on the Afric.
“It’s due to the demographic where I live,” he pleaded. “People have a higher percentage of Spanic in their personal ratios.”
High Blade Xenocrates was not swayed. “en cast a wider net,” he said.
“Glean elsewhere.”
He was charged with bringing his ratios back into line or face being disciplined—which consisted of having future gleanings preapproved by the selection committee. Having one’s freedom to glean taken away was a humiliation that no scythe wanted.
Sixteen scythes were taken to task. Ten were warned, six were disciplined.
e oddest situation was a scythe who was far too pretty for his own good.
He got cal ed out for gleaning too many unattractive people.
“What an idea,” one of the other scythes shouted out. “Imagine what a world it would be if we gleaned only ugly people!”
at brought a round of laughter from the rest of the room.
e scythe tried to defend himself, claiming the old adage, “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder,” but the High Blade wasn’t buying it. is was apparently his third such offense, so he was given permanent probation. He could live as a scythe but could not glean, “Until the next reptilian year,” the High Blade proclaimed.
“at’s crazy,” Citra commented just loud enough for Rowan and Faraday to hear. “No one knows what animals future years wil be named aer. I mean, the last reptilian year was the Year of the Gecko and that was before I was born.”
“Precisely!” said Faraday with a little bit of guilty glee. “Which means his punishment could end next year or never. Now he’l spend his time lobbying the office of the Calendaria to name a year aer the skink, or Gila monster, or some other reptile that has not yet been used.”
Before they moved on from the disciplinary portion of the morning, there was one more scythe to be cal ed out. It wasn’t a matter of bias, however.
“I have before me an anonymous note,” the High Blade said, “which accuses Honorable Scythe Goddard of malfeasance.”
A rumble throughout the room. Citra saw Scythe Goddard whisper to his inner circle of companions, then stood. “Of what sort of malfeasance am I being accused?’
“Unnecessary cruelty in your gleaning.”
“And yet this accusation comes anonymously!” said Goddard. “I cannot believe that a fel ow scythe would show such cowardice. I demand that the accuser reveal his or herself.”
More rumbles around the room. No one stood up, no one took responsibility.
“Wel then,” said Goddard, “I refuse to answer to an invisible accuser.”
Citra expected High Blade Xenocrates to press the issue. Aer al , an accusation from a fel ow scythe should be taken seriously—but the High
Blade put the paper down and said, “Wel , if there’s nothing more, we’l take our midmorning break.”
And the scythes, Earth’s grand bringers of death, began to file out into the rotunda for donuts and coffee.
Once they were in the rotunda, Faraday leaned close to Citra and Rowan and said, “ere was no anonymous accuser. I’m sure that Scythe Goddard accused himself.”
“Why would he do that?” asked Citra.
“To take the steam out of his enemies. It’s the oldest trick in the book.
Now anyone who accuses him wil be assumed to be the cowardly anonymous accuser. No one wil go aer him now.”
• • •
Rowan found himself less interested in the stagecra and parrying within the assembly room as he was in the things that went on outside of it. He was already getting a feeling for the Scythedom and how it truly worked. e most important business did not occur within the bronze doors, but in the rotunda and dim alcoves of the building—of which there were many, probably for this exact purpose.e early morning conversations had been just smal talk, but now, as the day progressed, Rowan could see a number of scythes congregating during break into smal klatches, doing side deals, building al iances, pushing secret agendas.
He overheard one group that was planning to propose a ban on remote detonators as a method of gleaning—not for any ethical reason, but because the gun lobby had made a sizeable contribution to a particular scythe.
Another group was trying to groom one of the younger scythes for a position on the selection committee, so that he might sway gleaning choices when they needed those choices swayed.
Power politics might have been a thing of the past elsewhere, but it was alive and seething in the Scythedom.
eir mentor did not join any of the plotters. Faraday remained solitary and above petty politics, as did perhaps half of the scythes.
“We know the schemes of the schemers,” he told Rowan and Citra as he negotiated a jel y donut. “ey only get their way when the rest of us want
Rowan made a point to observe Scythe Goddard. Many scythes approached him to talk. Others grumbled about him under their breath. His entourage of junior scythes were a multicultural bunch, in the old-school meaning of the word. While no one had pristine ethno-genetics anymore, his inner circle showed traits that leaned toward one ethnos or another. e girl in green seemed mildly PanAsian, the man in yel ow had Afric leanings, the one in fiery orange was as Caucasoid as could be, and he himself leaned slightly toward the Spanic. He was clearly a scythe who wanted high visibility—even his grand gesture of ethnic balance was a visible one.
Although Goddard never turned to look, Rowan had the distinct feeling that he knew Rowan was watching him.
• • •
For the rest of the morning, proposals were made and hotly debated in the assembly room. As Scythe Faraday had said, the schemers only prevailed when the more high-minded body of the Scythedom al owed. e ban on remote detonators was adopted—not because of bribes from the gun lobby, but because blowing people up was determined to be crude, cruel, and beneath the Scythedom. And the young scythe put forth for membership on the selection committee was voted down, because no one on that committee should be in anyone’s pocket.“I should like to be on a scythe committee one day,” Rowan said.
Citra looked at him oddly. “Why are you talking like Faraday?”
Rowan shrugged. “When in Rome . . .”
“We’re not in Rome,” she reminded him. “If we were, we’d have a much cooler place for conclave.”
Local restaurants vied for the chance to cater the conclave, so lunch was a buffet out in the rotunda even more sumptuous than the one at breakfast—
and Faraday packed his plate, which was out of character for him.
“Don’t think il of him,” Scythe Curie told Rowan and Citra, her voice mel ifluous, yet sharp at the same time. “For those of us who take our vow of austerity seriously, conclave is the only time we al ow ourselves the luxury of fine food and drink. It reminds us that we’re human.”
Citra, who had a one-track mind, took this as her opportunity to get information.
“When wil the apprentices be tested?” she asked.
Scythe Curie smirked and brushed back her silky silver hair. “e ones who are hoping to receive their ring today were tested last night. As for al the others, you’l be tested soon enough,” she said. Citra’s frustration made Rowan snicker, which earned him a glare from Citra.
“Just shut up and stuff your face,” she said. Rowan was happy to oblige.
• • •
As focused as Citra was on the upcoming test, she began to wonder what in conclave she would miss when the apprentices were taken for testing. Like Rowan, she found conclave to be an education like none other. ere were few people beyond scythes and their apprentices who ever witnessed this.And those others who did caught only a glimpse—such as the string of salespeople aer lunch, who were each given ten minutes to expound the virtues of some weapon or poison they were trying to sel to the Scythedom, and more importantly the Weaponsmaster, who had the final decision over what the Scythedom purchased. ey sounded like those awful people on info-holograms. “It dices, it slices! But wait! ere’s more!”
One salesperson was sel ing a digital poison that would turn the healing nanites in a person’s bloodstream into hungry little bastards that would devour the victim from the inside out in less than a minute. He actual y used the word “victim,” which immediately soured the scythes. He was flatly dismissed by the Weaponsmaster.
e most successful salesperson was offering a product cal ed Touch of Quietude, which sounded more like a feminine hygiene product than a death delivery system. e woman sel ing it displayed a smal pil —but not to give to the subject. e pil was for the scythe. “Take with water and within seconds your fingers wil secrete a transdermal poison. Anyone you touch for the next hour wil be instantly and painlessly gleaned.”
e Weaponsmaster was so impressed, he came up to the stage to take a dose, then, in the ultimate demonstration, proceeded to glean the saleswoman. She sold fiy vials of the stuff to the Scythedom posthumously.
e rest of the aernoon consisted of more discussion, arguments, and votes about policy. Scythe Faraday only found fit to voice his opinion once—
when it came to forming an immunity committee.
“It seems clear to me that there should be oversight for the granting of immunity, just as the selection committee provides oversight for gleaning.”
Rowan and Citra were pleased to see that his opinion carried a great deal of weight. Several scythes who had initial y voted against the forming of an immunity committee switched their vote. However, before a final tal y was taken, High Blade Xenocrates announced that time had run out for legislative issues.
“e subject wil be at the top of our agenda for the next conclave,” he announced.
A number of scythes applauded, but several rose up and shouted their grievous discontent at the issue being tabled. Scythe Faraday did not voice his own displeasure. He took a long breath in and out. “Interesting . . .” is al he said.
is might have al pinged loudly on Rowan and Citra’s radar, had the High Blade not immediately announced that the next order of business was the apprentices.
Citra found herself wanting to grip Rowan’s hand in anticipation and squeeze it until it was bloodless, but she restrained herself.
Rowan, on the other hand, fol owed his mentor’s lead. He took a deep breath in, then out, and tried to let his anxiety wash from him. He had studied al he could study, learned al he could learn. He would do the best he could do. If he failed today there would be more than enough chances to redeem himself.
“Good luck,” Rowan said to Citra.
“You too,” she returned. “Let’s make Scythe Faraday proud!”
Rowan smiled, and thought that Faraday might smile at Citra as wel , but he didn’t. He just kept his gaze on Xenocrates.
First, the candidates for Scythedom were cal ed up. ere were four whose apprenticeship was now complete. Having had their final test the evening before, there was nothing le but to ordain them. Or not, as the case may be. Word was there was a fih candidate who had failed the final test last night. He or she wasn’t even invited to conclave.
ree rings were brought out, resting on red velvet pil ows. e four looked to one another, now, aware that even though they had passed their final test, one of them would not be ordained and would be sent home in shame.
Scythe Faraday turned to the scythe beside him and said, “Only one scythe gleaned himself since last conclave, and yet three are being confirmed today. . . . Has the population grown so drastical y in three months that we need two additional scythes?”
e three chosen apprentices were cal ed one by one by Scythe Mandela, who presided over the bejeweling committee. As each knelt before him, he said something about each of them in turn, and then handed them their rings, which they slipped on their fingers and held to show the conclave—
which responded for each of them with obligatory applause. en they announced their Patron Historic, the luminary from history whom they would name themselves aer. e conclave applauded with each announcement, accepting Scythes Goodal , Schrödinger, and Colbert into the MidMerican Scythedom.
When the three had le the stage, the hot-tempered boy remained, just as Scythe Faraday had said earlier in the day. He stood alone aer the applause died down. en Scythe Mandela said, “Ransom Paladini, we have chosen not to ordain you as a scythe. Wherever life leads you, we wish you wel . You are dismissed.”
He lingered for a few moments, as if thinking it might be a joke—or maybe one final test. en, his lips pursed, his face turned red and he strode quickly up the center aisle in silence, pushing through the heavy bronze doors, their hinges complaining at his exit.
“How awful,” said Citra. “At least they could applaud him for trying.”
“ere are no accolades for the unworthy,” Faraday said.
“One of us wil exit that way,” Rowan pointed out to her. He resolved that if it was him, he would take his time going down that aisle. He’d make eye contact and nod to as many scythes as he could on his way out. Were he to be ejected, he would leave that final conclave with dignity.
“e remaining apprentices may now come forward,” said Xenocrates.
Rowan and Citra rose, ready to face whatever the Scythedom had in store for them.
I do believe people stil fear death, but only one-one hundredth as much as they used to. I say that because, based on current quotas, a person’s chance of being gleaned within the next one hundred years is only 1 percent. Which means the chance that a child born today wil be gleaned between now and their five thousandth year on Earth is only 50 percent.
Of course, since we no longer count the years numerical y, aside from children and adolescents, no one knows how old anyone is anymore—sometimes not even themselves. These days people roughly know within a decade or two. At the writing of this, I can tel you that I am somewhere between one hundred sixty and one hundred eighty years old, although I don’t enjoy looking my age.
Like everyone else, I turn the corner on occasion and set my biological age back substantial y—but like many scythes, I don’t set it back past the age of forty. Only scythes that are actual y young like to look young.
To date, the oldest living human being is somewhere around three hundred, but only because we are stil so close to the Age of Mortality. I wonder what life wil be like a mil ennium from now, when the average age wil be nearer to one thousand. Wil we al be renaissance children, skil ed at every art and science, because we’ve had the time to master them? Or wil boredom and slavish routine plague us even more than it does today, giving us less of a reason to live limitless lives? I dream of the former, but suspect the lat er.
—From the gleaning journal of H.S. Curie
A Slight Stipulation
Rowan stepped on Citra’s toes on his way to the aisle. She grunted slightly, but didn’t wisecrack about it.
at was because Citra was too busy going over her weapons and poisons in her head. Rowan’s clumsiness was the least of her concerns.
She thought they would be led to a room elsewhere in the building—a quiet place for their exam—but other apprentices who had been to conclave before were heading down the aisle toward the open space in front of the rostrum. ey lined up in what seemed like no particular order, facing the conclave like a chorus line, so Citra joined the line next to Rowan.
“What is this?” she whispered.
“Not sure,” he whispered back.
ere were eight in total. Some stood with hard expressions, in control of their emotions, others were trying not to look terrified. Citra wasn’t sure what image she projected, and found herself annoyed that Rowan looked as casual as if he were waiting for a bus.
