فصل 4

4

Shaken, Not Stirred

Scythe Anastasia stalked her prey with patience. This was a learned skill, because Citra Terranova had never been a patient girl. But all skills can be acquired with time and practice. She still thought of herself as Citra, although no one but her family called her that anymore. She wondered how long it would be until she truly became Scythe Anastasia both inside and out, and put her given name to eternal rest.

Today’s target was a woman of ninety-three who looked thirty-three, and who was constantly busy. When she wasn’t looking at her phone she was looking in her purse; when she wasn’t looking in her purse she was looking at her nails, or the sleeve of her blouse, or the loose button on her jacket. What does she fear in idleness? Citra wondered. The woman was so self- absorbed, she had no clue that she was under the scrutiny of a scythe, trailing her by only ten yards.

It wasn’t as if Scythe Anastasia was inconspicuous. The color she chose for her robe was turquoise. True, it was a stylishly faded turquoise, but was still vibrant enough to draw the eye.

The busy woman was engaged in a heated phone conversation at a street corner, waiting for the light to change. Citra had to tap her on the shoulder to get her attention. The moment she did, everyone around them moved away, like a herd of gazelles after a lion had taken one of them down.

The woman turned to see her, but didn’t register the severity of the situation yet.

“Devora Murray, I am Scythe Anastasia, and you have been selected for gleaning.” Ms. Murray’s eyes darted around as if looking for a hole in the pronouncement. But there was none. The statement was simple; there was no way it could be misunderstood.

“Colleen, let me call you back,” she said into her phone, as if Scythe Anastasia’s appearance was an inconvenience rather than a terminal affair.

The traffic light changed. She didn’t cross. And reality finally hit her. “Oh my god oh my god!” she said. “Right here? Right now?” Citra pulled a hypodermic gun out of the folds of her robe and quickly injected the woman in the arm. She gasped.

“Is that it? Am I going die now?”

Citra didn’t answer. She let the woman stew with the thought of it. There was a reason why Citra allowed these moments of uncertainty. Now the woman just stood there, waiting for her legs to give out, waiting for the darkness to close in. She seemed like a small child, helpless and forlorn. Suddenly her phone and her purse and her nails and her sleeve and her button didn’t matter at all. Her entire life had been shocked into perspective. This was what Citra wanted for her gleaning subjects. A sharp moment of perspective. It was for their own good.

“You have been selected for gleaning,” Citra said again calmly, without judgment or malice, but with compassion. “I am giving you one month to put your life in order, and to say your goodbyes. One month to find completion. Then we’ll speak again, and you’ll tell me how you choose to die.” Citra watched the woman try to wrap her mind around it. “A month? Choose? Are you lying to me? Is this some kind of test?” Citra sighed. People were so used to scythes descending like angels of death, taking life in the moment, that no one was prepared for a slightly different approach. But every scythe had the freedom to do things his or her own way. And this was how Scythe Anastasia chose to do it.

“No test, no trick. One month,” Citra said. “The tracking device that I just injected into your arm contains a grain of lethal poison, but it will only activate if you attempt to leave MidMerica to escape your gleaning, or if you do not contact me within the next thirty days to let me know where and how you’d like to be gleaned.” Then she gave the woman a business card. Turquoise ink on a white background. It said simply, “Scythe Anastasia,” and had a phone number that was reserved exclusively for her gleaning subjects. “If you lose the card, don’t worry—just call the general number for the MidMerican scythedom, choose option three, and follow the prompts to leave me a message.” Then Citra added, “And please don’t try to get immunity from another scythe—they’ll know you’ve been marked and will glean you on the spot.” The woman’s eyes filled with tears, and Citra could see the anger coming on. It wasn’t unexpected.

