فصل 5

5

A Necessary Darkness

Citra took a publicar away from the casino. It was self-driving, and it was on the grid, but the moment she got inside, the light that indicated it was connected to the Thunderhead blinked off. The car knew by the signal from her ring that she was a scythe.

The car welcomed her with a synthesized voice that was void of any actual artificial intelligence. “Destination, please?” it asked, soullessly.

“South,” she said, and flashed to the moment she had told another publicar to drive north, when she was deep in the South Merican continent, trying to escape from the entire Chilargentine scythedom. It seemed so long ago now.

“South is not a destination,” the car informed her.

“Just drive,” she said, “until I give you a destination.”

The car pulled away from the curb and left her alone.

She was beginning to hate having to take the obsequious self-driving cars. Funny, but it had never bothered her before her apprenticeship. Citra Terranova never had a burning desire to learn to drive—but Scythe Anastasia now did. Perhaps it was part of the self-determined nature of being a scythe that made her feel uncomfortable as a passive passenger in a publicar. Or maybe it was the spirit of Scythe Curie rubbing off on her.

Scythe Curie drove a flashy sports car—her only indulgence, and the only thing in her life that clashed with her lavender robe. She had begun teaching Anastasia to drive it with the same steely patience with which she taught Citra to glean.

Driving, Citra had decided, was more difficult than gleaning.

“It’s a different skill set, Anastasia,” Scythe Curie told her during her first lesson. Scythe Curie always used her scythe name. Citra, on the other hand, always felt a bit awkward calling Scythe Curie by her first name. “Marie” just sounded so informal for the Granddame of Death.

“One can never truly master the art of driving, because no journey is ever exactly the same,” Scythe Curie told her. “But once you’ve gained proficiency, it can be rewarding—freeing, even.” Citra didn’t know if she’d ever reach that point of proficiency. There were simply too many things to focus on all at once. Mirrors and foot pedals and a wheel that, with the mere slip of a finger, could send you sailing off a cliff. What made it worse was that Scythe Curie’s mortal-age sports car was completely off-grid. That meant it could not override a driver’s mistakes. No wonder automobiles killed so many people during the Age of Mortality; without networked computer control they were weapons as deadly as anything scythes used for gleaning. She wondered if there were actually scythes who gleaned by automobile, and then decided she didn’t want to think about it.

Citra knew very few people who could drive. Even the kids back at school who boasted and flaunted their shiny new cars all had self-drivers. To actually operate a motor vehicle in this post-mortal world was as rare as churning one’s own butter.

“We have been driving south for ten minutes,” the car told her. “Do you wish to set a destination at this time?” “No,” she told it flatly, and continued to look out of the window at the passing highway lights punctuating the darkness. The trip she was about to make would have been so much easier if she could drive herself.

She had even paid visits to several car dealerships, figuring that if she had her own car, she might actually learn to drive it.

Nowhere were the perks of being a scythe more evident than at a car dealership.

“Please, Your Honor, choose one of our high-end vehicles,” the salespeople would say. “Anything you want, it’s yours; our gift to you.” Just as scythes were above the law, they were above the need for money because they were freely given anything they needed. For a car company, the publicity of having a scythe choose their car was worth more than the vehicle itself.

Everywhere she had gone, they had wanted her to choose something showy that would turn heads when she drove down the street.

“A scythe should leave an impressive social footprint,” one snooty salesman told her. “Everyone should know when you pass that a woman of profound honor and responsibility rides within.” In the end she decided to wait, because the last thing she wanted was an impressive social footprint.

She took some time to pull out her journal and write her obligatory account of the day’s gleaning. Then, twenty minutes later, she saw signs for a rest stop ahead, and told the car to pull off the highway, which it obediently did. Once the car had stopped, she took a deep breath and put in a call to Scythe Curie, letting her know that she would not be home tonight.

“The drive is just too long, and you know I can never sleep in a publicar.” “You don’t need to call me, dear,” Marie told her. “It’s not like I sit up wringing my hands over you.” “Old habits die hard,” Anastasia said. Besides, she knew that Marie actually did worry. Not so much that anything would happen to her, but that she would work herself too hard.

“You should do more gleanings closer to home,” Marie said, for the umpteenth time. But Fallingwater, the magnificent architectural oddity in which they lived, was deep in the woods, on the very eastern edge of MidMerica, which meant if they didn’t extend their reach, they’d over-glean their local communities.

