فصل 13

13

Not a Pretty Picture

Scythe Pierre-Auguste Renoir was no artist, although he had quite the collection of masterpieces painted by his Patron Historic. What could he say? He liked pretty pictures.

Of course, a MidMerican scythe naming himself after a French artist infuriated scythes from the FrancoIberian region. They felt that all mortal-age French artists belonged to them. Well, just because Montreal was now part of MidMerica didn’t mean its French heritage was lost. Surely someone in Scythe Renoir’s ancestry had been from France.

No matter—the scythedoms across the Atlantic could bluster all they wanted, it did not affect him. What affected him were the Permafrost ethnics in the northern reaches of the Mericas where he lived. While the rest of the world had blended on the genetic level to a large degree, the Permafrosts were far too protective of their culture to become one with the rest of humankind. Not a crime, of course—people were free to do as they chose—but to Scythe Renoir it was a nuisance, and a blemish upon the order of things.

And Renoir knew order.

His spices were arranged alphabetically; his teacups were lined up in his cupboard with mathematical precision; he had his hair trimmed to a measured length every Friday morning. The Permafrost population flew in the face of all of that. They looked far too racially distinct, and it was something he could not abide.

Therefore, he gleaned as many of them as he could.

Of course, showing an ethnic bias would leave him in deep water with the scythedom if it found out. Thank goodness Permafrost was not considered a distinct race. Their genetic ratio simply showed a high percentage of  “other.”  “Other” was such a broad category, it effectively masked what he was doing. Perhaps not from the Thunderhead, but from the scythedom, which was all that mattered. And as long as he gave no one in the scythedom a reason to look deeper into his gleanings, no one would know! In this way, he hoped, in time, to thin the population of ethnic Permafrosts, until their presence no longer offended him.

On this particular night, he was on his way to a double gleaning. A Permafrost woman and her young son. He was in high spirits that evening—but just as he left his home, he unexpectedly encountered a figure dressed in black.

The woman and her son were not gleaned that night . . . however, Scythe Renoir was not so lucky. He was found in a burning publicar that had sped through his neighborhood like a fireball until its tires melted and it skidded to a stop. By the time firefighters reached him, there was nothing they could do. It was not a pretty picture.

• • •

Rowan awoke to a knife at his throat. The room was dark. He couldn’t see who held the knife, but he knew the feel of the blade. It was a ringless karambit—its curved blade perfect for its current application. He had always suspected his tenure as Scythe Lucifer would not last long. He was prepared for this. He was prepared from the day he began.

“Answer me truthfully, or I will slit your throat ear to ear,” his assailant said. Rowan recognized the voice right away. It was not a voice he was expecting.

“Ask your question first,” Rowan said. “Then I’ll tell you whether I’d rather answer it or have my throat slit.” “Did you end Scythe Renoir?”

Rowan did not hesitate. “Yes, Scythe Faraday.  Yes, I did.”

The blade was removed from his neck. He heard a twanging sound across the room as the hurled blade embedded in the wall.

“Damn you, Rowan!”

Rowan reached to turn on the light. Scythe Faraday now sat in the single chair in Rowan’s Spartan room. It’s a room Faraday should approve of, Rowan thought. No creature comforts, but for a comfortable bed to guard against the troubled sleep of a scythe.

“How did you find me?” Rowan asked. After his encounter with Tyger, Rowan had left Pittsburgh for Montreal, because he felt that if  Tyger could find him, anyone could. And yet even with the move, he was found. Luckily, it was Faraday and not another scythe who might not hesitate to slit his throat.

“You forget that I’m skilled in digging around the backbrain. I can find anything or anyone I set my mind to.” Faraday regarded him with eyes filled with smoldering anger and bitter disappointment. Rowan felt compelled to look away, but he didn’t. He refused to feel any shame for the things he’d done.

“When you left, Rowan, did you not promise me that you would lie low, and stay away from scythe affairs?” “I did promise that,” Rowan told him quite honestly.