“Honorable Scythe Curie wil be the examiner today,” Xenocrates said.
A hush fel over the chamber as Scythe Curie, the Grande Dame of Death, came forward. She walked down the line of apprentices twice, sizing them up. en she said, “Each of you wil be asked one question. You wil have one opportunity to give an acceptable answer.”
One question? What kind of exam could possibly consist of one question?
How could they test anyone’s knowledge that way? Citra’s heart beat so violently, she imagined it bursting out of her chest. en she would find herself waking up in a revival center tomorrow, a laughingstock.
Scythe Curie began at the le end of the line. It meant Citra would be fourth to be questioned.
“Jacory Zimmerman,” Scythe Curie said to the gangly boy on the end. “A woman hurls herself on your blade, offering herself as a sacrifice to prevent you from gleaning her child, and dies. What do you do?”
e boy hesitated for just an instant, then said, “By resisting the gleaning, she has violated the third commandment. I therefore am obliged to glean the rest of her family.”
Scythe Curie was silent for a moment, then said, “Not an acceptable answer!”
“But . . . but . . . ,” said Jacory, “she resisted! e rule says—”
“e rule says if one resists one’s own gleaning. Were she the chosen one, the third commandment would most certainly apply. But if we are ever unsure, we are obliged to err on the side of compassion. In this case you would glean the child and arrange for the woman to be brought to a revival center, granting her a year of immunity along with the rest of the family.”
en she gestured toward the assembly. “Step down. Your sponsoring scythe wil choose your punishment.”
Citra swal owed. Shouldn’t the punishment for failure be the awful knowledge of that failure? What sorts of punishments would scythes devise for their disgraced disciples?
Scythe Curie moved on to a strong-looking girl with high cheekbones on a face that looked like it could weather a hurricane.
“Claudette Catalino,” Scythe Curie said, “you have made a mistake in your poison—”
“at would never happen,” Claudette said.
“Do not interrupt me.”
“But your premise is flawed, Honorable Scythe Curie. I know my poisons so wel , I could never make a mistake. Ever.”
“Wel ,” said Curie, with deadpan irony, “how proud your sponsoring scythe must be to have the first perfect pupil in human history.”
It brought forth a smattering of chuckles from the room.
“Al right then,” continued Scythe Curie. “Let us say that someone irritated by your arrogance has sabotaged your poison. Your subject, a man who offered you no resistance, begins to convulse and it appears that his end wil be slow and likely fil ed with much more pain than his nanites can suppress. What do you do?”
And without hesitation Claudette said, “I draw the pistol that I always keep for emergencies, and end the subject’s suffering with a single wel -
placed bul et. But first I would order any family members to leave the room, sparing them the trauma of witnessing a bal istic gleaning.”
Scythe Curie raised her eyebrows, considering the response, and said,
“Acceptable. And thinking of the family is a nice touch—even in a hypothetical.” en she grinned. “I’m disappointed I couldn’t prove you imperfect.”
Next was a boy whose gaze was fixed on a spot on the back wal , clearly trying to find his happy place.
“Noah Zbarsky,” said Curie.
“Yes, Your Honor.” His voice quivered. Citra wondered what sort of response that might evoke from Curie. What sort of question might she ask a boy so frightened?
“Name for me five species that generate neurotoxins powerful enough to be effective on a poison-tipped dart.”
e boy, who had been holding his breath, exhaled with loud relief.
“Wel , Phyl obates aurotaenia, of course, better known as the poison dart frog,” he said. “e blue-ringed octopus, the marbled cone snail, the inland taipan snake, and . . . uh . . . the deathstalker scorpion.”
“Excel ent,” Scythe Curie said. “Can you name any more?”
“Yes,” Noah told her, “but you said one question.”
“And what if I tel you I’ve changed my mind, and I want six instead of five?”
Noah took a deep breath, but didn’t hold it. “en I would tel you in a most respectful way that you were not honoring your word, and a scythe is duty bound to honor their word.”
Scythe Curie smiled. “Acceptable answer! Very good!”
And then she moved on to Citra.
“Citra Terranova.”
She had realized the scythe knew everyone’s name, and yet it came as a shock to hear her say it.
“Yes, Honorable Scythe Curie.”
e woman leaned in close, peering deeply into Citra’s eyes. “What is the worst thing you have ever done?”
Citra was prepared for just about any question. Any question but that one.“Excuse me?”
“It’s a simple question, dear. What is the worst thing you’ve ever done?”
Citra’s jaw clenched. Her mouth went dry. She knew the answer. She didn’t even have to think about it.
“Can I have a moment?”
“Take your time.”
en some random scythe in the audience heckled. “She’s done so many terrible things, she’s having trouble selecting just one.”
Laughter everywhere. In that moment she hated them al .
Citra held eye contact with Scythe Curie. ose al -seeing gray eyes. She knew she couldn’t back away from the question.
“When I was eight,” she began, “I tripped a girl down the stairs. She broke her neck, and had to spend three days at a revival center. I never told her that it was me. at’s the worst thing I ever did.”
Scythe Curie nodded and offered a sympathetic grin, then said, “You’re lying, dear.” She turned to the crowd, shaking her head perhaps a little bit sadly. “Unacceptable answer.” en she turned back to Citra. “Step down,”
she said. “Scythe Faraday wil choose your punishment.”
She didn’t argue, she didn’t insist that she was tel ing the truth. Because she wasn’t. She had no idea how Scythe Curie knew.
Citra went back to her place, unable to look at Scythe Faraday, and he said nothing to her.
en Scythe Curie moved on to Rowan, who seemed so smug, Citra just wanted to hit him.
“Rowan Damisch,” Scythe Curie asked. “What do you fear? What do you fear above al else?”
Rowan did not hesitate in his response. He shrugged and said, “I don’t fear anything.”
Citra wasn’t sure she heard him right. Did he say he didn’t fear anything?
Had he lost his mind?
“Perhaps you want to take some time before answering,” Scythe Curie prompted, but Rowan just shook his head.
“I don’t need any more time. at’s my answer. Not gonna change it.”
Absolute silence in the room. Citra found herself involuntarily shaking her head. And then she realized . . . he was doing this for her. So she wouldn’t have to suffer alone through whatever punishment was in store. So she wouldn’t feel she had fal en behind him. Although she stil wanted to smack him, now it was for an entirely different reason.
“So,” said Scythe Curie, “today we have one perfect apprentice and one fearless one.” She sighed. “But I’m afraid that no one is entirely fearless, so your answer, as I’m sure you must know, is unacceptable.”
She waited, perhaps thinking Rowan might respond to that, but he did not. He just waited for her to say, “Step down. Scythe Faraday wil choose your punishment.”
Rowan returned to his place next to Citra as nonchalant as could be.
“You’re an idiot!” she whispered to him.
He gave her the same shrug he gave Scythe Curie. “Guess so.”
“You think I don’t know why you did that?”
“Maybe I did it so that I’l look better at the next conclave. Maybe if I gave too good an answer today, my next question would be harder.”
But Citra knew it was false, faulty logic. Rowan didn’t think that way.
And then Scythe Faraday spoke up—his voice quiet and measured, but somehow carrying an intensity that was chil ing.
“You shouldn’t have done that.”
“I’l accept whatever punishment you see fit,” Rowan said.
“It’s not about the punishment,” he snapped.
By now Scythe Curie had questioned a few more apprentices. One was sent to sit, two others stayed.
“Maybe Scythe Curie wil see what I did as noble,” Rowan suggested.
“Yes, and so wil everyone else,” Faraday said. “Motives can easily be beaten into weapons.”
“Which proves,” Citra said to Rowan, “that you’re an idiot.” But he only grinned idiotical y.
She thought she had the last word on the matter and that it was over until they returned home, where, no doubt Scythe Faraday would inflict some annoying but fair punishment that fit the crime. She was mistaken.
Aer the apprentices were done being traumatized, the focus of the scythes began to wear down. ere was now a constant murmur as scythes discussed dinner plans as the hour approached seven. e remaining
business was of little interest to anyone. Issues of building maintenance, and whether or not scythes should be required to announce the turning of a corner so it wasn’t so shocking when they looked thirty years younger at the next conclave.
It was as things were wrapping up that one scythe stood up and loudly addressed Xenocrates. She was the one dressed in green with emeralds embroidered into her robe. One of Scythe Goddard’s bunch.
“Excuse me, Your Excel ency,” she began, although clearly she was speaking to the entire assembly, not just the High Blade. “I’m finding myself troubled by this set of new apprentices. More specifical y the apprentices taken on by Honorable Scythe Faraday.”
Both Citra and Rowan looked up. Faraday did not. He seemed frozen, looking downward almost in meditation. Or perhaps steeling himself for what was to come.
“To the best of my knowledge, a scythe has never taken on two apprentices and set them in competition for the ring,” she continued.
Xenocrates looked over to the Parliamentarian, who had jurisdiction in such matters. “ere’s no law against it, Scythe Rand,” said the Parliamentarian.
“Yes,” Scythe Rand continued, “but clearly the competition has turned into camaraderie. How wil we ever know which is the better candidate if they continue to aid each other?”
“Your complaint is duly noted,” said Xenocrates, but Scythe Rand was not done.
“I propose that, to ensure this competition is truly a competition, we add a slight stipulation.”
Scythe Faraday rose to his feet as if launched from his chair. “I object!” he shouted. “is conclave cannot stipulate how I train my apprentices! It is my sole right to teach them, train them, and discipline them!”
Rand held up her hands in a gesture of mock magnanimity. “I merely seek to make your ultimate choice fair and honest.”
“Do you think you can beguile this conclave with your baubles and vanity? We are not so base as to be dazzled by shiny things.”
“What is your proposal, Scythe Rand?” asked Xenocrates.
“I object!” shouted Faraday.
“You can’t object to something she has not yet said!”
Faraday bit down his objection, and waited.
Citra watched, feeling almost detached, as if this were a tennis match and it was match point. But she wasn’t an observer, was she? She was the bal .
And so was Rowan.
“I propose,” said Scythe Rand, with the slickness of a deathstalker scorpion, “that upon the confirmation of the winner, the first order of business wil be for that winner to glean the loser.”
Gasps and grumbles from around the room. And—Citra couldn’t believe it—some laughter and affirmations as wel . She wanted to believe the woman in green could not be serious. at this was yet another level of the test.
Faraday was so beside himself, he said nothing at first. He couldn’t even find the words to object. Final y he thundered his fury, like a force of nature.
A wave pounding the shore. “is flies in the face of everything we are!
Everything we do! We are in the business of gleaning, but you and Scythe Goddard and al of his disciples—you would turn this into a blood sport!”
“Nonsense,” said Rand. “It makes perfect sense. e threat of gleaning wil ensure that the best applicant comes out on top.”
And then rather than striking it down as ridiculous, to Citra’s horror, Xenocrates turned to the Parliamentarian.
“Is there a rule against it?”
e Parliamentarian considered and said, “Since there is no precedent for the treatment of a double apprenticeship, there are no rules as to how it should be dealt with. e proposal is within our guidelines.”
“Guidelines?” shouted Scythe Faraday. “Guidelines? e moral fabric of the Scythedom should be our guidelines! To even consider this is barbaric!”
“Oh, please,” said Xenocrates with an exaggerated sweep of his hand.
“Spare us al the melodrama, Faraday. is is, aer al , the consequence of your decision to take on two apprentices when one would have been sufficient.”
en the clock began to strike seven o’clock.
“I demand a ful debate and vote on this!” Scythe Faraday pleaded, but three bel s had already rung, and Xenocrates ignored him.
“As is my prerogative as High Blade, I so stipulate that in the matter of Rowan Damisch and Citra Terranova, whomsoever shal prevail wil be required to glean the other upon receipt of his or her ring.”
en he banged his gavel heavily upon the rostrum, adjourning conclave and sealing their fate.
There are times I long for a relationship with the Thunderhead. I suppose we always want what we can’t have. Others can cal on the Thunderhead for advice, ask it to resolve disputes. Some rely on it as a confidant, for it’s known to have a compassionate, impartial ear, and never gossips. The Thunderhead is the world’s best listener.
But not for scythes. For us, the Thunderhead is eternal y silent.
We have ful access to its wealth of knowledge, of course. The Scythedom uses the Thunderhead for countless tasks—but to us, it’s simply a database. A tool, nothing more. As an entity—as a mind—
the Thunderhead does not exist for us.
And yet it does, and we know it.
Estrangement from the col ective consciousness of humanity’s wisdom is just one more thing that sets scythes apart from others.
The Thunderhead must see us. It must be aware of the Scythedom’s pet y bickering, and growing corruption, even though it has pledged noninterference. Does it despise us scythes, but abides us because it has to? Or does it simply choose not to think of us at al ? And which is worse—to be despised, or to be ignored?
—From the gleaning journal of H.S. Curie
The Space Between
e night was bleak and rain streaked the windows of the train, distorting the lights beyond, until the lights were gone. Rowan knew they were slicing through the countryside now, but the darkness could have been the airless expanse of space.