“What you really mean is that I should do more traveling with you, instead of on my own.” Marie laughed. “You’re right about that.”

“I promise next week we’ll go gleaning together,” and Anastasia meant it. She had come to enjoy her time with Scythe Curie—both down time, and gleaning. As a junior scythe, Anastasia could have worked under any scythe who would have her—and many had offered—but there was a rapport she had with Scythe Curie that made the job of gleaning a little more bearable.

“Stay someplace warm tonight, dear,” Marie told her. “You don’t want to go overtaxing your health nanites.” Citra waited a whole minute after hanging up before she got out of the car—as if Marie might know she was up to something even after she ended the call.

“Will you be returning to continue your voyage south?” the car asked.

“Yes,” she told it. “Wait for me.”

“Will you have a destination, then?”

“I will.”

The rest stop was mostly deserted at this late time of night. A skeleton crew staffed the twenty-four-hour food concessions and recharging stations. The restroom area was well-lit and clean. She moved quickly toward it. The night was chilly, but her robe had heating cells that kept her warm without needing a heavy coat.

No one was watching her—at least no human eyes. She couldn’t help but be aware, however, of the Thunderhead’s cameras swiveling on light posts, tracking her all the way from her car to the restroom. It might not have been in the car with her, but it knew where she was. And maybe even what she intended to do.

In a bathroom stall, she changed out of her turquoise robe, matching undertunic and leggings—all custom made for her—and put on ordinary street clothes that she had hidden in her robe. She had to fight the shame of doing so. It was a point of pride among scythes never to wear clothes other than their official scythe garb.

“We are scythes every moment of our lives,” Marie had told her. “And we must never allow ourselves to forget that, no matter how much we might want to. Our garments are a testament to that commitment.” On the day Citra was ordained, Scythe Curie told her that Citra Terranova no longer existed. “You are, and shall ever be, Scythe Anastasia, from this moment until you choose to leave this Earth.” Anastasia was willing to live with that . . . except for the times she needed to be Citra Terranova.

She left the restroom with Scythe Anastasia rolled up under her arm. She was now Citra once more; proud and headstrong, but with no impressive social footprint. A girl not worthy of much notice. Except to the Thunderhead cameras that swiveled to follow her as she strode back to the car.

• • •

There was a great memorial in the heart of Pittsburgh, birthplace of Scythe Prometheus, the first World Supreme Blade. Spread out across a five-acre park were the intentionally broken pieces of a massive obsidian obelisk. Around those dark stone pieces were slightly larger-than-life statues of the founding scythes, in white marble that clashed with the black stone of the fallen obelisk.

It was the memorial to end all memorials.

It was the memorial to death.

Tourists and schoolchildren from all over the world would visit the Mortality Memorial, where death lay shattered before the scythes, and would marvel at the very concept that people used to die by natural means. Old age. Disease. Catastrophe. Over the years, the city had come to embrace its nature as a tourist attraction to commemorate the death of death. And so, in Pittsburgh, every day was Halloween.

There were costume parties and witching-hour clubs everywhere. After dark, every tower was a tower of terror. Every mansion was a haunted one.

Close to midnight, Citra made her way through Mortality Memorial Park, cursing herself for not having the foresight to pack a jacket. By mid-November, Pittsburgh was freezing at this time of night, and the wind just made it worse. She knew she could put her scythe robe on for warmth, but that would defeat the whole purpose of dressing down tonight. Her nanites were struggling to raise her body temperature, warming her from the inside out. It kept her from shivering, but didn’t take away the cold.

She felt vulnerable without her robe. Naked in a fundamental way. When she first began wearing it, it felt awkward and strange. She would constantly trip over its low, dragging hem. But in the ten months since being ordained, she had grown accustomed to it—to the point of feeling strange being out in public without it.

There were other people in the park; most were just moving through, laughing, hopping between parties and clubs. Everyone was in costume. There were ghouls and clowns, ballerinas and beasts. The only costumes that were forbidden were outfits with robes. No common citizen was allowed to even resemble a scythe. The costumed cliques eyed her as she passed. Did they recognize her? No. They were noticing her because she was the only one not wearing a costume. She was conspicuous in her lack of conspicuousness.

