فصل 29

I am apprenticed to a monster. Scythe Faraday was right: Someone who enjoys killing should never be a scythe. It goes against everything the founders wanted. If this is what the Scythedom is turning into, someone has to stop it. But it can’t be me. Because I think I’m becoming a monster, too.

Rowan looked at what he wrote and carefully, quietly tore the page out, crumpled it, and tossed it into the flames of his bedroom fireplace. Goddard always read his journal. As Rowan’s mentor, it was his prerogative to do so. It had taken forever for Rowan to learn how to write his true thoughts, his true feelings. Now he had to learn to hide them again. It was a matter of survival. So he picked up his pen and wrote a new official entry.

Today I killed twelve moving targets using only twelve bullets, and saved the life of my friend. Scythe Goddard sure knows how to motivate someone to do their best. There’s no denying that I’m getting better. I’m learning more and more each day, perfecting my mind, my body, and my aim. Scythe Goddard is proud of my progress. Someday I hope I can repay him, and give him what he deserves in return for all he’s done for me.

29

They Called It Prison

Scythe Curie hadn’t gleaned since conclave. All her concern was on Citra. “I’m entitled to some down time,” the scythe told her. “I have plenty of time to pick up the slack.” It was at dinner on their first day back at Falling Water that Citra finally broached the subject she had been dreading.

“I have a confession to make,” Citra said five minutes into the meal.

Scythe Curie chewed and swallowed before she responded. “What kind of confession?” “You’re not going to like it.”

“I’m listening.”

Citra did her best to hold the woman’s cool gray gaze. “It’s something that I’ve been doing for some time. Something you don’t know about.” The scythe’s lips screwed into a wry grin. “Do you honestly think there’s anything you do that I don’t know about?” “I’ve been looking into the murder of Scythe Faraday.”

Scythe Curie actually dropped her fork with a clatter. “You’ve been what?” Citra told Scythe Curie everything. How she dug through the backbrain, how she painstakingly reconstructed Faraday’s moves on his last day. And how she found two of the five witnesses that were given immunity, suggesting, if not proving, that the act was committed by a scythe.

Scythe Curie was attentive to everything, and when Citra was done, she bowed her head and braced herself for the worst.

“I submit myself for disciplinary action,” Citra said.

“Disciplinary action,” said Scythe Curie with disgust in her voice, but that disgust was not aimed at Citra. “I should discipline myself for being so inexcusably blind to what you were doing.” Citra released a breath that she had been holding for the last twenty seconds.

“Have you told anyone else?” Scythe Curie asked.

Citra hesitated, then realized there was no sense in concealing it now. “I told Rowan.” “I was afraid you’d say that. Tell me Citra, what did he do to you after you told him? I’ll tell you what he did—he broke your neck! I think that’s a very good indication of where he stands on this. You can bet that Scythe Goddard knows all about your little theory by now.” Citra didn’t even want to consider whether or not that might be true. “What we need to do is track down those witnesses and see if we can get any of them to talk.” “Leave that to me,” Scythe Curie said. “You’ve done more than enough already.  You need to clear it out of your head now, and focus on your studies and your training.” “But if this really is a scandal in the Scythedom—”

“—then your best possible position would be to achieve scythehood yourself, and fight it from the inside.” Citra sighed. That’s what Rowan had said. Scythe Curie was even more stubborn than Citra, and when her mind was made up, there was no changing it. “Yes, Your Honor.” Citra went to her room but still felt a definite sense that there was something Scythe Curie was holding back from her.

• • •

They came for Citra the following day. Scythe Curie had gone to the market, and Citra was doing what was expected of her. She was practicing killcraft with knives of different sizes and weights, trying to remain balanced and graceful.

There came a pounding on the door that made her drop the larger knife, almost stabbing her foot. There was a moment of déjà vu, because it was the exact same sort of pounding that came in the middle of the night when Scythe Faraday had died. Urgent, loud, and relentless.

She left the larger blade on the ground, but concealed the small one in a pocket sheath sewn into her pants. Whatever this was, she would not be unarmed when she answered the door.

She pulled open the door to reveal two officers of the BladeGuard, just as there had been that terrible night, and her heart sank.

“Citra Terranova?” one of the guardsmen asked.

“Yes?”

“I’m afraid you’ll need to come with us.”