“I won’t do it,” Citra final y said, breaking the silence that had engulfed them since leaving conclave. “ey can’t make me do it.”
Faraday didn’t say a word—didn’t even look at her—so Rowan took it upon himself to answer.
“Yes, they can.”
Final y Faraday looked to them. “Rowan is right,” he said. “ey wil find whatever button wil make you dance, and dance you wil , no matter how hideous the tune.”
Citra kicked the empty seat in front of her. “How could they be so awful, and why do they hate us so much?”
“It’s not al of them,” Rowan said, “and I don’t think it’s real y about us. . . .” Clearly, Faraday was a respected scythe—and although he didn’t come out against Goddard today, his feelings about the man were clear.
Goddard must see Faraday as a threat; attacking Rowan and Citra was a warning shot.
“What if we both fail?” Citra suggested. “If we’re lousy apprentices, then they can’t choose either of us.”
“And yet they wil ,” Faraday told her with an authority and finality that le little room for doubt. “No matter how poorly you perform, they wil stil choose one of you, for the spectacle alone.” en he scowled in disgust.
“And to set the precedent.”
“I’l bet Goddard has enough friends to make sure it happens,” said Rowan. “I think he has the High Blade on his side, too.”
“Indeed,” Faraday said with a world-weary sigh. “Never before have there been so many wheels within wheels in the Scythedom.”
Rowan closed his eyes, wishing he could close his mind as wel and hide from his own thoughts. In eight months I wil be kil ed by Citra, he thought.
Or I wil kil her. And cal ing it “gleaning” didn’t change the fact of what it was. He cared for Citra, but enough to surrender his life and let her win?
Citra certainly wouldn’t back down to let him earn the ring.
When he opened his eyes, he caught her staring at him. She didn’t look away.
“Rowan,” she said, “whatever happens, I want you to know—”
“Don’t,” Rowan told her. “Just don’t.”
And the rest of the ride was silence.
• • •
Citra, who was not the heaviest sleeper, found herself awake al night aer they arrived home. Images of the scythes she saw at conclave fil ed even the hint of dreams, jarring her back to unwanted wakefulness. e wise ones, the schemers, the compassionate, and those who did not seem to care. Such a delicate charge as pruning the human race should not be subject to the quirks of personality. Scythes were supposed to be above the petty, just as they were above the law. Faraday certainly was. If she became a scythe, she would fol ow his lead. And if she didn’t become one, it wouldn’t matter because she’d be dead.Perhaps there was some sort of twisted wisdom in the decision to have one of them gleaned by the other. Whoever wins wil begin their life as a scythe in abject sorrow, never to forget the cost of that ring.
Morning came with no great fanfare. It was just an ordinary day, like any other. e rain had passed, and the sun peeked from behind shiing clouds.
It was Rowan’s turn to make breakfast. Eggs and hash browns. He never cooked the potatoes long enough. “Hash pales” Citra always cal ed them.
Faraday never complained when the meals they made were subpar. He ate what they served, and didn’t tolerate complaints from either of them. e
punishment for making something barely edible was having to eat it yourself.
Citra ate, even though she didn’t have an appetite. Even though the whole world had slid off its axis. Breakfast was breakfast. How dare it be?
When Faraday broke the silence, it felt like a brick flying through the window.
“I wil go out alone today. e two of you wil attend to your studies.”
“Yes, Scythe Faraday,” Citra said, with Rowan saying the same in a half-second echo.
“For you nothing has changed.”
Citra looked down into her cereal. It was Rowan who dared to state the obvious.
“Everything has changed, sir.”
And then Faraday said something enigmatic that would only resonate with them much later.
“Perhaps everything wil change again.”
en he le them.
• • •
e space between Rowan and Citra had quickly become a minefield. A dangerous no-man’s-land that promised nothing but misery. It was hard enough to negotiate with Scythe Faraday there, but his absence le the two of them with no one to mediate the space between.Rowan stayed in his room, studying there rather than going into the weapons room, which would feel painful y wrong without Citra sitting with him. Stil , he kept his door cracked on the faint hope that she’d want to bridge the distance. He heard her leave, probably for a run, and she was gone for a good long time. Her way of dealing with the dark discomfort of their new situation was to remove herself from it even more completely than Rowan had.
Aer she returned, Rowan knew there would be no peace between them, or within himself, unless he took the first step into that minefield.
He stood outside her closed door for at least a ful minute before he worked up the nerve to knock.
“What do you want?” she asked, her voice muffled by the closed door.
“It’s not locked.”
He turned the knob and slowly opened the door. She was in the middle of the room with a hunting knife, practicing bladecra against the empty air, as if battling ghosts.
“Nice technique,” Rowan said, then added, “if you’re planning on gleaning a pack of angry wolves.”
“Skil is skil , whether you use it or not.” She sheathed the blade, tossed it on her desk, and put her hands on her hips. “So what do you want?”
“I just wanted to say I’m sorry for shutting you down before. On the train, I mean.”
Citra shrugged. “I was babbling. You were right to shut me up.”
e moment began to get awkward, so Rowan just went for it. “Should we talk about this?”
She turned away from him and sat on her bed, picking up a book on anatomy and opening it as if she was about to start studying. She hadn’t yet realized she was holding it upside down. “What’s to talk about? I kil you, or you kil me. Either way, I don’t want to think about it until I have to.” She glanced at the open book, turned it right side up, and then gave up the charade completely, closing it and tossing it to the floor. “I just want to be le alone, okay?”
Even so, Rowan sat on the edge of her bed. And when she didn’t tel him to go, he shied a little bit closer. She watched him, but said nothing.
He wanted to reach for her, maybe touch her cheek. But thinking about that made him think of the saleswoman who was gleaned by a touch. What a perverse poison that was. Rowan wanted to kiss her. ere was no denying that anymore. He had suppressed the urge for weeks because he knew it would not be tolerated by the scythe. But Faraday wasn’t here, and the turmoil they had both been hurled into had washed al bets off the table.
en, to his surprise, she suddenly lurched forward and kissed him, catching him completely off guard.
“ere,” she said. “We’ve done it. Now it’s out of the way and you can leave.”
“What if I don’t want to?”
And she hesitated. Long enough to make it clear that staying was a distinct possibility. But in the end she said, “What good would it do, real y?
She moved farther away on the bed, bringing her knees to her chest. “I haven’t fal en in love with you, Rowan. And now I want to keep it that way.”
Rowan got up and moved to the safety of the threshold before turning back to her. “It’s al right, Citra,” he told her. “I haven’t fal en in love with you, either.”
I am not a man easily brought to fury, but how dare the old-guard scythes presume to dictate my behavior? Let every last one of them glean themselves, and we can be done with their self-loathing, sanctimonious ways. I am a man who chooses to glean with pride, not shame. I choose to embrace life, even as I deal death. Make no mistake—we scythes are above the law because we deserve to be.
I see a day when new scythes wil be chosen not because of some esoteric moral high ground, but because they enjoy the taking of life. After al , this is a perfect world—and in a perfect world, don’t we al have the right to love what we do?
—From the gleaning journal of H.S. Goddard
Pool Boy
ere was a scythe at the door of the executive’s mansion. Actual y a quartet of them, although the other three stood back, al owing the one in the royal blue to be the point man.
e executive was frightened—terrified actual y—but he hadn’t risen to this level of success by wearing his emotions on his sleeve. He had a keen mind, and a consummate poker face. He would not be intimidated by death on his doorstep—even when death’s robe was studded with diamonds.
“I’m surprised you got to the front door without my gate guards alerting me,” the executive said, as nonchalant as could be.
“ey would have alerted you, but we gleaned them,” one of the other scythes said—a woman in green with PanAsian leanings.
e executive would not al ow this news to daunt him. “Ah, so you need me to give you their personal information, in order for you to alert their families.”
“Not exactly,” said the lead scythe. “May we come in?”
And since the executive knew he didn’t have the right to refuse, he stepped aside.
e diamond-studded scythe and his rainbow of subordinates fol owed, looking around at the understated opulence of the mansion.
“I am Honorable Scythe Goddard. ese are my junior associates, Scythes Volta, Chomsky, and Rand.”
“Sharp robes,” commented the executive, stil successful y capping his fear.“ank you,” said Scythe Goddard. “I can see you are a man of taste. My compliments to your decorator.”
“at would be my wife,” he said, then inwardly grimaced to have brought her, in any way, to the attention of the life-takers.
Scythe Volta—the one in yel ow, with an Afric look about him—strol ed around the grand foyer, peering through the archways that led to other areas of the mansion. “Excel ent feng shui,” he said. “Energy flow is very important in a home so large.”
“I imagine there’s a good-size pool,” said the one in the flame-colored robe embedded with rubies. Scythe Chomsky. He was blond, pale, and brutish.
e executive wondered if they were enjoying prolonging this encounter.
e more he played along, the more power they had, so he cut through the smal talk before they could see him crack.
“May I ask your business here?”
Scythe Goddard glanced at him but ignored the question. He gestured to his subordinates, and two of the three le. e one in yel ow took the winding stairs, the woman in green went to explore the rest of the first floor.
e pale one in orange stayed nearby. He was the largest of them, and perhaps a bodyguard for their leader—as if anyone would actual y be stupid enough to strike a scythe.
e executive wondered where his children were at the moment. Out back with the nanny? Upstairs? He wasn’t sure, and the last thing he wanted was to have scythes in the house out of his sight.
“Wait!” he said. “Whatever your purpose, I’m sure we could reach some sort of arrangement. You do know who I am, don’t you?”
Scythe Goddard took in a piece of artwork on display in the foyer, instead of looking at him. “Someone wealthy enough to own a Cézanne.”
Could it be that he didn’t know? at their presence here was not planned, but random? Scythes were supposed to be random in their choices, but this random? He found the dam that held back his fear was fracturing.
“Please,” the executive said, “I’m Maxim Easley—surely the name means something to you?”
e scythe looked at him without a hint of recognition. It was the flame-clad one who reacted. “e guy who runs Regenesis?”
Final y there came recognition from Goddard. “Oh, right—your company is number two in the turncorner industry.”
“Soon to be number one,” Easley reflexively bragged. “Once we release our technology that al ows cel ular regression beyond the twenty-first year.”
“I have friends who’ve used your services. I myself have yet to turn a corner.”
“You could be the first to official y use our new process.”
Goddard laughed and turned to his associate. “Could you imagine me as a teenager?”
“Not a chance.”
e more amused they were, the more horrified Easley became. No sense in hiding his desperation anymore. “ere must be something you want—
something of value I can offer you. . . .”
And final y Goddard laid his cards on the table.
“I want your estate.”
Easley resisted the urge to say “Excuse me?” because the statement was not ambiguous in any way. It was an audacious demand. But Maxim Easley was nothing if not a negotiator.
“I have a garage with more than a dozen mortal-age motor vehicles.
Priceless, every last one of them. You can have any of them. You can have them al .”
e scythe stepped closer, and Easley suddenly found a blade pressed to his neck, to the right of his Adam’s apple. He never saw the scythe draw it.
So quick was he that it seemed to just appear at his jugular
“Let’s clarify,” Goddard said calmly. “We are not here to barter and bargain. We are scythes—which means that by law, anything we want we can take. Any life we wish to end, we wil . Simple as that. You have no power here. Do I make myself clear?”
Easley nodded, feeling the blade almost but not quite cut his skin as he did. Satisfied, Goddard removed the blade from his neck.
“An estate like this must require a sizable staff. Housekeepers, gardeners, perhaps even stable personnel. How many do you employ?”
Easley tried to speak, but nothing came out. He cleared his throat and tried again. “Twelve,” he said. “Twelve ful -time employees.”
en the woman in green—Scythe Rand—emerged from the kitchen, bringing with her a man Easley’s wife had recently hired. He was in his early twenties, or appeared so. Easley couldn’t remember his name.
“And who is this?” Goddard asked.
“Pool boy,” mimicked Scythe Rand.
Goddard nodded to the musclebound Scythe in orange, who then approached the young man, reached up, and touched his cheek. e pool boy col apsed to the ground, his head hitting the marble. His eyes stayed open, but no life remained in them. He had been gleaned.
“It works!” said Scythe Chomsky, looking at his hand. “Definitely worth what the Weaponsmaster paid.”
“Now then,” said Goddard. “While we are within our rights to take anything we choose, I am a fair man. In exchange for this lovely estate, I wil offer you, your family, and your surviving staff ful immunity for every year that we choose to remain here.”
Easley’s relief was intense and immediate. How odd, he thought, to have his home stolen, and yet feel relieved.
“On your knees,” Goddard said, and Easley obeyed.
“Kiss it.”
Easley did not hesitate. He planted his lips on the ring, pressing hard, feeling the edge of the setting catch on his lip.
“Now you wil go to your office and resign your position, effective immediately.”
is time Easley did say, “Excuse me?”
“Someone else can do your job—I’m sure there are others itching for the opportunity.”