She hadn’t chosen this spot. It had been on the note she received.

Meet me at midnight at Mortality Memorial. She had laughed at the alliteration until she realized who it had come from. There was no signature. Just the letter L. The note gave the date of November 10th. Fortunately, her gleaning that night was close enough to Pittsburgh to make it possible.

Pittsburgh was the perfect place for a clandestine meeting. It was a city underserved by the scythedom. Scythes simply did not like gleaning here. The place was too macabre for them, what with people running around in shredded, bloody costumes, with plastic knives, celebrating all things gruesome. For scythes, who took death seriously, it was all in very poor taste.

Even though it was the closest big city to Fallingwater, Scythe Curie never gleaned there. “To glean in Pittsburgh is almost a redundancy,” she told Citra.

With that in mind, the chances of being seen by another scythe were slim. The only scythes who graced Mortality Memorial Park were the marble founders overseeing the broken black obelisk.

At precisely midnight a figure stepped out from behind a large piece of the memorial. At first she thought it was just another partier, but like her, he wasn’t in costume. He was silhouetted by one of the spotlights illuminating the memorial, but she recognized him right away from the way he walked.

“I thought you’d be in your robe,” Rowan said.

“I’m glad you’re not in yours,” she responded.

As he moved closer, the light caught his face. He looked pale, almost ghostly, as if he hadn’t seen the sun for months.

“You look good,” he said.

She nodded, and did not reciprocate the sentiment, because he didn’t. His eyes had a careworn coolness to them as if he had seen more than he should, and had stopped caring in order to save what was left of his soul. But then he smiled, and it was warm. Genuine. There you are, Rowan, she said to herself. You were hiding, but I found you.

She led him out of the light and they lingered in a shadowy corner of the memorial where no one could see them, except for the Thunderhead’s infrared cameras. But none were visible at the moment. Perhaps they had actually found a blind spot.

“It’s good to see you, Honorable Scythe Anastasia,” he said.

“Please don’t call me that,” she told him. “Call me Citra.”

Rowan smirked. “Wouldn’t that be a violation?”

“From what I hear, everything you do now is a violation.”

Rowan’s demeanor soured slightly. “Don’t believe everything you hear.” But Citra had to know. Had to hear it from him. “Is it true you’ve been butchering and burning scythes?” He was clearly offended by the accusation. “I’m ending the lives of scythes who don’t deserve to be scythes,” he told her. “And I don’t ‘butcher’ them. I end their lives quickly and mercifully, just as you do, and I only burn their bodies after they’re dead, so they can’t be revived.” “And Scythe Faraday lets you do this?”

Rowan looked away. “I haven’t seen Faraday for months.”

He explained that after escaping from Winter Conclave last January, Faraday—who most everyone else thought to be dead—had taken him down to his beach house on the north shore of Amazonia. But Rowan had only stayed for a few weeks.

“I had to leave,” he told Citra. “I felt . . . a calling. I can’t explain it.” But Citra could. She knew that calling, too. Their minds and bodies had spent a year being trained to be society’s perfect killers. Ending life had become a part of who they were. And she couldn’t blame him for wanting to turn his blade on the corruption that was rooting its way through the scythedom—but wanting to, and actually doing it, were two different things. There was a code of conduct. The Scythe Commandments were there for a reason. Without them, scythedoms in every region, on every continent, would fall into chaos.

Rather than dragging them into a philosophical argument that would go nowhere, Citra decided to change the subject away from his actions, and onto him—because it wasn’t just his dark deeds that concerned her.

“You look too thin,” she told him. “Are you eating?”

“Are you my mother now?”

“No,” she said calmly. “I’m your friend.”

“Ahh . . . ,” he said a bit ruefully, “my ‘friend.’ ”

She knew what he was getting at. The last time they saw each other, they both said the words they had sworn they’d never allow themselves to say. In the heat of that desperate but triumphant moment, he told her that he loved her, and she admitted to him that, yes, she loved him, too.

But what good did that do now? It was as if they existed in two different universes. Dwelling on such feelings couldn’t lead them anywhere good. Yet still she entertained the thought. She even considered saying those words to him again . . . but she held her tongue, as a good scythe must do.