“Why? What’s happened?”

But they didn’t tell her, and this time there was no one with them to explain. Then it occurred to her that this might not be what it seemed. How did she know that these were really BladeGuardsmen at all? Uniforms could be faked.

“Show me your badges!” she insisted. “I want to see your badges.”

Either they didn’t have any, or they didn’t want to be bothered with it, because one of them grabbed her.

“Maybe you didn’t hear me. I said come with us.”

Citra pulled out of his grip, spun around, and for just an instant considered the knife sheathed on the side of her pants, but instead delivered a brutal kick to his neck that took him down. She coiled, prepared to attack the other one, but she was an instant too late. He pulled out a jolt baton and jammed it into her side. Her own body suddenly became her enemy and she went down, hitting her head hard enough on the ground to knock her out.

When she came to, she was in a car, locked in the back, with a splitting headache that her pain nanites were struggling to subdue. She tried to lift a hand to her face, but found her hands restrained. There were steel clamps cinched on both hands and connected by a short chain. Some awful artifact from the Age of Mortality.

She pounded on the barrier between the front and back seats until finally one of the guardsmen turned to her, his gaze anything but peaceful.

“Do you want another jolt?” he threatened. “I’d be happy to give you one. After what you did, I wouldn’t mind turning the voltage into the red.” “What I did? I haven’t done anything! What am I being accused of?”

“An ancient crime called murder,” he said. “The murder of Honorable Scythe Michael Faraday.” • • •

No one read her rights. No one offered her an attorney for her defense. Such laws and customs were from a very different age. An age when crime was a fact of life, and entire industries were based on apprehending, trying, and punishing criminals. In a crime-free world, there was no modern precedent for how to deal with such a thing. Anything this complex and strange would usually be left for the Thunderhead to resolve—but this was a scythe matter, which meant the Thunderhead would not interfere. Citra’s fate was entirely in the hands of High Blade Xenocrates.

She was brought to his residence, the log cabin in the middle of a well-kept lawn that spread across the roof of a one hundred nineteen–story building.

She sat in a hard wooden chair. The cuffs on her hands were too tight, and her pain nanites were fighting a losing battle to quell the ache.

Xenocrates stood before her, eclipsing the light. This time Xenocrates was neither kind nor comforting.

“I don’t think you realize how serious this charge against you is, Miss Terranova.” “I know how serious it is. I also know it’s ridiculous.”

The High Blade didn’t respond to that. She struggled in the blasted things cuffing her hands. What kind of world would make such a device? What sort of world would need one?

Then out of the shadows stepped another scythe, robed in earthtone brown and forest green. Scythe Mandela.

“Finally, someone reasonable!” said Citra. “Scythe Mandela, please help me! Please tell him I’m not guilty!” Scythe Mandela shook his head. “I’ll do nothing of the sort, Citra,” he said sadly.

“Talk to Scythe Curie! She knows I didn’t do this!”

“This is too sensitive a situation to involve Scythe Curie at this time,” said Xenocrates. “She will be informed once we’ve determined your guilt.” “Wait—you mean she doesn’t know where I am?”

“She knows we’ve detained you,” said Xenocrates. “We’re sparing her the details for now.” Scythe Mandela sat in a chair across from her. “We know you’ve been in the backbrain, attempting to erase records of Scythe Faraday’s movements on the day he died, to foil our own internal investigation.” “No! That’s not what I was doing!” But the more she denied it, the more guilty she appeared.

“But that’s not the most damning evidence,” said Scythe Mandela. Then he looked to Xenocrates. “May I show her?” Xenocrates nodded, and Mandela pulled out from his robe a sheet of paper, putting it in one of Citra’s cuffed hands. She raised it to read it, not even imagining what it could be. It was a copy of a handwritten journal entry. Citra recognized the handwriting. There was no question it was Scythe Faraday’s. And as she read, her heart sank to a place she didn’t know existed in this, or any other world.

I fear I’ve made a dreadful mistake. An apprentice should never be chosen in haste, but I was foolish. I felt a need to impart all I know, all I’ve learned. I sought to increase the allies I have in the Scythedom who think as I do.

She comes to my door at night. I hear her in the darkness, and can only guess her intentions. Only once did I catch her entering my room. Had I actually been asleep, who can say what she might have done?