“How old are you?” the woman demanded, her tone accusatory, and a little bit insolent. “How could you be a scythe? You can’t be any older than eighteen!” “I just celebrated my eighteenth birthday,” Citra told her. “But I’ve been a scythe for nearly a year. You don’t have to like being gleaned by a junior scythe, but you’re still obliged to comply.” And then came the bargaining. “Please,” she begged, “couldn’t you give me six months more? My daughter is getting married in May. . . .” “I’m sure she can reschedule the wedding for an earlier date.” Citra didn’t mean to sound heartless—she truly did feel for the woman, but Citra had an ethical obligation to stand firm. In the mortal age, death could not be bargained with. It had to be the same for scythes.

“Do you understand all I’ve told you?” Citra asked. The woman, who was already wiping away her tears, nodded.

“I hope,” said the woman, “in the very long life I’m sure you have ahead of you, that someone causes you the suffering you cause others.” Citra straightened up, and held herself with a bearing that befit Scythe Anastasia. “You don’t have to worry about that,” she said, then turned her back on the woman, leaving her on the corner to navigate this crossroad of her life.

• • •

In Vernal Conclave last spring—her first reckoning as a fully ordained scythe—Citra was reprimanded when her quota came up substantially short. Then, when the other MidMerican scythes found out she was giving her subjects a month’s warning, they were livid.

Scythe Curie, who was still her mentor, had warned her of this. “They see anything but decisive action as weakness. They’ll bluster about how it’s a failing in your character, and suggest it was a mistake to ordain you. Not that they can do anything about that. You cannot be unringed; you can only be henpecked.” Citra was surprised to find the indignation came not just from the so-called new-order scythes, but from the old guard as well. No one liked the idea of giving the general public the slightest level of control when it came to their own gleaning.

“It’s immoral!” the scythes complained. “It’s inhumane.”

Even Scythe Mandela, who chaired the bejeweling committee and had been such an advocate for Citra, chastised her. “To know that your days are numbered is a cruelty,” he said. “How miserable to live one’s final days thus!” But Scythe Anastasia was not fazed—or at least she didn’t let them see her sweat. She made her argument, and stood by it. “In my studies of the mortal age,” she had told them, “I learned that for many people, death was not instantaneous. There were, in fact, diseases that gave people warning. It gave them time to prepare themselves, and their loved ones, for the inevitable.” That had brought forth a whole chorus of grumbles from the hundreds of scythes gathered. Most were scoffs and disgruntled dismissals—but she had heard a few voices saying that she had a point.

“But allowing the . . . the condemned . . . to choose their own method? It’s positively barbaric!” Scythe Truman shouted.

“More barbaric than electrocution? Or beheading? Or a knife through the heart? If a subject is allowed to choose, don’t you think that subject is going to choose the method that is the least offensive to them? Who are we to call their choice barbaric?” Fewer grumbles this time. Not because they were in agreement, but because the scythes were already losing interest in the discussion. An upstart junior scythe—even one who had arrived at her position under so much controversy—wasn’t worth more than a few volleys of their attention.

“It violates no law, and it is the way I choose to glean,” Citra maintained. High Blade Xenocrates, who didn’t seem to care either way, deferred to the Parliamentarian, who couldn’t find grounds for legal objection. In her first challenge in conclave, Scythe Anastasia had gotten her way.

Scythe Curie was duly impressed.

“I thought for sure they would put you on some sort of probation, choosing your gleanings for you and compelling you to accomplish them on a strict schedule. They could have—but they didn’t. That says a lot more about you than you realize.” “What—that I’m a pain in the scythedom’s collective ass? They already knew that.” “No,” said Scythe Curie with a smirk. “It shows that they’re taking you seriously.” Which was more than Citra could say for herself. She felt like she was playacting half the time. A turquoise costume for a plum role.

She’d found a great deal of success gleaning in the way that she did. There were only a handful of subjects who didn’t return at the end of their grace period. Two had died trying to cross the border into Texas, another on the WestMerican border, where no one would touch the body until Scythe Anastasia personally showed up to pronounce him gleaned.