Easley rose, his legs stil a bit shaky “But . . . but why? Can’t you just let me and my family leave? We won’t bother you. We’l take nothing but the clothes on our backs. You’l never see us again.”
“But alas, I can’t let you leave,” said Scythe Goddard. “I need a new pool boy.”
I think it’s wise that scythes may not glean one another. It was clearly implemented to prevent Byzantine grabs at power; but where power is concerned there are always those who find ways to grasp for it.
I think it’s also wise that we are al owed to glean ourselves. I wil admit there were times when I considered it. When the weight of responsibility felt so heavy, leaving the yoke of the world behind seemed a bet er alternative. But one thought always stayed my hand from commit ing that final act.
If not me, who?
Wil the scythe who replaces me be as compassionate and fair?
I can accept a world without me in it . . . but I can’t bear the thought of other scythes gleaning in my absence.
—From the gleaning journal of H.S. Curie
The Seventh Commandment
Citra and Rowan were awakened sometime aer midnight by someone pounding on the front door. ey le their rooms, meeting in the hal way, and both reflexively glanced toward Scythe Faraday’s closed door. Citra turned the knob, finding it unlocked, and pushed it open just enough to see that the scythe wasn’t there. His bed had not yet been slept in tonight.
It was unusual but not unheard of for him to stay out this late. ey had no idea what his occasional late nights were about, and they didn’t want to ask. Curiosity was one of the first casualties of apprenticeship. ey had long since learned there were many things they’d rather not know in the life of a scythe.
e relentless pounding continued—not the rapping of knuckles, but the ful -fisted heel of a hand.
“So?” said Rowan. “He forgot his keys. So?”
It was the most sensible explanation, and didn’t the most sensible explanation tend to be correct? ey approached the door, steeling themselves for admonishment.
How could you not hear me knocking? he would chide. Last I heard, no one’s been deaf for two hundred years.
But when they opened the door, they were faced not with Scythe Faraday, but with a pair of officers. Not common peace officers, but members of the BladeGuard, the sign of the Scythedom clearly emblazoned on the breast of their uniforms.
“Citra Terranova and Rowan Damisch?” one of the guardsmen asked.
“Yes?” answered Rowan. He stepped slightly forward, putting a shoulder in front of Citra in a sort of protective stance. He felt it gal ant, but Citra found it irritating.
“Why?” asked Rowan. “What’s going on?”
“It’s not our place to say,” the second guardsman told them.
Citra pushed Rowan’s protective shoulder to the side. “We’re scythe’s apprentices,” she said, “which means the BladeGuard serves us, and not the other way around. You have no right to take us against our wil .” Which was probably untrue, but it gave the guards pause.
And then came a voice from the shadows.
“I’l handle this.”
Out of the darkness swel ed a familiar figure, whol y out of place in Faraday’s neighborhood. e High Blade’s gilded robe did not shine in the dimness of the doorstep. It seemed dul , almost brown.
“Please . . . you must come with me immediately. Someone wil be sent for your things.”
As Rowan was in pajamas and Citra a bathrobe, neither was too keen to obey, but they both sensed that their nightclothes were the least of their concerns.
“Where’s Scythe Faraday?” Rowan asked.
e High Blade took a deep breath in, and sighed. “He invoked the seventh commandment,” Xenocrates said. “Scythe Faraday has gleaned himself.”
• • •
High Blade Xenocrates was a bloated bundle of contradictions. He wore a robe of rich baroque brocades, yet on his feet were frayed, treadworn slippers. He lived in a simple log cabin—yet the cabin had been reassembled on the rooop of Fulcrum City’s tal est building. His furniture was mismatched and thri-store shabby, yet on the floor beneath them were museum-quality tapestries that could have been priceless.“I can’t tel you how sorry I am,” he told Rowan and Citra, who were stil too shel -shocked to wrap their minds around what had happened. It was morning now, the three of them having ridden in a private hypertrain to Fulcrum City, and they were now out on a smal wooden deck that overlooked a wel -tended lawn that ended in a sheer ledge and a seventy-story drop. e High Blade did not want anything to obstruct his view—and
anyone stupid enough to trip over the edge would deserve the time and cost of revival.
“It’s always a terrible thing when a scythe leaves us,” the High Blade lamented, “especial y one as wel -respected as Scythe Faraday.”
Xenocrates had a ful retinue of assistants and flunkies in the outside world to help him go about his business, but here in his home, he didn’t have as much as a single servant. Yet another contradiction. He had brewed them tea, and now poured it for them, offering cream but no sugar.
Rowan sipped his, but Citra refused the slightest kindness from the man.
“He was a fine scythe and a good friend,” Xenocrates said. “He wil be sorely missed.”
It was impossible to guess at Xenocrates’ sincerity. Like everything else about him, his words seemed both sincere—and not—at the same time.
He had told them the details of Scythe Faraday’s demise on the way here.
At about ten fieen the evening before, Faraday was on a local train platform. en, as a train approached, he hurled himself in front of it. ere were several witnesses—al probably relieved that the scythe had gleaned himself and not any of them.
Had it been anyone but a scythe, his broken body would have been rushed to the nearest revival center, but rules for scythes were very clear.
ere would be no revival.
“But it doesn’t make sense,” Citra said, fighting tears with little success.
“He wasn’t the kind of man who would do something like that. He took his responsibility as a scythe—and training us—very seriously. I can’t believe he would just give up like that. . . .”
Rowan held his silence on the subject, waiting for the High Blade’s response.
“Actual y,” Xenocrates said, “it makes perfect sense.” He took an excruciatingly long sip of tea before he spoke again. “Traditional y, when a mentor scythe self-gleans, anyone bound to an apprenticeship is unbound.”
Citra gasped, realizing the implication.
“He did it,” said Xenocrates, “to spare one of you from having to glean the other.”
“Which means,” said Rowan, “that this is your fault.” And then he added with a little bit of derision, “Your Excel ency.”
Xenocrates stiffened. “If you are referring to the decision to set the two of you in mortal competition, that was not my suggestion. I was merely carrying out the wil of the Scythedom, and frankly, I find your insinuation offensive.”
“We never heard the wil of the Scythedom,” Rowan reminded him,
“because there was never a vote.”
Xenocrates stood, ending the conversation with, “I’m sorry for your loss.”
It was more than just Rowan’s and Citra’s loss, though; it was a loss to the entire Scythedom, and Xenocrates knew it, whether he said so or not.
“So . . . that’s it then?” said Citra. “We go home now?”
“Not exactly,” said Xenocrates, this time not looking either of them in the eye. “While it’s traditional for the apprentices of dead scythes to go free, another scythe can come forward and take over the training. It’s rare, but it does happen.
“You?” Citra asked. “You’ve volunteered to train us now?”
It was Rowan who saw the truth of it in his eyes. “No, it’s not him,”
Rowan said. “It’s someone else. . . .”
“My responsibilities as High Blade would make it far too difficult to take on apprentices. You should be flattered, however; not just one, but two scythes have come forward—one for each of you.”
Citra shook her head. “No! We were pledged to Scythe Faraday and no one else! He died to free us, so we should be freed!”
“I’m afraid I’ve already given my blessing, so the matter is settled.” en he turned to each of them in turn. “You, Citra, wil now be the apprentice of Honorable Scythe Curie. . . .”
Rowan closed his eyes. He knew what was coming next, even before Xenocrates said the words.
“And you, Rowan, wil complete your training in the capable hands of Honorable Scythe Goddard.”
THE OLD GUARD AND THE NEW ORDER
I have never taken an apprentice. I simply never felt compel ed to subject another human being to our way of life. I often wonder what motivates other scythes to do so. For some it is a form of vanity: “Learn from me and be awed because I am so wise.” For others perhaps it is compensation for not being al owed to have children: “Be my son or my daughter for a year, and I wil give you power over life and death.” Yet for others, I imagine it is to prepare for their own self-gleaning. “Be the new me, so that the old me can leave this world satisfied.”
I suspect, however, if I ever take on an apprentice, it wil be for a different reason entirely.
—From the gleaning journal of H.S. Curie
Fal ing Water
At the far eastern edge of MidMerica, near the EastMerica border, was a home with a river running beneath it, spil ing from its foundations into a waterfal .
“It was designed by a very wel -known mortal age architect,” Scythe Curie told Citra as she led the way across a footbridge to the front door. “e place had fal en into disrepair; as you can imagine, a home such as this couldn’t survive without constant attention. It was in a horrible state, and no one cared enough to preserve it. Only the presence of a scythe would bring forth the kind of donations required to save it. Now it’s been returned to its former glory.”
e Scythe opened the door and let Citra step in first. “Welcome to Fal ing Water,” Scythe Curie said.
e main floor was a huge open room with a polished stone floor, wooden furniture, a large fireplace, and windows. Lots and lots of windows.
e waterfal was right beneath an expansive terrace. e sound of the river running beneath the home and over the fal s was a constant but calming white noise.
“I’ve never been in a house with a name,” Citra said as she looked around, doing her best to be unimpressed. “But it’s a bit much, isn’t it? Especial y for a scythe. Aren’t you al supposed to live simple lives?”
Citra knew such a comment could bring forth the scythe’s temper, but she didn’t care. Her presence here meant that Scythe Faraday died for nothing. A beautiful home was no consolation.
Scythe Curie did not respond in anger. She just said, “I live here not because of its extravagance, but because my presence here is the only way to preserve it.”
e decor seemed to be frozen in the twentieth century, when the place was built. e only hints of modernization were a few simple computer interfaces in unobtrusive corners. Even the kitchen was a throwback to an earlier time.
“Come, I’l show you to your room.”
ey climbed a staircase that was lined on the le by layered sheets of granite and echoed on the right by rows and rows of shelved books. e second floor was the scythe’s bedroom suite. e third floor held a smal er bedroom and a study. e bedroom was simply furnished, and, like the rest of the home, had huge windows framed in polished cedar, wrapping around two entire wal s. e view of the forest made Citra feel as if she were perched in a treehouse. She liked it. And she hated that she did.
“You know that I don’t want to be here,” Citra said.
“At last some honesty from you,” Scythe Curie said with the slightest of grins.
“And,” added Citra, “I know you don’t like me—so why did you take me on?”e scythe looked at her with those cold, inscrutable gray eyes. “Whether or not I like you is irrelevant,” she said. “I have my reasons.”
en she le Citra alone in her room without as much as a good-bye.
• • •
Citra didn’t remember fal ing asleep. She hadn’t even considered how exhausted she was. She recal ed lying down on the comforter, looking out at the trees, listening to the river roaring endlessly below, wondering if the noise would eventual y go from soothing to unbearable. And then she opened her eyes to stark incandescence, squinting at Scythe Curie who was standing in the doorway, by the light switch. It was dark outside now. Not just dark but lightless, like space. She could stil hear the river, but couldn’t see even a hint of the trees.“Did you forget about dinner?” Scythe Curie asked.
Citra rose, ignoring the sudden vertigo when she stood. “You could have woken me.”
Scythe Curie smirked. “I thought I just did.”
Citra made her way down toward the kitchen—but the scythe let her go first, and she couldn’t quite remember the way. e house was a maze. She took a few wrong turns, and Scythe Curie didn’t correct her. She just waited for Citra to find her way.
What, Citra wondered, would this woman want to eat? Would she silently accept anything that Citra prepared, as Scythe Faraday had? e thought of the man brought a wave of sorrow chased by anger, but she didn’t know who exactly to be angry at, so it just festered.
Citra arrived on the main floor ready to assess the contents of the pantry and refrigerator, but to her surprise she found the dinner table set for two, and steaming plates of food already there.
“I had a hankering for hasenpfeffer,” the scythe said. “I think you’l like it.” “I don’t even know what hasenpfeffer is.”
“Best if you don’t.” Scythe Curie sat down, and bade Citra to do the same.
But Citra wasn’t quite ready, stil wondering if this might be a trick.
Scythe Curie dug a spoon into the rich stew, but paused when she saw Citra stil standing. “Are you waiting for a formal invitation?” she asked.
Citra couldn’t tel if she was irritated or amused. “I’m an apprentice. Why would you cook for me?”
“I didn’t. I cooked for me. Your grumbling stomach just happened to be in the vicinity.”
Final y Citra sat and tasted the stew. Flavorful. A little gamey, but not bad. e sweetness of honey-glazed carrots cut the gaminess.
“e life of a scythe would be dreadful if we didn’t al ow ourselves the guilty pleasure of a hobby. Mine is cooking.”
“is is good,” Citra admitted. en added, “ank you.”
ey ate mostly in silence. Citra felt odd not being of service at the table, so she got up to refil the scythe’s glass of water. Scythe Faraday did not have any hobbies—or at least none that he shared with Citra and Rowan.
e thought of Rowan made her hand tremble as she poured, and she sloshed some water on the table.
“I’m sorry, Scythe Curie.” She grabbed her own napkin and blotted the spil before it could spread.
“You’l need a steadier hand than that if you’re going to be a scythe.”