“So you lied to me? You planned this ‘Scythe Lucifer’ business all along?” Rowan got up and pulled the blade from the wall. A ringless karambit, just as he thought. “I didn’t plan anything, I just changed my mind.” He handed the blade back to Faraday.

“Why?”

“I felt I had to. I felt it was necessary.”

Faraday looked to Rowan’s black robe, which hung on a hook beside the bed. “And now you dress in a forbidden robe. Is there no taboo you will not break?” It was true. Scythes were not allowed to wear black, which is exactly why he chose it. Black death for purveyors of darkness.

“We are supposed to be the enlightened!” Faraday said. “This is not how we fight!” “You of all people have no right to tell me how to fight.  You played dead and ran away!” Faraday took a deep breath. He looked at the karambit in his hand and slipped it into an inner pocket of his ivory robe. “I thought by convincing the world that I had self-gleaned, it would save you and Citra. I thought you would be freed from the apprenticeship and get sent back to your old lives!” “It didn’t work,” Rowan reminded him. “And you’re still hiding.”

“I am biding my time.  There’s a difference.  There are things I can accomplish best if the scythedom does not know I’m alive.” “And,” said Rowan, “there are things I can accomplish best as Scythe Lucifer.” Scythe Faraday stood and took a long, hard look at him. “What have you become, Rowan . . . that you could end the existences of scythes in cold blood?” “As they die, I think of their victims. The men, women, and children that they have gleaned—because the scythes that I end don’t glean with remorse, or the sense of responsibility that a scythe is supposed to have. Instead, I’m the one who feels compassion for their victims. And that frees me from feeling any remorse for the twisted scythes that I end.” Faraday seemed unmoved. “Scythe Renoir—what was his crime?”

“He was doing a secret ethnic cleansing of the north.”

That gave Faraday pause for thought. “And how did you learn of this?”

“Don’t forget that you taught me how to research the backbrain, too,” Rowan told him. “You taught me the importance of thoroughly researching the people I was to glean. Or did you forget that you put all these tools in my hands?” Scythe Faraday looked out of the window, but Rowan knew it was only to keep from having to look Rowan in the eye. “His crime could have been reported to the selection committee. . . .” “And what would they have done? Reprimanded him and put him on probation? Even if they stopped him from gleaning, it wouldn’t suit the crime!” Scythe Faraday finally turned to look at him. He suddenly seemed tired, and old. Much older than a person is supposed to feel or look. “We are not a society that believes in punishment,” he said. “Only correction.” “So do I,” Rowan told him. “In mortal days, when they couldn’t cure a cancer-illness, they cut that cancer-illness out. That’s exactly what I do.” “It’s cruel.”

“It’s not. The scythes that I end feel no pain. They are dead before I reduce them to ash. Unlike the late Scythe Chomsky, I do not burn them alive.” “A small grace,” said Faraday, “but not a saving one.”

“I’m not asking to be saved,” Rowan told him. “But I do want to save the scythedom. And I believe this is the only way to do it.” Faraday looked him over again, and shook his head sadly. He was no longer furious. He seemed resigned.

“If you want me to stop, you’ll have to end me yourself,” Rowan told him.

“Do not put me to the test, Rowan. Because the grief I might feel from ending you would not stay my hand if I felt it was necessary.” “But you won’t. Because deep down you know that what I’m doing is necessary.” Scythe Faraday didn’t speak for a while. He returned his gaze out the window. It had started to snow. Flurries. It would make the ground slick. People would fall, hit their heads. The revival centers would be busy tonight.

“So many scythes have fallen from the old, true ways,” Faraday said with a weight of sadness that went deeper than Rowan could read. “Would you end half the scythedom—because from what I can see, Scythe Goddard is being seen as a martyr in the so-called new order. More and more scythes are coming to enjoy the act of killing. Conscience is becoming a casualty.” “I’ll do what I have to do until I can’t do it anymore,” was Rowan’s only response.