Three others were found in their beds when the time on the tracking grain ran out. They chose the silence of the poison rather than having to face Scythe Anastasia again. In all instances, though, their method of death had been their own choice. For Citra that was crucial, for the thing she despised most about the scythedom’s policies was the indignity of having your death chosen for you.

Of course, this method of gleaning created double the work for her—because she had to face her subjects twice. It made for an incredibly exhausting life, but at least it helped her sleep at night.

• • •

On the evening of the same November day she gave Devora Murray her terminal news, Citra entered a lavish casino in Cleveland. All eyes turned when Scythe Anastasia stepped onto the casino floor.

Citra had grown used to this; a scythe was the center of attention in every situation with or without wanting to be. Some reveled in it, others preferred to do their business in quiet places, where there were no crowds and no eyes but the eyes of their subjects. It was not Citra’s choice to be here, but she had to respect the wishes of the man whose choice it was.

She found him where he said he’d be: at the far end of the casino, in a special area raised three steps from the rest of the floor. It was the place reserved for the highest of rollers.

He was dressed in a sharp tuxedo and was the only player at the high-limit tables. It made him look like he owned the place. But he didn’t. Mr. Ethan J. Hogan was not a high roller. He was a cellist with the Cleveland Philharmonic. He was highly competent—which was the best praise a musician could get these days. Passion of performance was a thing of the mortal past, and true artistic style had gone the way of the dodo. Of course, the dodo was back—the Thunderhead had seen to that. A thriving colony was now happily not flying on the island of Mauritius.

“Hello, Mr. Hogan,” Scythe Anastasia said. She had to think of herself as Scythe Anastasia when she gleaned. The play. The role.

“Good evening, Your Honor,” he said. “I would say that it is a pleasure to see you, but under the circumstances . . .” He let the thought trail off. Scythe Anastasia sat at the table beside him and waited, allowing him to take the lead in this dance.

“Would you try your hand at baccarat?” he asked. “It’s a simple game, but the levels of strategy are boggling.” She couldn’t tell whether he was being sincere or facetious in his assessment of the game. Scythe Anastasia didn’t know how to play baccarat, but she wasn’t about to share that with him. “I don’t have any cash to bet,” was all she said.

In response, he moved a column of his own chips over to her. “Be my guest. You can either bet on the bank, or bet on me.” She pushed all the chips forward into the wager box marked “player.”

“Good for you!” he said. “A gambler with courage.”

He matched her bet with his own and gestured to the croupier, who dealt two cards to the cellist and two cards to himself.

“Player has eight, bank has five. Player wins.” He cleared the cards with a long wooden pallet that seemed entirely unnecessary, and he doubled both their piles of chips.

“You’re my angel of good fortune,” the cellist said. Then he straightened his bow tie and looked to her. “Is everything ready?” Scythe Anastasia glanced back to the main part of the casino. No one was looking directly at them, but still she could tell they were at the center of everyone’s concentration. That would be good for the casino; distracted gamblers bet poorly. The management must love scythes.

“The barman should be coming any second,” she told him. “Everything’s been arranged.” “Well then, one more hand while we wait!”

Again she pushed both piles of winnings, betting on the player, and he matched. Again the cards were in their favor.

She looked to the croupier but he wouldn’t meet her eye—as if somehow by doing so he would be gleaned as well. Then the barman arrived with a chilled martini glass on a tray, along with a silver martini shaker beaded with condensation.

“My, oh my,” the cellist said. “Until now it never occurred to me how those shakers look like little bombs.” Scythe Anastasia had no response to that.

“I’m not sure if you’re aware, but there’s a character from mortal-age fiction and films,” the cellist went on. “A playboy of sorts. I always admired him—he was more like us, I think, because the way he kept coming back, you’d swear he was immortal. Not even the most arch of villains was able to do away with him.” Scythe Anastasia grinned. Now she understood why the cellist had chosen to be gleaned this way.  “He preferred his martinis shaken, not stirred,” she said.