Again, Citra couldn’t tel if she was being serious or sardonic. e woman
was even harder for Citra to read than Faraday—and reading people was not her forte by any means. Of course, she never realized that until she spent time with Rowan, who, in his own unobtrusive way, was a master of observation. Citra had to remind herself that she had other skil s. Speed and decisiveness of action. Coordination. ose things would have to come into play if she was going to . . .
She couldn’t finish the thought—wouldn’t al ow herself to. e territory where that thought led was stil too terrible to consider.
• • •
In the morning, Scythe Curie made blueberry pancakes, and then they went out gleaning.While Scythe Faraday always reviewed his notes on his chosen subject and used public transportation, Scythe Curie had an old-school sports car that required substantial skil to drive—especial y on a winding mountain road.
“is Porsche was a gi from an antique car dealer,” Scythe Curie explained to her.
“He wanted immunity?” Citra asked, assuming the man’s motive.
“On the contrary. I had just gleaned his father, so he already had immunity.”
“Wait,” said Citra. “You gleaned his father, and he gave you a car?”
“Yes.”
“So he hated his father?”
“No, he loved his father very much.”
“Am I missing something?”
e road ahead of them straightened out, Scythe Curie shied gears, and they accelerated. “He appreciated the solace I afforded him in the aermath of the gleaning,” she told Citra. “True solace can be worth its weight in gold.”
Stil , Citra didn’t quite understand—and wouldn’t until much later that evening.
ey went to a town that was hundreds of miles away, arriving around lunchtime. “Some scythes prefer big cities; I prefer smal er towns,” Scythe Curie said. “Towns that perhaps haven’t seen a gleaning in over a year.”
“Who are we gleaning?” Citra asked as they looked for a parking place—
one of the liabilities of taking a car that was off-grid.
“You’l find out when it’s time to know.”
ey parked on a main street, then walked—no, strol ed—down the street, which was busy but not bustling. Scythe Curie’s leisurely pace made Citra uncomfortable, and she wasn’t sure why. en it occurred to her that when she went gleaning with Scythe Faraday, his focus was always on the destination, and that destination wasn’t a place, but a person. e subject.
e soul to be gleaned. As awful as that was, it had somehow made Citra feel more secure. With Scythe Faraday, there was always a tangible end to their endeavor. But nothing about Scythe Curie’s manner suggested premeditation at al . And there was a reason for that.
“Be a student of observation,” Curie told Citra.
“If you want a student of observation, you should have chosen Rowan.”
Scythe Curie ignored that. “Look at people’s faces, their eyes, the way they move.”
“What am I looking for?”
“A sense that they’ve been here too long. A sense that they’re ready to . . .
conclude, whether they know it or not.”
“I thought we weren’t al owed to discriminate by age.”
“It’s not about age, it’s about stagnation. Some people grow stagnant before they turn their first corner. For others it could take hundreds of years.”
Citra looked at the people moving around them—al trying to avoid eye contact and get away from the scythe and her apprentice as quickly as possible, al the while trying not to be obvious about it. A couple stepping out of a café; a businessman on his phone; a woman beginning to cross the street against the light, then coming back, perhaps fearing that jaywalking would get her gleaned.
“I don’t see anything in anyone,” Citra said, irritated at both the task and her inability to rise to it.
A group of people came out of an office building—perhaps the tal est one in town at about ten stories. Scythe Curie zeroed in on one man. Her eyes looked almost predatory as she and Citra began to fol ow him at a distance.
“Do you see how he holds his shoulders, as if there is an invisible weight upon them?”
“Can you see how he walks—a little less intently than those around him?”
“No.”
“Do you notice how scuffed his shoes are, as if he doesn’t care anymore?”
“Maybe he’s just having a bad day,” suggested Citra.
“Yes, maybe,” admitted Scythe Curie, “but I choose to believe otherwise.”
ey closed in on the man, who never seemed to be aware that he was being stalked.
“Al that remains is to see his eyes,” the scythe said. “To be sure.”
Scythe Curie touched him on the shoulder, he turned, and their eyes met, but only for the slightest moment. en he suddenly gasped—
—because Scythe Curie’s blade had already been thrust up beneath his rib cage and into his heart. So quick was Scythe Curie that Citra never saw her do it. She never even saw the scythe pul out her blade.
e scythe offered no response to the man’s awful surprise; she said nothing to him at al . She just withdrew the blade, and the man fel . He was dead before he hit the pavement. Around them people gasped and hurried away, but not so far away that they couldn’t watch the aermath. Death was unfamiliar to most of them. It needed to exist in its own bubble, as long as they could stay just beyond its outer edge, peering in.
e scythe wiped her blade on a chamois cloth the same pale lavender as her robe, and that’s when Citra lost control.
“You gave him no warning!” she blurted. “How could you do that? You don’t even know him! You didn’t even let him prepare!”
e cloud of rage that bil owed forth from Scythe Curie was so powerful it was almost a visible thing, and Citra knew she had made a terrible mistake.
“ON THE GROUND!” yel ed the scythe, with such volume it echoed back and forth between the brick buildings of the street.
Citra immediately got to her knees.
“FACE TO THE PAVEMENT! NOW!”
Citra complied, fear overcoming her fury. She splayed herself, prostrate on the ground, her right cheek pressed against the pavement, which was searingly hot from the midday sun. Her view was now of the dead man, just a foot away, whose eyes were empty, and yet staring into Citra’s at the same time. How could dead eyes stil stare?
“YOU DARE PRESUME TO TELL ME HOW TO ACCOMPLISH MY
TASK?”
It seemed the world had frozen around them.
“YOU WILL APOLOGIZE FOR YOUR INSOLENCE, AND BE
DISCIPLINED.”
“I’m sorry, Scythe Curie.” At the mention of Scythe Curie’s name, a murmur erupted among the bystanders. She was legendary everywhere.
“CONVINCE ME!”
“I’m truly sorry, Scythe Curie,” Citra said louder, screaming it into the face of the dead man. “I wil never disrespect you again.”
“Get up.”
e scythe was no longer raging with earthshaking wrath. Citra rose, furious at the weakness of her own legs, which shook beneath her, and the incontinence of her eyes, which spewed tears she wished would evaporate before Scythe Curie or any of the bystanders could see.
e world-renowned Grande Dame of Death turned to stride away, and Citra fol owed in her wake, humbled, hobbled, wishing she could take the scythe’s blade and stab it into the woman’s back—and then furious at herself for wishing such a thing.
ey got into the car and pul ed away from the curb. Only when they were about a block away did the scythe speak to Citra.
“Now then, it wil be your task to identify the man, find his immediate family, and invite them to Fal ing Water so that I may grant them immunity.”
She spoke without the slightest hint of the fury of just a few moments ago.
“Wh . . . what?” It was as if the scene on the street had never happened.
Citra was caught completely off guard—a bit dizzy, as if al the air had been sucked out of the car.
“I have forty-eight hours to grant them immunity. I’d like them to gather at my home this evening.”
“But . . . but back there . . . when you had me on the ground . . .”
“Yes?”
“And you were so angry . . .”
Scythe Curie sighed. “ere is an image to uphold, dear,” she said. “You defied me in public, so I had no choice but to publicly put you in your place.
In the future, you need to hold your opinions until we are alone.”
“So you’re not angry?”
e scythe considered the question. “I’m annoyed,” she said. “But then, I should have warned you what I was about to do. Your response was . . .
justified. And so was the consequence I levied.”
Even at this end of the emotional rol er coaster, Citra had to admit that the scythe was right. ere was a certain amount of decorum required of an apprentice. Another scythe might have exacted a punishment far worse.
ey circled back, and Scythe Curie let Citra off on a side street just a block from where the gleaning had occurred. She would have an hour to find the family and extend them the invitation.
“And if he lives alone, both our jobs wil be easy today,” the scythe said.
Citra wondered what about gleaning could possibly be easy.
• • •
e man’s name was Barton Breen. He had turned the corner many times, had fathered more than twenty children over the years, some of whom were now over a century old themselves. His current household consisted of his most recent wife and his three youngest children. ese were the ones who would receive immunity from gleaning for one year.“What if they don’t come?” Citra asked Scythe Curie on the way home.
“ey always come,” the scythe told her.
And she was right. ey arrived a little aer eight in the evening, somber and shel -shocked. Scythe Curie had them kneel right at the door to kiss her ring, granting them immunity. en she and Citra served them dinner, which the scythe had prepared. Comfort food: pot roast, green beans, and garlic mashed potatoes. Clearly the family had no appetite, but they ate out of obligation.
“Tel me about your husband,” Scythe Curie asked, her voice gentle and sincere.
e woman was reluctant to say much at first, but soon she couldn’t stop tel ing the tale of her husband’s life. Soon the kids joined in with their memories. e man quickly went from an anonymous subject on the street to an individual whose life even Citra now missed, although she had never known him.
And Scythe Curie listened— truly listened—as if she were intent on memorizing everything they said. More than once her eyes moistened,
reflecting the tears of the family.
And then the scythe did the oddest thing. She produced from her robe the blade that had taken the man’s life, and set it down on the table.
“You may take my life, if you like,” she told the woman.
e woman just stared at her, not understanding.
“It’s only fair,” the scythe said. “I’ve taken away your husband, robbed your children of their father. You must despise me for it.”
e woman looked to Citra, as if she might know what to do, but Citra only shrugged, equal y surprised by the offer.
“But . . . attacking a scythe is punishable by gleaning.”
“Not if you have the scythe’s permission. Besides, you’ve already received immunity. I promise there wil be no retribution.”
e knife lay on the table between them, and Citra suddenly felt like the pedestrians at the gleaning: frozen just on the other side of some unthinkable event horizon.
Scythe Curie smiled at the woman with genuine warmth. “It’s al right. If you strike me down, my apprentice wil simply bring me to the nearest revival center, and in a day or two I’l be as good as new.”
e woman contemplated the blade, the children contemplated their mother. Final y the woman said, “No, that won’t be necessary.”
Scythe Curie removed the blade from sight. “Wel , in that case, on to dessert.”
And the family devoured the chocolate cake with a passion they hadn’t shown for the rest of the meal, as if a great pal had been lied.
• • •
Aer they were gone, Scythe Curie helped Citra with the dishes. “When you’re a scythe,” she told Citra, “I’m sure you won’t do things my way. You won’t do things the way Scythe Faraday did, either. You’l find your own path. It may not bring you redemption, it might not even bring you peace, but it wil keep you from despising yourself.”en Citra asked a question she had asked before—but this time she suspected she might get an answer.
“Why did you take me on, Your Honor?”
e scythe washed a dish, Citra dried it, and final y Scythe Curie said the oddest thing. “Have you ever heard of a ‘sport’ cal ed cock fighting?”
Citra shook her head.
“Back in the mortal age, unsavories would take two roosters, put them in a smal arena, and watch them battle to the death, wagering on the outcome.”
“at was legal?”
“No, but people did it anyway. Life before the underhead was a blend of bizarre atrocities. You weren’t told this—but Scythe Goddard had offered to take both you and Rowan on.”
“He offered to take both of us?”
“Yes. And I knew it would be only so he could pit the two of you against each other day aer day for his own amusement, like a cock fight. So I intervened and offered to take you, in order to spare you both Scythe Goddard’s bloody arena.”
Citra nodded in understanding. She chose not to point out that they hadn’t been spared the arena at al . ey were stil facing a mortal struggle.
Nothing could change that.
She tried to imagine what it might have been like had Scythe Curie not stepped forward. e thought of not being separated from Rowan was tempered by the knowledge of whose hand they’d be under. She didn’t even want to imagine how he was faring with Goddard.
As this had turned into an evening of answers, Citra dared to ask the question she had asked so inappropriately on the street, before the man’s body had even gone cold.
“Why did you glean that man today without warning? Didn’t he deserve at least a moment of understanding before your blade?”
is time Scythe Curie was not offended by the question. “Every scythe has his or her method. at happens to be mine. In the Age of Mortality, death would oen come with no warning. It is our task to mimic what we’ve stolen from nature—and so that is the face of death I’ve chosen to recreate.
My gleanings are always instantaneous and always public, lest people forget what we do, and why we must do it.”
“But what happened to the scythe who gleaned the president? e hero who went aer corporate corruption that not even the underhead could
rout. I thought the Grande Dame of Death would always glean with greater purpose.”
A shadow seemed to pass over Scythe Curie’s face. A ghost of some sorrow Citra couldn’t even guess at.
“You thought wrong.”
If you’ve ever studied mortal age cartoons, you’l remember this one. A coyote was always plot ing the demise of a smirking long-necked bird. The coyote never succeeded; instead, his plans always backfired. He would blow up, or get shot, or splat from a ridiculous height.
And it was funny.
Because no mat er how deadly his failure, he was always back in the next scene, as if there were a revival center just beyond the edge of the animation cel .
I’ve seen human foibles that have resulted in temporary maiming or momentary loss of life. People stumble into manholes, are hit by fal ing objects, trip into the paths of speeding vehicles.
And when it happens, people laugh, because no mat er how gruesome the event, that person, just like the coyote, wil be back in a day or two, as good as new, and no worse—or wiser—for the wear.