I am concerned that she may mean to end me. She’s shrewd, determined, calculating, and I’ve taught her the many arts of killing far too well. Let it be known that if death befalls me, it is not the result of self-gleaning. Should my life be brought to an unexpected end, it will be her hand, not mine, that bears the blame.

Citra found her eyes filling with tears of anguish and betrayal. “Why? Why would he write this?” Now she was beginning to doubt her own sanity.

“There’s really only one reason, Citra,” said Scythe Mandela.

“Our own investigation has ascertained that the witnesses were bribed to lie about what truly occurred. Further, their identities have been tampered with, and we can’t locate them.” “Bribed!” said Citra, holding on to a last thread of hope. “Yes! They were bribed with immunity! Which proves it couldn’t have been me! It could only have been another scythe!” “We tracked the source of the immunity,” said Scythe Mandela. “Whoever killed Scythe Faraday also gave him one final insult. After he was dead, the killer defeated the security measures on Faraday’s ring, and used it to grant the witnesses immunity.” “Where’s the ring, Citra?” demanded Xenocrates.

She couldn’t look him in the face anymore. “I don’t know.”

“I only have one question for you, Citra,” said Scythe Mandela. “Why did you do it? Did you despise his methods? Are you working for a tone cult?” Citra kept her eyes cast down to the damning journal entry in her hands. “None of those things.” Scythe Mandela shook his head and stood up. “In all my years as a scythe, I’ve never seen such a thing,” he said. “You disgrace us all.” Then he left her alone with Xenocrates.

The High Blade paced silently for a few moments. Citra wouldn’t look at him.

“There is this concept I’ve been studying from the Age of Mortality,” he informed her. “It is a number of procedures designed to uncover truths. I believe it is pronounced ‘tor-turé.’ It would involve turning off your pain nanites, and then inflicting high levels of physical suffering until you finally confess the truth of what you’ve done.” Citra said nothing. She still couldn’t process any of this. She didn’t know if she ever would.

“Please don’t misunderstand,” said Xenocrates. “I have no intent of submitting you to tor-turé. That is only a last resort.” Then he pulled out another piece of paper and put it down on his desk.

“If you sign this confession, we can avoid any more mortal-age unpleasantness.” “Why should I have to sign anything? I’ve already been tried, and . . . what’s the word? Convicted.” “A confession will remove all doubt. We would all sleep much easier if you’d be so kind as to remove the specter of doubt.” Now Xenocrates finally offered her a sympathetic smile.

“And if I sign it, what then?”

“Well, Scythe Faraday did grant you immunity until Winter Conclave. Immunity is nonrevocable, even in a case such as this. Therefore, you will be held in an incarceration facility until that time.” “A what?”

“They were called ‘prisons.’ There are still a few left—abandoned, of course, but it shouldn’t be to hard to restore one to house a single prisoner. Then, at Winter Conclave, your friend Rowan shall be ordained, and, as has already been stipulated, he shall glean you. I’m sure, knowing what we know now, he’ll have no reservations in doing so.” Citra looked morosely down at the page on the table next to her. “I can’t sign it,” she told him.

“Oh yes, of course, you need a pen.” He reached into various pockets of his gilded person until finding one. As he moved to place it on the table next to her, Citra thought of half a dozen places she could jam it into him that would either render him deadish, or at least incapacitated. But what would be the point? There were BladeGuard officers in the next room, and she could see even more on the porch through the front window.

He gently laid the pen down within her reach, then called Mandela back in to witness her signature. As soon as the door to the cabin opened, Citra realized there was only one way out of this situation. Only one thing she could do. It might not buy her anything but time, but right now time was the most valuable commodity in the world.

She feigned to reach for the pen, but instead swung her bound hands in the other direction, slamming them into Xenocrates’s gut.

He folded with an “oomf,” and she sprang from her chair, ramming her shoulder against Mandela, knocking him backward and out the front door. She leaped over him, and immediately a swarm of guards came at her. Now she needed every ounce of her training. Her hands were cuffed, but Bokator was more about elbows and legs than it was about hands. She didn’t need to decimate them, all she needed to do was disarm them and keep them off balance. One came at her with a jolt baton that she kicked out of his hand. Another had a club, which missed its mark as she dodged, and she used his momentum to flip him onto his back. Two others didn’t waste time with weapons; they lunged for her, hands outstretched—a textbook case of how not to attack. She dropped to the lawn, swung her feet, and bowled them down like pins.