“You can end scythe after scythe, it won’t change the tide,” Faraday said. It was the first thing he offered Rowan that made him question himself. Because he knew Faraday was right. No matter how many bad scythes he removed from the equation, there would be more on the rise. New-order scythes would take on apprentices who lusted for death, like mortal-age murderers—the kind who were put in incarceration places and spent the rest of their limited lives behind bars. Now those would be the types of monsters allowed to freely end life without consequence. This was not what the founders wanted—but all the founding scythes had long since self-gleaned. And even if any of them were still alive, what power would they have to change things now?

“So what will change the tide?” Rowan asked.

Scythe Faraday raised an eyebrow. “Scythe Anastasia.”

Rowan had not expected that. “Citra?”

Faraday nodded. “She is a fresh voice of reason and responsibility. She can make the old ways new again. Which is why they fear her.” Then Rowan read something deeper in Faraday’s face. He knew what he was really saying. “Citra’s in danger?” “It would appear.”

Suddenly Rowan’s whole world seamed to heave on its axis. He was amazed at how quickly his priorities could change.

“What can I do?”

“I’m not sure—but I can tell you what you will do. You will write an elegy for each of the scythes you kill.” “I’m not your apprentice anymore. You can’t order me around.”

“No, but if you wish to wash at least some of the blood from your hands and win back an ounce of my respect, you will do it. You will write an honest epitaph for each of them. You will speak to the good each of your victims has done in the world, as well as the bad—for even the most self-serving, corrupt of scythes has some virtue hidden within the wrinkles of their corruption. At some point in their lives, they strove to do what was right before they fell.” He paused as a memory came to him. “I used to be friends with Scythe Renoir,” Faraday admitted, “many years before his bigotry became the cancer you spoke of. He loved a Permafrost woman once. You didn’t know that, did you? But as a scythe, he couldn’t marry. Instead, she married another Permafrost man . . . which began Renoir’s long path to hatred.” He took a moment to look at Rowan. “If you had known that, would you have spared him?” Rowan didn’t answer, because he didn’t know.

“Complete your research on him,” Faraday instructed. “Write an anonymous epitaph and post it for all to read.” “Yes, Scythe Faraday,” Rowan said, finding a bit of unexpected honor in obedience to his old mentor.

Satisfied, Faraday turned for the door.

“What about you?” Rowan asked, part of him not wanting the scythe to go and leave him to his own thoughts. “Are you just going to vanish again?” “I have many things to do,” he told Rowan. “I am not old enough to have known Supreme Blade Prometheus and the founding scythes, but I do know the lore they left behind.” So did Rowan. “If this experiment of ours fails, we have embedded a way to escape it.” “Very good; you remember your readings. They planned a failsafe against a scythedom that falls to evil—but that plan has been lost to time. My hope is that it is not lost, but merely misplaced.” “You think you can find it?”

“Perhaps, perhaps not, but I think I know where to look.”

Rowan considered it, and suspected he knew where Faraday planned to begin his search. “Endura?” Rowan knew very little about the City of the Enduring Heart, more commonly known as Endura. It was a floating metropolis in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. It was the seat of power, where the seven Grandslayer scythes of the World Scythe Council lorded over the regional scythedoms around the world. As an apprentice, it had been too many layers above Rowan for him to care about. But as Scythe Lucifer, he now realized it should have been more than just a blip on his radar. His actions must have drawn the attention of the Grandslayers, even if they remained silent about it.

But even as Rowan considered the part that the great floating city might play in the grand scheme of things, Scythe Faraday shook his head.

“Not Endura,” he said. “That place was built long after the scythedom was founded. The place I’m looking for is much older than that.” And when Rowan drew a blank, Faraday grinned and said, “Nod.”

It took a moment for Rowan to register it. It had been years since he had heard the rhyme. “The Land of Nod? But that place can’t be real—it’s just a nursery rhyme.” “All stories can be traced to a time and place—even the simplest, most innocent of children’s tales have unexpected beginnings.” It brought to mind another nursery rhyme Rowan remembered. Ring Around the Rosie. Years later, he had learned that it was all about some mortal-age disease called the black plague. The rhyme was just silliness without context, but once you knew what it was about—what each line meant—it made eerie sense. Children chanting about death in a macabre singsong.