Immortality has turned us al into cartoons.
—From the gleaning journal of H.S. Curie
A Terrible Thing to Do
Citra wasn’t sure what possessed her to bring up the question she had been asked at conclave. Perhaps it was the unexpected closeness she felt to Scythe Curie aer seeing her feed the grieving family and listen—truly listen—to their stories about the man she had gleaned.
at night, Scythe Curie came into Citra’s room with clean sheets. ey made her bed together, and just as they finished, Citra said, “In conclave you accused me of lying.”
“You were,” Scythe Curie said.
“How did you know?”
Scythe Curie didn’t offer a smile, but she didn’t offer any judgment either.
“When you’ve lived nearly two hundred years, some things are obvious.” She tossed Citra a pil ow and Citra stuffed it into a pil owcase.
“I didn’t push that girl down the stairs,” Citra said.
“I suspected as much.”
Citra now clutched the pil ow. If it were alive, she would have suffocated it. “I didn’t push her down the stairs,” Citra repeated. “I pushed her in front of a speeding truck.”
Citra sat down, turning away from Scythe Curie. She couldn’t look the woman in the face, and now she regretted having confessed this dark secret from her childhood. If the Grande Dame of Death sees you as a monster, what a monster you must truly be.
“What a terrible thing to do,” said the scythe, but her voice was even, not shocked. “Was she kil ed?”
“Instantly,” Citra admitted. “Of course, she was back in school three days later, but it didn’t change what I had done. . . . And the worst thing was, no one knew. People thought she had tripped, and al the other kids were
laughing—because you know how funny it is when someone gets deadish by accident—but it wasn’t an accident, and no one knew. No one saw me do it.
And when she came back, she didn’t even know.”
Citra forced herself to look at the Grande Dame of Death, who now sat in a chair across the room from her, gazing at Citra with those invasive gray eyes.
“You asked me the worst thing I’ve ever done.” Citra said. “Now you know.”
Scythe Curie didn’t speak right away. She just sat there, letting the moment linger. “Wel ,” Scythe Curie final y said, “we’re going to have to do something about that.”
• • •
Rhonda Flowers was in the middle of a midaernoon snack when the doorbel rang. She didn’t think anything of it until a few moments later, when she looked up to see her mother standing at the kitchen threshold with a look of such abject pain on her face, it was clear that something was very wrong.“ey . . . they want to see you,” her mother announced.
Rhonda slurped the ramen noodles that were dangling from her mouth and got up. “Who’s they?”
Her mother didn’t answer. Instead she threw her arms around Rhonda, giving her a bone-crushing hug, and melted into sobs. en over her mother’s shoulder, Rhonda saw them. A girl about her age, and a woman in a lavender garment—clearly in the style of a scythe’s robe.
“Be brave . . . ,” her mother whispered desperately into Rhonda’s ear.
But bravery was about as far away as terror. ere simply wasn’t enough time to summon either fortitude or fear. Al Rhonda felt was a sudden tingling in her extremities and a dreamy disconnect, as if she were watching a scene from someone else’s life. She le her mother and moved toward the door, where the two figures waited.
“You want to see me?”
e scythe, a woman with silky silver hair and a steely gaze, smiled.
Rhonda never considered that a scythe might smile. On the rare occasions she’d encountered them, they always seemed so somber.
“I don’t, but my apprentice does,” the woman said, indicating the girl. But Rhonda couldn’t take her eyes off of the scythe.
“Your apprentice is going to glean me?”
“We’re not here for gleaning,” said the girl.
Only aer hearing that did the terror Rhonda should have felt final y blossom. Her eyes fil ed with tears that she quickly wiped away, as relief fol owed on terror’s tail. “You could have told my mother that.” She turned and cal ed to her mother. “It’s okay, they’re not here to glean.” en she stepped outside, pul ing the door closed behind her, knowing if she didn’t, her mother would eavesdrop on whatever this was about. She had heard that traveling scythes would show up at people’s doors asking for shelter and food for the night. Or sometimes they needed information from people for reasons she could only guess at. But why would they specifical y want to speak to her?
“You probably don’t remember me,” said the girl, “but we used to go to school together years ago—before you moved here.”
As Rhonda studied the girl’s face, she pul ed forth the vaguest memory, and tried to grasp at a name. “Cindy something, right?”
“Citra. Citra Terranova.”
“Oh, right.”
And then the moment became awkward. As if standing on your porch with a scythe and her apprentice wasn’t awkward enough already.
“So . . . what can I do for . . . Your Honors?” She wasn’t sure if an apprentice warranted the title of “Your Honor,” but it couldn’t hurt to err on the side of respect. Now that she had time to let her face and name sink in, Rhonda did remember Citra. As she recal ed, they didn’t like each other very much.
“Wel , here’s the thing,” said Citra. “Do you remember that day when you fel in front of that truck?”
Rhonda gave an involuntary shi of her shoulders. “Like I could possibly forget it. Aer I got back from the revival center, everybody cal ed me Rhonda Roadkil for months.”
Getting run over by a truck was perhaps the most annoying thing that had ever happened to her. She was deadish for three whole days, and ended up missing every last performance of her dance recital. e other girls said they did fine without her, which just made it worse. e only good thing
about it was the food at the revival center on the day she regained consciousness. ey had the best homemade ice cream—so good that she once splatted just to get another taste of it. But of course, leave it to her parents to send her to a cheapo revival center with sucky food.
“So you were there when it happened?”
“Wel , here’s the thing,” Citra said for the second time. en she took a deep breath and said, “It wasn’t an accident. I pushed you.”
“Ha!” said Rhonda, “I knew it! I knew someone pushed me!” At the time her parents had tried to convince her that it was unintentional. at someone had bumped her. Eventual y she came to believe it, but in the back of her mind she always held on to a little bit of doubt. “So it was you!”
Rhonda found herself smiling. ere was victory in knowing that she hadn’t been crazy al these years.
“Anyway, I’m sorry,” Citra said. “I’m real y, real y sorry.”
“So why are you tel ing me now?”
“Wel , here’s the thing,” Citra repeated, like it was a nervous tick. “Being a scythe’s apprentice means I have to make amends for my . . . wel , for my past bad choices. And so . . . I want to give you the chance to do the same thing to me.” She cleared her throat. “I want you to push me in front of a truck.”
Rhonda guffawed at the suggestion. She didn’t mean to; it just came out.
“Real y? You want me to throw you in front of a speeding truck?”
“Yes.”
“Right now?”
“Yes.”
“And your scythe is okay with that?”
e scythe nodded. “I support Citra entirely.”
Rhonda considered the proposal. She supposed she could. How many times had there been someone in her life she wanted to dispose of—even just temporarily? Just last year she had come remarkably close to
“accidental y” electrocuting her lab partner in science because he was such an ass. But in the end she realized that he’d get a few days vacation, and she’d have to finish the lab alone. is situation was different. It was a free revenge ticket. e question was, how badly did she want revenge?
“Listen, it’s tempting and al ,” said Rhonda, “but I’ve got homework, and dance class later.”
“It’s not that I don’t want to, I’m just busy today. Can I throw you under a truck some other time?”
Citra hesitated. “Okay . . .”
“Or better yet, maybe you can just take me out to lunch or something.”
“Okay . . .”
“Just next time, please give us some warning so you don’t freak out my mother.” en she said good-bye, stepped inside, and closed the door.
“How bizarre . . . ,” said Rhonda.
“What was that al about?” her mother asked.
And since she didn’t want to get into it, Rhonda said, “Nothing important,” which irritated her mother, just as it was intended to.
en she went back to the kitchen, where she found her ramen had gotten cold. Great.
• • •
Citra felt both relieved and humiliated at once. For years she had held onto this secret crime. Her gripe with Rhonda had been petty, as most childhood resentments are. It was the way Rhonda always spoke of her dancing as if she were the most talented bal erina in the world. Citra was in the same dance class, back in that magical childhood time when little girls nurtured the delusion that they were as graceful as they were cute.Rhonda had led the pack in disabusing Citra of that delusion through eyebal rol s and exasperated exhales each time Citra took an imperfect step.
e push wasn’t premeditated. It was a crime of opportunity, and that one act had cast a shadow over Citra that she hadn’t even realized until she faced the girl today.
And Rhonda didn’t even care. It was water under a very old bridge. Citra felt stupid about the whole thing now.
“You realize that in the Age of Mortality, you would have been treated much differently.” Scythe Curie didn’t look at her as she spoke—she never looked away from the road when she was driving. Citra was stil getting used to the odd habit. How strange to actual y have to see the path of your journey in order to make it.
“If it was the Age of Mortality, I wouldn’t have done it,” Citra told her with confidence, “because I’d know she wouldn’t be back. Pushing her then would have been more like gleaning.”
“ey had a word for it. ‘Murder.’”
Citra chuckled at the archaic word. “at’s funny. Like a bunch of crows.”
“I’m sure it wasn’t funny at the time.” She did a quick maneuver to avoid a squirrel on the winding road. en Scythe Curie took a rare moment to glance over at Citra, when the road ahead straightened. “So now the penance you’ve given yourself is to be a scythe, forever doomed to take lives as punishment for that one childhood act.”
“I didn’t give it to myself.”
“Didn’t you?”
Citra opened her mouth to answer, but then stopped. Because what if Scythe Curie was right? What if, deep down, Citra had accepted the apprenticeship with Scythe Faraday to punish herself for the crime only she cared about. If so, it was an unusual y harsh judgment. Had she been caught, or had she confessed, her punishment would have been a short suspension from school, at most, plus a fine for her parents, and a stern reprimand. It would even have had an up side: Her schoolmates would have been afraid to cross her.
“e difference between you and most other people, Citra, is that another person would not have cared once that girl was revived. ey would have simply forgotten about it. Scythe Faraday saw something in you when he chose you—perhaps the weight of your conscience.” And then she added, “It was that same weight that let me know you were lying in conclave.”
“I’m actual y surprised the underhead didn’t see me push her,” Citra said off-handedly. en the scythe said something that began a chain reaction in Citra’s mind that changed everything.
“I’m sure it did,” she said. “e underhead sees just about everything, what with cameras everywhere. But it also decides what infractions are worth the effort to address and which ones are not.”
• • •
e underhead sees just about everything.It had a record of practical y every human interaction since the moment it became aware—but unlike in mortal days, that knowledge was never abused. Before the underhead achieved consciousness, when it was merely known as “the cloud,” criminals—and even public agencies—would find ways into people’s private doings, against the law, and exploit that information. Every school child knew of the information abuses that nearly brought down civilization before the underhead condensed into power.
Since that time there had not been a single breach of personal information.
People waited for it. People prophesized doom at the hands of a soul ess machine. But apparently the machine had a purer soul than any human.
It watched the world from mil ions of eyes, listened from mil ions of ears.
It either acted, or chose not to act on, the countless things it perceived.
Which meant that somewhere in its memory lurked a record of Scythe Faraday’s movements on the day his life ended.
Citra knew it was probably a pointless endeavor to track those movements, but what if Faraday’s demise was not an act of self-gleaning at al ? What if he was pushed, just as Citra had pushed Rhonda al those years ago? But this wouldn’t have been a childish crime of the moment. It would have been cruel y premeditated. What if Faraday’s death was, to use the word Scythe Curie had taught her, murder?
As a young man, I marveled at the stupidity and hypocrisy of the mortal age. In those days, the purposeful act of ending human life was considered the most heinous of crimes. How ridiculous! I know how hard it is to imagine that what is now humanity’s highest cal ing was once considered a crime. How smal -minded and hypocritical mortal man was, for even as they despised the enders of life, they loved nature—which, in those days, took every human life ever conceived. Nature deemed that to be born was an automatic sentence to death, and then brought about that death with vicious consistency.
We changed that.
We are now a force greater than nature.
For this reason, scythes must be as loved as a glorious mountain vista, as revered as a redwood forest, and as respected as an approaching storm.
—From the gleaning journal of H.S. Goddard
Guest of Honor
I am going to die.
Rowan had begun repeating this to himself like a mantra, hoping it would make it easier to digest. Yet he seemed no closer to accepting it. Even under different scythes, the edict pronounced at conclave stil stood. He would kil Citra at the end of their apprenticeship, or she would kil him. It was too juicy a bit of drama for the scythes to cancel just because they were no longer apprentices of Scythe Faraday. Rowan knew he could not kil Citra. And the only way to avoid the possibility would be to throw the competition; to perform so poorly between now and the final conclave that they had no choice but to grant scythehood to Citra. en, her first honor-bound duty would be to glean Rowan. He trusted she would make it quick, and that she would be merciful. e trick would be to not make his failure obvious. He must appear to be doing his best. No one must know his true plan. He was up to the task.
I am going to die.
Before that fateful day in the principal’s office with Kohl Whitlock, Rowan hadn’t even known anyone who died. Gleaning had always been at least three degrees removed. e relative of someone who knew someone he knew. But over the past four months, he’d witnessed dozens upon dozens of gleanings firsthand.
I am going to die.