The cellist smiled back. “Shall we, then?”

So she took the silver container, shook it well, until the ice inside made her fingers ache. Then she opened the cap and poured out a mixture of gin, vermouth, and a little something extra into the frosty martini glass.

The cellist looked at it. She thought he’d be cavalier and ask for a lemon twist, or an olive, but no, he just looked at it. So did the croupier. So did the pit boss behind him.

“My family is in a hotel room upstairs waiting for you,” he told her.

She nodded. “Suite 1242.” It was her job to know these things.

“Please make a point of holding out your ring to my son, Jorie, first—he’s the one taking this the hardest. He’ll insist the others receive immunity before him, but singling him out to kiss the ring first will mean a lot to him, even if he lets the others go first.” He pondered the glass a few moments more, then said, “I’m afraid I cheated, but I’ll wager you know that already.” That was another wager he won. “Your daughter, Carmen, doesn’t live with you,” Scythe Anastasia said. “Which means she’s not entitled to immunity, even though she’s in your hotel suite with the others.” The cellist, she knew, was one hundred forty-three, and had raised several families. Sometimes her gleaning subjects would attempt to get immunity for entire multitudes of offspring. In those circumstances she had to refuse. But one extra? That was within her discretion. “I will grant her immunity, as long as she promises not to boast about it.” He released a breath of immense relief. Clearly this deception had weighed on him, but it wasn’t really a deception at all if Scythe Anastasia already knew—and even less so if he confessed it in his final moments. Now he could leave this world with a clear conscience.

Finally Mr. Hogan lifted the glass with debonair style, and regarded the way the liquid caught and refracted the light. Scythe Anastasia couldn’t help but imagine his 007 ticking down digit by digit to 000.

“I want to thank you, Your Honor, for allowing me these past few weeks to prepare. It has meant the world to me.” This is what the scythedom was incapable of understanding. They were so focused on the act of killing, they couldn’t comprehend what went into the act of dying.

The man raised the glass to his lips and took the tiniest sip. He licked his lips, judging the flavor.

“Subtle,” he said. “Cheers!”

Then he downed the whole glass in a single gulp, and slammed it down on the table, pushing it toward the croupier, who backed away slightly.

“I’ll double down!” the cellist said.

“This is baccarat, sir,” the croupier responded, his voice a little shaky. “You can only double down in blackjack.” “Damn.”

Then he slumped in his seat, and was gone.

Citra checked his pulse. She knew she’d find none, but procedure was procedure. She instructed the croupier to have the glass, the shaker, and even the tray, bagged and destroyed. “It’s a strong poison—if anyone inadvertently dies handling it, the scythedom will pay for their revival and compensate them for their trouble.”  Then she pushed her pile of winnings over to the dead man’s. “I want you to personally make sure that all these winnings go to Mr. Hogan’s family.” “Yes, Your Honor.” The croupier glanced at her ring as if she might offer him immunity, but she withdrew her hand from the table.

“Can I count on you to make sure it’s done?”

“Yes, Your Honor.”

Satisfied, Scythe Anastasia left to grant the cellist’s grieving family a year of immunity, ignoring the constellation of eyes doing their best not to look at her as she sought out the elevators.

I have always had a preoccupation with those who have a high probability of changing the world. I can never predict how they might accomplish the change, only that they are likely to.

Since the moment that Citra Terranova was placed into apprenticeship under Honorable Scythe Faraday, her probability of changing the world increased a hundredfold. What she will do is unclear, and the outcome hazy, but whatever it is, she will do it. Humanity may very well rise or fall by her decisions, by her achievements, by her mistakes.

I would guide her, but as she is a scythe, I cannot interfere. I only watch her fly or fall. How frustrating it is to have so much power, yet be so impotent to wield it when it counts.

—The Thunderhead