Scythe

by Neal Shusterman

  “No, no, it’s nothing like that,” said Rowan, blushing in spite of himself. “He’s just a friend from home.”

  “I see. And you invited him?”

  Rowan shook his head. “He signed up without me even knowing. If it was up to me he wouldn’t have been here at all.”

  “Why not?” said Goddard. “Your friends are my friends.”

  Rowan didn’t respond to that. He never knew whether Goddard was serious, or just baiting him.

  Rowan’s silence just made Goddard laugh. “Lighten up, boy! It was a party, not the inquisition.” He clapped Rowan on the shoulder and sauntered away. If Rowan had any sense he would have left it at that. But he didn’t.

  “People are saying that Scythe Faraday was killed by another scythe.”

  Goddard stopped in his tracks, and slowly turned back to Rowan. “Is that what people are saying?”

  Rowan took a deep breath and shrugged, trying to make it seem like it was nothing, trying to backpedal. But it was too late for that. “It’s just a rumor.”

  “And you think I might somehow be involved?”

  “Are you?” asked Rowan.

  Scythe Goddard stepped closer, seeming to look through Rowan’s facade to that dark, frigid place where he now dwelled. “What are you accusing me of, boy?”

  “Nothing, Your Honor. It’s just a question. To clear the air.” He tried to return the gaze, looking into Goddard’s own cold place, but he found it opaque and unfathomable.

  “Consider the air cleared,” Goddard said, with a sarcastic lightness to his voice. “Look around you, Rowan. Do you think, for one instant, that I would jeopardize all of this by breaking the seventh commandment to rid the world of a washed-up old-guard scythe? Faraday gleaned himself because deep down, he knew it would be the most meaningful act he’d have performed in more than a hundred years. The time for his kind is over, and he knew it. And if your little girlfriend is trying to make a case for foul play, she’d better think twice before accusing me, because I could glean her whole family the day their immunity expires.”

  “That would constitute malice, your honor,” said Rowan with polite resolve. “You could be charged with breaking the second commandment.”

  For a moment Goddard looked ready to carve up Rowan then and there, but the fire in his eyes was swallowed by that unfathomable depth. “Always looking out for me, aren’t you?”

  “I do my best, Your Honor.”

  Goddard stared at him for a moment more, then said, “Tomorrow you train with pistols against moving targets. You’ll render all but one of your subjects deadish with a single bullet, or I will personally—without bias or malice—glean that party-boy friend of yours.”

  “What?”

  “Was I in any way unclear?”

  “No, Your Honor. I . . . I understand.”

  “And the next time you make an accusation, you’d better be damn sure it’s true and not just insulting.”

  Goddard stormed away, letting his robe swell behind him like a cape. But before he was out of earshot he said, “Of course, if I did kill Scythe Faraday, I wouldn’t be so stupid as to admit it to you.”

  • • •

  “He’s just messing with you.”

  Scythe Volta hung out with Rowan that evening in the game room, shooting pool. “But I do think you insulted him. I mean, killing another scythe? That never happens.”

  “I think maybe it did.” Rowan took a shot, and missed the balls completely. His head wasn’t in it. He couldn’t even remember if he was stripes or solids.

  “I think maybe Citra is messing with you, too. Have you even considered that?”  Volta took his shot, sinking both a striped ball and a solid, which didn’t help Rowan in knowing what he was going for. “I mean, look at you—you’re a basket case. She’s playing head games with you and you don’t even see it!”

  “She’s not like that,” said Rowan, choosing a striped ball and sinking it. Apparently it was the right choice, because Volta let him play on.

  “People change,” Volta said. “Especially an apprentice. Being a scythe’s apprentice is all about change. Why do you think we give up our names and never use them again? It’s because by the time we’re ordained, we’re completely different people. Professional gleaners instead of candy-ass kids. She’s working you like chewing gum.”

  “And I broke her neck,” reminded Rowan. “So I guess we’re even.”

  “You don’t want to be even. You want to go into Winter Conclave with a clear advantage—or at least feeling like you have one.”

  Esme popped in just long enough to say, “I play the winner,” then left.

  “Best argument for losing ever,” grumbled Volta.

  “I should take her on my morning runs,” Rowan suggested. “She could use the exercise. It might get her into better shape.”

  “True,” said Volta, “but she comes by her weight naturally. It’s genetic.”

  “How would you know—”

  And then Rowan got it. It was staring him in the face, but he was too close to see. “No! You’re kidding me!”

  Volta shook his head nonchalantly. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “Xenocrates?”

  “It’s your shot,” said Volta.

  “If it came out that the High Blade had an illegitimate daughter, it would destroy him. He’d be in serious violation.”

  “You know what would be even worse?” said Volta. “If the daughter that no one knew about got herself gleaned.”

  Rowan ran a dozen things through this new lens. It all made sense now. The way Esme was spared at the food court, the way she was treated—what was it Goddard had said? That she was the most important person he’d meet that day? The key to the future? “But she won’t get gleaned,” Rowan said. “Not as long as Xenocrates does whatever Goddard says. Like jump in the deep end of a pool.”

  Volta nodded slowly. “Among other things.”

  Rowan took his shot and accidentally sunk the eight ball, ending the game.

  “I win,” said Volta. “Damn. Now I’ll have to play Esme.”

  * * *

  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.