Eight more months. He would see his seventeenth birthday, but not much more. Even though it would be his choice, the thought of being just another statistic for the scythes’ records infuriated him. His life had been a whole lot of nothing. Lettuce-kid. He had thought the label was funny—a badge of honor—but now it was an indictment. His was a life without substance, and
now it would end. He should never have accepted Scythe Faraday’s invitation to be a scythe’s apprentice. He should have just gone on with his unremarkable life—because then, maybe, just maybe, he might have had the chance to do something remarkable with it in time.
“You’ve barely said a word since you got into the car.”
“I’l talk when I have something to say.”
He rode with Scythe Volta in an off-grid Rol s Royce perfectly maintained since the Age of Mortality, the scythe’s yel ow robe in stark contrast to the dark earth tones of the vehicle’s interior. Volta didn’t do the driving; there was a chauffeur. ey wove through a neighborhood where the homes became increasingly larger and the grounds more vast, until the residences disappeared entirely behind gates and ivy-covered wal s.
Volta, one of Goddard’s disciples, had golden citrine gems embedded in his yel ow robe. He was clearly a junior scythe, just a few years out of apprenticeship, in his early twenties perhaps—stil an age where numbering one’s years felt important. His features and skin tone had an Afric leaning, which made the yel ow of his garment seem even brighter.
“So is there a reason why you chose your robes to be the color of piss?”
Volta laughed. “I think you’l fit in just fine. Scythe Goddard likes those close to him to be as sharp as his blades.”
“Why do you fol ow him?”
e honest question seemed to bother him more than the urinary barb.
Volta became the tiniest bit defensive. “Scythe Goddard is a visionary. He sees our future. I’m much more interested in being a part of the Scythedom’s future than its past.”
Rowan turned back to the window. e day was bright but the tinted windows dimmed it, as if they were in the midst of a partial eclipse. “You glean people by the hundreds. Is that the future you mean?”
“We have the same quota as al other scythes,” was al Volta said on the matter.
Rowan turned back to look at Volta, who now seemed to have trouble keeping eye contact. “Who did you train under?” Rowan asked.
“Scythe Nehru.”
Rowan seemed to recal Scythe Faraday chatting with Scythe Nehru during conclave. ey appeared to be on good terms.
“How does he feel about you hanging around with Goddard?”
“To you, he’s Honorable Scythe Goddard,” Volta said, a bit indignant. “And I couldn’t care less how Scythe Nehru feels. Old-guard scythes have obsolete ideas. ey’re too set in their ways to see the wisdom of the Change.”
He spoke of “the Change” as if it were a tangible thing. A thing that, by its very weight, could make a person strong simply by pushing it.
ey stopped at a pair of wrought iron gates, which slowly swung open to admit them. “Here we are,” said Volta.
A quarter-mile driveway ended at a palatial estate. A servant greeted them and led them into the mansion.
Rowan was immediately assaulted by loud dance music. ere were people everywhere, reveling as if it were New Year’s Eve. e whole estate seemed to undulate in the throes of the relentless beat. People laughing, drinking, and laughing some more. Some of the guests were scythes—and not just Goddard’s obvious disciples, other scythes as wel . ere were also some minor celebrities. e rest seemed to be beautiful people who were probably professional party guests. His friend Tyger aspired to be one of those. A lot of kids said that, but Tyger real y meant it.
e servant led them out back to a huge pool that seemed more suited to a resort than a home. ere were waterfal s and a swim-up bar, and more beautiful people happily bobbing. Scythe Goddard was in a cabana beyond the deep end, its front open to the festivities before him. He was attended by more than one fawning bimbotech. He wore his signature royal blue robe, but as Rowan got closer, he could see it was a sheerer variation than the one he had worn at conclave. His leisure robe. Rowan wondered if the man had a diamond-studded bathing suit in his wardrobe as wel .
“Rowan Damisch!” said Scythe Goddard as they approached. He told a servant passing with a tray of drinks to give Rowan a glass of champagne.
When Rowan didn’t take it, Scythe Volta grabbed one and put it in Rowan’s hand before disappearing into the throng, leaving Rowan to fend for himself.
“Please—enjoy,” said Goddard. “I serve only Dom Pérignon.”
Rowan took a sip, wondering if an underage scythe’s apprentice could get marked down for drinking. en he remembered that such rules didn’t apply to him anymore. So he took another sip.
“I arranged this little bacchanal in your honor,” the scythe said, gesturing to the party around them.
“What do you mean, in my honor?”
“Exactly that. is is your party. Do you like it?”
e surreal display of excess was even more intoxicating than the champagne, but did he like it? Mostly he just felt weird, and weirder stil to know that he was the guest of honor.
“I don’t know. I’ve never had a party before,” Rowan told him. It was true
—his parents had seen so many birthdays by the time Rowan was born, they had stopped celebrating them. He was lucky if they even remembered to get him a gi.
“Wel then,” said Scythe Goddard, “let this be the first of many.”
Rowan had to remind himself that this man with the perfect smile, secreting charisma instead of sweat, was the man who had manipulated him and Citra into mortal competition. But it was hard not to be dazzled by his style. And as distasteful as al this spectacle was, it stil made his adrenaline flow.
e scythe patted the seat beside him for Rowan to sit, and Rowan took his place at the scythe’s right hand.
“Doesn’t the eighth commandment say that a scythe can’t own anything but his robe, ring, and journal?”
“Correct,” said Scythe Goddard brightly. “And I own none of this. e food is donated by generous benefactors, the guests are here by choice, and this fine estate has been graciously loaned to me for as long as I choose to grace its hal s.”
Upon the mention of the estate, a man cleaning the pool looked up at them for a moment before returning to his labors.
“You should reread the commandments,” Scythe Goddard said. “You’l find that nothing in them demands that scythes shun the creature comforts that make life worth living. at bleak interpretation by old-guard scythes is a relic from another time.”
Rowan did not offer any further opinion on the subject. It was Scythe Faraday’s humble and serious “old-guard” nature that had made an impression on Rowan. Had he been approached by Scythe Goddard with enticements of rock star glamour in exchange for the taking of lives, he would have declined. But Faraday was dead, and Rowan was here, looking out on strangers that were here for his benefit.
“If it’s my party, shouldn’t it have people I know?”
“A scythe is a friend to the world. Open your arms and embrace it.” It seemed Scythe Goddard had an answer for everything. “Your life is about to change, Rowan Damisch,” he said, waving his arm to indicate the pool and the partiers and the servants and the elaborate spread of food just past the shal ow end that kept being replenished. “In fact, it already has.”
Among the party guests was a girl who seemed markedly out of place.
She was young—nine or ten at the most, and completely oblivious to the party around her as she frolicked in the shal ow end of the pool.
“It looks like one of your guests brought their kid to the party,” Rowan commented.
“at,” said Goddard, “is Esme, and you would be wise to treat her wel .
She is the most important person you wil meet today.”
“How so?”
“at chubby little girl is the key to the future. So you’d better hope she likes you.”
Rowan would have continued picking at Goddard’s enigmatic responses, but his attention was grabbed by a beautiful party girl approaching in a bikini that seemed almost painted on. Rowan realized a moment too late that he was staring. She grinned and he blushed, looking away.
“Ariadne, would you be so kind as to give my apprentice a massage?”
“Yes, Your Honor,” said the girl.
“Uh . . . maybe later,” Rowan said.
“Nonsense,” said the scythe. “You need to loosen up, and Ariadne has magical hands skil ed in Swedish technique. Your body wil thank you.”
She took Rowan by the hand, and that kil ed any resistance. He rose and let himself be led away.
“If our young man is pleased by your efforts,” Scythe Goddard cal ed aer them, “I wil al ow you to kiss my ring.”
As Ariadne led him to the massage tent, Rowan thought, In eight months I am going to die. So perhaps he could al ow himself a little indulgence on the way.
I am disturbed by those who revere us far more than those who disdain us. Too many put us on a pedestal. Too many long to be one of us—and knowing that they can never be makes their longing even greater, for al scythes are apprenticed in their youth.
It is either naivete in thinking that we are somehow of a higher order of being, or it is the product of a depraved heart—for who but the depraved would revel in the taking of life?
For a time years ago, there were groups who would emulate and imitate us. They would fashion robes like those of scythes. They would wear rings that looked similar to ours. For many it was just costume play, but some would actual y pretend to be scythes, fooling others, granting false immunity. Everything short of gleaning.
There are laws against impersonating workers in any profession, but no law preventing anyone from impersonating a scythe. Since the Thunderhead has no jurisdiction over the Scythedom, it cannot pass any laws concerning us. It was an unforeseen glitch in the separation of Scythe and State.
However, it wasn’t a glitch for long. In the Year of the Stingray, at the Sixty-Third World Conclave, it was decided that al such imposters shal be gleaned on sight, publicly, and most violently.
While one might expect such an edict to produce a bloodbath, very few gleanings ever took place. Once word got out, the posers shed their false robes and vanished into the woodwork of the world. To this day the edict remains, but rarely needs to be invoked, because few are foolish enough to impersonate a scythe.
And yet now and again, I hear at conclave the rare tale of a scythe coming face to face with an imposter and having to glean them. Usual y the conversation is about the inconvenience of it.
How the scythe must then track down the imposter’s family to grant immunity and such.
But I wonder more about the imposter. What was it they hoped to achieve? Was it the lure of the forbidden? Were they enticed by the danger of being caught? Or did they simply wish to leave this life so badly that they chose one of the few direct paths to annihilation?
—From the gleaning journal of H.S. Curie
Branded
e party continued for another day. A festival of excess on al levels. Rowan joined in the revelry, but it was more out of obligation than anything. He was the center of attention, the celebrity of the moment. In the pool beautiful people bobbed toward him, at the buffet guests cleared the way so he could always be at the front of the line. It was awkward, yet heady. He couldn’t deny that there was a part of him that enjoyed the surreal nature of celebratory attention. e lettuce elevated to a place of honor.
It was only when the other scythes in attendance shook his hand and wished him luck in his mortal competition against Citra that he sobered and remembered what was at stake.
He borrowed brief snippets of sleep in the cabana, always awakened by music, or raucous laughter, or fireworks. en, late in the aernoon of the second day, when Scythe Goddard had enough, he merely whispered so and word spread quickly. In less than an hour the guests had le, and servants began to clean the detritus of revelry from the eerily silent grounds. Now only the other residents of the estate remained: Scythe Goddard, his three junior scythes, the servants, and the girl, Esme, who peered out of her bedroom window at Rowan like a wraith, as he sat in Goddard’s cabana, awaiting whatever came next.
Scythe Volta approached, his yel ow robes rippling in the breeze. “What are you stil doing out here?” he asked.
“I have nowhere else to be,” Rowan told him.
“Come with me,” Volta said. “It’s time to begin your training.”
• • •
ere was a wine cel ar in the basement of the main house. Hundreds, perhaps thousands of bottles of wine rested in brick alcoves. A bare minimum of bulbs lit the space, casting long shadows and making the alcoves seem like portals to undisclosed hel s.Scythe Volta led Rowan to the central chamber of the cel ar, where Goddard and the other scythes waited. Scythe Rand produced a device from her green robe. It looked like a cross between a gun and a flashlight.
“Do you know what this is?” she asked.
“It’s a tweaker,” Rowan told her. He’d had the occasion several years ago to have his nanites tweaked when his teachers decided his moodiness had crossed the line into depression. at was five or six years ago. e tweaking was painless, and the effect subtle. He hadn’t noticed much of a change, but everyone agreed that he had begun to smile more.
“Arms out, legs spread,” said Scythe Rand. Rowan did as he was told and Scythe Rand passed the tweaker al over his body like some sort of magic wand. Rowan felt a mild tingling in his extremities that quickly faded. She stepped back, and Scythe Goddard approached.
“Have you ever heard the expression ‘being made?’” asked Scythe Goddard. “Or being ‘jumped in?’”
Rowan shook his head, noticing that the other scythes had positioned themselves around him, leaving Rowan at the center of their circle.
“Wel , you are about to find out what it means.”
e other scythes then removed their cumbersome outer robes. Now down to their tunics and knickers, they took aggressive stances. ere was a look of determination on each of their faces, and maybe a little bit of joyous anticipation. Rowan knew what was about to happen an instant before it began.
Scythe Chomsky, the largest of them, stepped forward and, without warning, swung his fist, connecting with Rowan’s cheek so hard, he spun around, lost his footing, and fel to the dusty floor.
Rowan felt the shock of the punch, the jagged bolt of pain, and waited for the tel tale warmth of his nanites releasing pain-kil ing opiates into his bloodstream. But relief didn’t come. Instead the pain swel ed.
It was horrible.
Overwhelming.
Rowan had never experienced such pain—he never knew such pain could even exist.
“What did you do?” he wailed. “What did you do to me?”
“We turned off your nanites,” Scythe Volta said calmly, “so you could experience what our ancestors once did.”
“ere’s a very old expression,” Scythe Goddard told him. “‘To be painless is to be gainless.’” He gripped Rowan warmly on the shoulder. “And I wish you to gain much.”
en he stood back, signaled the others to advance, and they began to beat Rowan to a pulp.