And then she began to run.

“There’s nowhere you can go, Citra!” called Xenocrates.

But he was wrong.

Forcing strength and speed into her legs, she ran across the rooftop lawn. There was no guardrail, because the High Blade wanted nothing to impede his view of his domain.

Citra neared the edge, and rather than slowing down, she increased her pace, until the grass was gone and there was nothing but one hundred nineteen floors of air beneath her. She held her cuffed hands over her head, grimacing against the wind and the uneasy feel of freefall, and plummeted feet first, surrendering her will to gravity, relishing her defiance, until her life ended for the second time in a week, this time with what was undoubtedly the best splat ever.

• • •

This was unexpected and inconvenient, but it changed nothing. Xenocrates didn’t even run out to the edge. That would just be wasting time.

“The girl has a spark,” said Mandela. “Do you really think she’s working for a tone cult?” “I doubt we’ll ever understand her motives,” Xenocrates told him. “But removing her will certainly help the Scythedom heal.” “Poor Marie must be beside herself,” said Mandela. “To have lived with the girl for months, and not known.” “Yes, well, Scythe Curie’s a strong woman,” Xenocrates said. “She’ll get over it.” He had his guards call down to the lobby. The site of Citra Terranova’s remains was to be cordoned off until her unpleasant little self could be scraped off the sidewalk and brought to a revival center. It would have been so much cleaner if she could just stay dead. Damn the immunity rules! Well, when she was once more pronounced alive, she would find herself in a cell with no possible means of escape, and more importantly, no contact with anyone who might take up her cause and petition for her freedom.

Xenocrates went to the express elevator, not trusting his security detail to handle the situation down below. “Will you accompany me, Nelson?” “I’ll stay here,” said Mandela. “I have no desire to see the poor girl in such an unpleasant state.” • • •

Xenocrates assumed this would be a simple scrape-and-soar maneuver—and indeed, an ambudrone had already landed on the street ready to spirit away what was left of Citra. But something wasn’t quite right. It wasn’t his security detail surrounding her remains; instead, there were at least a dozen men and women, all in cloud-colored suits, forming a circle around her. Nimbus agents! They ignored the threats and jeers from the BladeGuard officers who insisted that they needed to get through.

“What’s going on here?” Xenocrates demanded.

“The damn Nims!” said one of the guardsmen. “They were already here when we came outside. They won’t let us near the body.” Xenocrates pushed his way through his security detail and addressed a woman who appeared to be the head Nimbus agent. “See here! I am High Blade Xenocrates. This is scythe business, and as such, you and the rest of your Nimbus agents have no place here. Yes, the law states she must be revived, but we shall bring her to a revival center. The Thunderhead has absolutely no jurisdiction.” “On the contrary,” the woman said. “All revival falls under the auspices of the Thunderhead, and we are here to make sure its domain is not infringed upon.” Xenocrates sputtered for a moment, before finding mental traction. “The girl is not a public citizen. She is a scythe’s apprentice.” “Was a scythe’s apprentice,” said the woman. “The moment she died, she ceased to be anyone’s apprentice. She is now a rather damaged set of remains that the Thunderhead must repair and revive. I assure you that the moment she is pronounced alive, she will be fully under your jurisdiction once more.” A team of revival workers made their way from the ambu-drone and began to prepare the body for transport.

“This is inexcusable!” raved the High Blade. “You can’t do this! I demand to speak to your superior.” “I’m afraid I report directly to the Thunderhead. We all do. And since there can be no contact between the Scythedom and the Thunderhead, there’s no one else for you to speak to. I shouldn’t even be speaking to you now.” “I will glean you!” threatened Xenocrates. “I will glean every last one of you where you stand!” The woman was not troubled. “That is your prerogative,” she said. “But I believe that would be considered bias and malice aforethought. A violation of the Scythedom’s second commandment by the region’s High Blade would most certainly raise eyebrows at the World Scythe Council’s next global conclave.” With nothing left to say, Xenocrates just screamed primal rage into the woman’s face until his emo-nanites calmed him down. But he didn’t want to calm down. He just wanted to scream and scream and scream.