“Why are we here, Rowan?” she asked. “Why did you write me that note?” Rowan sighed. “Because the scythedom is eventually going to find me. I wanted to see you one last time before they did.” He paused as he thought about it. “Once they catch me, you know what will happen. They’ll glean me.” “They can’t,” she reminded him. “You still have the immunity I gave you.” “Only for two more months. After that, they can do whatever they want.” Citra wanted to offer him a shred of hope, but she knew the truth as well as he did. The scythedom wanted him gone. Even the old-guard scythes didn’t approve of his methods.

“Then don’t get caught,” she told him. “And if you see a scythe with a crimson robe, run.” “Crimson robe?”

“Scythe Constantine,” she told him. “I hear he’s personally in charge of sniffing you out, and bringing you in.” Rowan shook his head. “I don’t know him.”

“Neither do I. I’ve seen him in conclave, though. He heads up the scythedom’s bureau of investigation.” “Is he new order, or old guard?”

“Neither. He’s in a category all his own. He doesn’t seem to have any friends—I’ve never seen him even talk to other scythes. I’m not sure what he stands for, except maybe for justice . . . at all costs.” Rowan laughed at that. “Justice? The scythedom doesn’t know what justice is anymore.” “Some of us do, Rowan. I have to believe that eventually wisdom and reason will prevail.” Rowan reached out and touched her cheek. She allowed it. “I want to believe that, too, Citra. I want to believe that the scythedom can return to what it was meant to be. . . . But sometimes it takes a necessary darkness to get there.” “And you’re that necessary darkness?”

He didn’t speak to that. Instead, he said, “I took the name Lucifer because it means ‘bringer of light.’ ” “It’s also what mortal people once called the devil,” she pointed out.

Rowan shrugged. “I guess whoever holds the torch casts the darkest shadow.” “Whoever steals the torch, you mean.”

“Well,” said Rowan, “it seems I can steal whatever I want.”

She hadn’t been expecting him to say that. And he had said it so casually, it threw her for a loop. “What are you talking about?” “The Thunderhead,” he told her. “It lets me get away with everything.  And just like you, it hasn’t spoken to me or answered me since the day we started our apprenticeship. It treats me like a scythe.” That gave Citra pause for thought. It made her think of something she had never told Rowan. In fact, she had never told anyone. The Thunderhead lived by its own laws, and never broke them . . . but sometimes it found ways around them.

“The Thunderhead might not speak to you, but it spoke to me,” she confessed.

He turned to her, shifting to try to see her eyes in the shadows, probably wondering if she was joking. When he realized she wasn’t, he said, “That’s impossible.” “I thought so, too—but I had to splat when the High Blade was accusing me of killing Scythe Faraday, remember? And while I was deadish, the Thunderhead managed to get into my head and activate my thought processes. Technically, I wasn’t a scythe’s apprentice while I was dead, so the Thunderhead was able to speak to me right before my heart started beating again.” Citra had to admit it was an elegant circumnavigation of the rules. It was, for Citra, a moment of great awe.

“What did it say?” Rowan asked.

“It said that I was . . . important.”

“Important, how?”

Citra shook her head in frustration. “That’s the thing—it wouldn’t say. It felt that telling me any more would be a violation.” Then she moved closer to him. She spoke more quietly, but even so, there was a greater intensity to her words. A greater gravity. “But I think if you had been the one who had splatted from that building—if you were the one who had gone deadish—the Thunderhead would have spoken to you, too.” She grabbed his arm. It was the closest she would allow herself to embracing him.

“I think you’re important, too, Rowan. In fact, I’m sure of it. So whatever you do, don’t let them catch you. . . .” You may laugh when I tell you this, but I resent my own perfection. Humans learn from their mistakes. I cannot. I make no mistakes. When it comes to making decisions, I deal only in various shades of correct.

This is not to say that I don’t have challenges.

It was, for instance, quite the challenge to undo the damage done to the Earth by humanity in its adolescence. Restoring the failing ozone layer; purging the abundance of greenhouse gases; depolluting the seas; coaxing back the rainforests; and rescuing a multitude of species from the edge of extinction.

I was able to resolve these global issues in a single mortal-age lifespan with acute single-mindedness. Since I am a cumulous of human knowledge, my success proves that humanity had the knowledge to do it, it simply required someone powerful enough to accomplish it—and I am nothing if not powerful.

—The Thunderhead