• • •
Recovery without the aid of healing nanites was a slow, miserable process that seemed to get worse before it got better. e first day Rowan longed to die. e second day he thought he actual y might. His head pounded, his thoughts swam. He slipped in and out of consciousness with little warning.It was hard to breathe, and he knew he had several broken ribs. And although Scythe Chomsky had painful y popped his dislocated shoulder back into place at the end of his beating, it stil ached with each heartbeat.
Scythe Volta visited him several times a day. He sat with Rowan, spoon-feeding him soup, and blotting where it spil ed from his split, swol en lips.
ere seemed to be a halo around him, but Rowan knew it was just optical damage that caused the effect. He wouldn’t be surprised if he had detached retinas.
“It burns,” he told Volta as the salty soup spil ed over his lips.
“It does for now,” Volta told him with genuine compassion. “But it wil pass, and you’l be better for it.”
“How could I be better for any of this?” he asked, horrified at how distorted and liquid his words sounded, as if he were speaking through the blowhole of a whale.
Volta fed him another spoonful of soup. “Six months from now, you tel me if I was right.”
He thanked Volta for taking the time to visit him when no one else did.
“You can cal me Alessandro,” Volta said.
“Is that your real name?” Rowan asked.
“No, idiot, it’s Volta’s first name.”
Rowan supposed that’s as close as anyone got to knowing anyone else in the Scythedom.
“ank you, Alessandro.”
• • •
On the evening of the second day, the girl—the one who Goddard said was so important—came into his room in between deliriums. What was her name again? Amy? Emmy? Oh yes—Esme.“I hate that they did this to you,” she said with tears in her eyes. “But you’l get better.”
Of course he’d get better. He didn’t have any choice in the matter. In mortal days, one died or recovered. Now there was only one option.
“Why are you here?”
“To see how you were getting on,” she said.
“No . . . I mean here, in this place?”
She hesitated before she spoke. en she looked away. “Scythe Goddard and his friends came to a mal near where I lived. ey gleaned everyone in the food court except for me. en he told me to come with him. So I did.”
It didn’t explain anything, but it was the only explanation she offered—
perhaps the only one she knew. From what Rowan could see, this girl served no discernible function at the estate. Yet Goddard gave orders that anyone who ran afoul of her would be severely disciplined. She was not to be bothered in any way, and was al owed free run of the estate. She was the biggest mystery he’d encountered yet in Scythe Goddard’s world.
“I think you’l be a better scythe than the others,” she told him, but gave no explanation as to why she thought so. Perhaps it was a gut feeling, but she couldn’t be more wrong.
“I won’t be a scythe,” he told her. She was the first person he confessed it to. “You wil if you want to,” she said. “And I think you’l want to.”
en she le him to ponder the pain and the possibility.
• • •
Scythe Goddard didn’t show his face in Rowan’s room until day three.“How are you feeling?” he asked. Rowan wanted to spit at him, but knew it would hurt too much, and might even bring about a second beating.
“How do you think I’m feeling?” Rowan answered.
He sat on the edge of the bed and studied Rowan’s face. “Come see yourself.” en he helped Rowan out of the bed, and Rowan hobbled to an ornate wardrobe on which was a ful -length mirror.
Rowan barely recognized himself. His face was so swol en it was pumpkin-like. Purple bruises al over his face and body were mottling to al shades of the spectrum.
“Here is where your life begins,” Goddard told him. “What you see is the boy dying. e man wil emerge.”
“at’s such a load of crap.” Rowan said, not even caring what response it might evoke.
Goddard merely raised an eyebrow. “Perhaps . . . but you can’t deny this is a turning point in your life, and every turning point must be marked by an event—one that burns itself into you as indelibly as a brand.”
So now he was branded. Yet he suspected this was just the beginning of a much larger trial by fire.
“e world longs to be like us,” Goddard told Rowan. “Taking and doing what we choose, with neither consequence nor remorse. ey would steal our robes and wear them if they could. You have been given an opportunity to become greater than royalty, so at the very least it requires this rite of passage that I have provided for you.”
Goddard stood there, studying Rowan a few moments more. en he pul ed out the tweaker from his robes. “Arms up, legs spread.”
Rowan took as deep a breath as he could, and did as he was told.
Goddard wanded him. Rowan felt tingling in his extremities, but when it was done, he didn’t feel the warmth of opiates or the deadening of his pain.
“It stil hurts,” Rowan told him.
“Of course it does. I didn’t activate your painkil ers, just your healing nanites. You’l be good as new by morning, and ready to begin your training.
But from this moment on, you’l feel every measure of your body’s pain.”
“Why?” Rowan dared to ask. “What person in their right mind would want to feel that kind of pain?”
“Rightmindedness is overrated,” Goddard said. “I’d rather have a mind that’s clear than one that’s ‘right.’”
In the business of death, we scythes have no competition. Unless, of course, you consider fire. Fire kil s just as swiftly and completely as a scythe’s blade. It’s frightening, but also somehow comforting to know that there’s one thing the Thunderhead can’t fix. One type of damage that revival centers are powerless to undo. Once one’s goose is cooked, it is truly and permanently cooked.
Death by fire is the only natural death left. It almost never happens, though. The Thunderhead monitors heat on every inch of the planet, and the fighting of fires often begins before one can even smel smoke. There are safety systems in every home and every office building, with multiple levels of redundancy, just in case. The more extreme tone cults try to burn their deadish, to make it permanent, but ambu-drones usual y get to them first.
Isn’t it good to know that we are al safe from the threat of the inferno? Except, of course, when we’re not.
—From the gleaning journal of H.S. Curie
Sign of the Bident
Citra’s days were fil ed with training and gleaning.
Each day Citra would go out with Scythe Curie to towns that were selected completely at random. She would watch as the scythe prowled the streets and mal s and parks, becoming like a lioness in search of vulnerable prey. Citra learned to see the signs of the “stagnant,” as Scythe Curie cal ed them—although Citra was not as convinced as she about their readiness to be gleaned. Citra wondered how many of her own days had been fil ed with worldweariness before becoming an apprentice to death. If Scythe Curie had come across Citra on one of those days, would the woman have gleaned her?
ey passed an elementary school one day as it was letting out, and Citra had a sinking feeling that she would glean one of the students.
“I never glean children,” Scythe Curie told her. “I’ve never found a child who seemed stagnant, but even if I did, I wouldn’t do it. I’ve been admonished in conclave about it, but they’ve never taken disciplinary action against me.”
Scythe Faraday had no such rule. He had been strictly about statistics from the Age of Mortality. Fewer preadolescents died in those days, but they did die on occasion. In their time together, Citra had known him to only do one such gleaning. He did not invite Rowan or her, and at dinner that night he broke into uncontrol able sobbing and had to excuse himself. If Citra was ordained, she vowed to fol ow a policy like Scythe Curie, even if it got her in trouble with the selection committee.
Almost every night, she and the scythe would prepare dinner for mourning family members. Most would leave with their spirits lied. Some would remain inconsolable, resentful, hateful, but they were in the minority.
Such was life and death for Citra in the days before the Harvest Conclave.
She couldn’t help but think of Rowan and wonder how he was faring. She longed to see him, but she dreaded it at the same time, because she knew in a few short months she’d be seeing him for the last time, one way or another.
And she held on to the narrow hope that if she could prove Scythe Faraday was taken out by a fel ow scythe, perhaps that could be a monkey wrench hurled into the relentless gearworks of the Scythedom. A monkey wrench that would free Citra from having to glean or be gleaned by Rowan.
• • •
Most of the bereaved that Citra had to notify were the same: husbands, wives, children, parents. At first she had resented that Scythe Curie made her the front line for these heartbroken people, but soon she came to understand why. It wasn’t so that Scythe Curie could avoid it, but so that Citra could experience it and learn how to show compassion in the face of tragedy. It was emotional y exhausting, but rewarding. It was preparing her to be a scythe.Only one time did her post-gleaning experience differ. e first part of her job was tracking down the immediate family of the gleaned. ere was one woman who seemed to have no immediate family; just one estranged brother. It was odd in this time when extended families were more oen than not a convoluted web that spanned six living generations or more. Yet this poor woman had only a brother. Citra mapped out the address, went there, but wasn’t paying al that much attention. She didn’t know where she was until she was right in front of the place.
It wasn’t a home—not in the traditional sense—it was a monastery. A wal ed adobe compound styled aer the historical missions. But unlike those ancient structures, the symbol at the apex of the central steeple was not a cross, but a two-pronged tuning fork. e bident. It was a sign of the tone cults.
is was a Tonist monastery.
Citra shivered in the way anyone shivers at the prospect of something vaguely alien and darkly mystic.
“Stay away from those lunatics,” her father once told her. “People get sucked in and are never seen again.” Which was a ridiculous thing to say. No
one truly disappears in this day and age. e underhead knows exactly where everyone is at al times. Of course, it doesn’t have to tel .
Under other circumstances, Citra might have heeded her father’s advice.
But she was making a bereavement cal , and that trumped any trepidation.
She entered the compound through a gated arch. e gate wasn’t locked.
She found herself in a garden ful of white, rich-smel ing flowers. Gardenias.
Tone cults were al about aroma and sounds. ey gave little value to the sense of sight. In fact, the more extreme Tonist groups actual y blinded themselves, and the underhead reluctantly al owed it, preventing their healing nanites from restoring sight. It was awful, and yet was one of the few expressions of religious freedom le in a world that had laid its various gods to rest.
Citra fol owed a stone path through the garden to the church on which stood the sign of the fork, and she pushed her way through the heavy oak doors into a chapel lined with pews. It was dim, even though there were stained glass windows on either side. ey were not from the mortal age, but were Tonist in nature. ey depicted various strange scenes: a shirtless man carrying a huge tuning fork on his burdened back; a stone fracturing and shooting forth bolts of lightning; crowds running from a nasty vermiform creature in the form of a double helix that spiraled out of the ground.
She didn’t like the images and didn’t know what these people believed, only that it was laughable. Ludicrous. Everyone knew that this so-cal ed religion was just a hodgepodge of mortal age faiths slapped together into a troubling mosaic. Yet somehow there were people who found that strange ideological mosaic to be enticing.
A priest, or monk, or whatever you cal a cult clergyman, was at the altar, chanting in monotone and dousing lit candles one by one.
“Excuse me,” Citra said. Her voice was much louder than she meant it to be. A trick of the chapel’s acoustics.
e man wasn’t startled by her. He put out one more candle, then set down his silver snuffer and hobbled toward her with a pronounced limp. She wondered if it was affected, or if his religious freedom al owed him to retain whatever scarring caused the limp. By the wrinkles on his face she could tel that he was long overdue to turn a corner.
“I am Curate Beauregard,” he said. “Have you come for atonement?”
“No,” she told him, showing her armband that bore the seal of scythes. “I need to speak to Robert Ferguson.”
“Brother Ferguson is in aernoon repose. I shouldn’t disturb him.”
“It’s important,” she told him.
e curate sighed. “Very wel . at which comes can’t be avoided.” en he hobbled off, leaving Citra alone.
She looked around, taking in the strange surroundings. e altar in the front contained a granite basin fil ed with water—but the water was cloudy and foul-smel ing. Just behind that was the focal point of the entire church: a steel two-pronged fork similar to the one on the roof outside. is bident was six feet tal and protruded from an obsidian base. Beside it, on its own little platform, sat a rubber mal et resting on a black velvet pil ow. But it was the bident that held her attention. e huge tuning fork was cylindrical, silvery smooth, and cold to the touch.
“You want to strike it, don’t you? Go on—it’s not forbidden.”
Citra jumped and silently chided herself for being caught off guard.
“I am Brother Ferguson,” said the man as he approached. “You wanted to see me?”
“I’m the apprentice of Honorable Scythe Marie Curie,” Citra told him.
“I’ve heard of her.”
“I’m here on a bereavement mission.”
“Go on.”
“I’m afraid that your sister, Marissa Ferguson, was gleaned by Scythe Curie today at one fieen p.m. I’m very sorry for your loss.”
e man didn’t seem upset or shocked, merely resigned. “Is that al ?”
“Is that al ? Didn’t you hear me? I just told you that your sister was gleaned today.”
e man sighed. “at which comes can’t be avoided.”
If she didn’t already dislike the Tonists, she certainly did now. “Is that it?”
she asked. “Is that your people’s ‘holy’ line?”
“It’s not a line; it’s just a simple truth we live by.”
“Yeah, whatever you say. You’l need to make arrangements for your sister’s body—because that’s coming and can’t be avoided either.”
“But if I don’t step forward, won’t the underhead provide a funeral?”
“Don’t you care at al ?”
e man took a moment before answering. “Death by scythe is not a natural death. We Tonists do not acknowledge it.”
Citra cleared her throat, biting back the verbal reaming she wanted to give him, and did her best to remain professional. “ere’s one more thing.
Although you didn’t live with her, you are her only documented relative.