The rhyme for the Land of Nod didn’t make any sense either. As Rowan remembered, kids spoke it while circling one chosen to be “it.” And when the rhyme was over, the child in the center had to tag all the others. Then the last one tagged would be the new “it.” “There’s no evidence that Nod even exists,” Rowan pointed out.

“Which is why it has never been found. Not even by the tone cults, who believe in it with the same fervor that they believe in the Great Resonance.” The mention of  Tonists killed any hope that Rowan would take Faraday seriously.  Tonists? Really? He had saved the lives of many Tonists on the day he killed Scythes Goddard, Chomsky, and Rand—but that didn’t mean he took any of their invented cultish beliefs seriously.

“It’s ridiculous!” Rowan said. “All of it!”

At that Faraday smiled. “How wise of the founders to hide a kernel of truth within something so absurd. Who among the rational would search for it there?” • • •

Rowan did not sleep for the rest of the night. Every sound seemed amplified—even the sound of his own heartbeat became an unbearable thrumming in his ears. It wasn’t fear he felt, but weight.  The burden he had placed on himself to save the scythedom—and now the added news that Citra could be in danger.

In spite of what the MidMerican scythes might think, Rowan loved the scythedom. The idea of the wisest and the most compassionate of all humans being the ones bringing life’s conclusion to balance immortality was a perfect idea for a perfect world. Scythe Faraday had shown him what a scythe truly should be—and many, many scythes, even the pompous, arrogant ones, still held themselves to the highest of values. But without those values, the scythedom would be a terrible thing. Rowan had been naive enough to believe he could prevent that. But Scythe Faraday knew better. Even so, this was the path Rowan had chosen for himself; to leave it now would be to admit failure. He was not ready to do that. Even if he couldn’t single-handedly prevent the fall of the scythedom, he could still remove what cancers he could.

But he was so alone. Scythe Faraday’s presence gave him a brief moment of camaraderie, but that only made his isolation all the worse. And Citra. Where was she now? Her existence was being threatened, and what could he do about it? There had to be something.

Only when dawn came did he finally sleep, and mercifully, his dreams were not of the turmoil he faced in his waking life, but were filled with memories of a simpler time, when his greatest troubles were grades and games and his best friend Tyger’s splatting habit. A time when the future yawned bright before him and he knew for a fact that he was invincible and could live forever.

There is no great mystery as to why I chose to set up Charter Regions with laws and customs different from those of the rest of the world. I simply understood the need for variety and social innovation. So much of the world has become homogeneous. Such is the fate of a unified planet. Native languages become quaint and secondary. Races blend into a pleasing mélange of all the best from each ethnicity, with only minor variations.

But in Charter Regions, differences are encouraged and social experiments abound. I have established seven of these regions, one on each continent. Where possible, I have maintained the borders that defined the region during the age of mortality.

I am particularly proud of the social experiments featured in each of these Charter Regions. For instance, in Nepal, employment is forbidden. All citizens are free to engage in any recreational activity they choose, and receive a Basic Income Guarantee much higher than in other regions, so that they do not feel slighted by an inability to actually earn a living.  This has resulted in a substantial rise in altruistic and charitable endeavors. One’s social status is not measured by wealth, but by one’s compassion and selflessness.

In the Charter Region of Tasmania, each citizen is required to select a biological modification to augment their lifestyle—the most popular being gillform breathers that allow for an amphibious life, and lateral webbing much like that of the flying squirrel, which facilitates gliding as a sport and as self-propelled travel.

Of course, no one is compelled to participate—people are free to leave or join a Charter Region as they please. In fact, the growth or decline of a Charter Region’s population is a good indication of how successful the region’s unique laws are. In this way, I can continue to improve the human condition, by broadly applying the most successful social programs to the rest of the world.

And then there’s Texas.

This is the region in which I dabble in benevolent anarchy. There are few laws, few consequences. I do not govern here as much as I stay out of people’s way, and watch what happens. The results have been mixed. I have seen people rise to be the finest versions of themselves, and others become victims of their own deepest flaws. I have yet to decide what is to be learned from this region. Further study is necessary.

—The Thunderhead