Scythe

by Neal Shusterman

  The revival center hallways seemed endless, and each time Citra was jostled, her whole body throbbed. Finally, she found herself spread out on the backseat of an off-grid car that Scythe Curie drove at what seemed to Citra to be a breakneck speed.  The thought made her laugh weakly. What an odd expression, when the breaking of her neck had seemed to happen in slow motion. Flurries blowing past the windows appeared to be a blizzard at this speed. It was hypnotic. At last numbness began to overtake her, and she felt sleep begin to envelop her like quicksand. . . .

  . . . But the moment before Citra lost consciousness, she remembered just a hint of a dream that may not have been a dream at all. A conversation in a place that was neither life nor death, but a womb between the two.

  “The Thunderhead . . . it spoke to me,” Citra said, forcing herself to stay conscious just long enough to get this out.

  “The Thunderhead doesn’t speak to scythes, dear.”

  “I was still dead . . . and it told me a name. The man who killed Scythe Faraday.” But the quicksand pulled her down before she could say any more.

  • • •

  Citra awoke in a cabin, and for a moment thought she might have hallucinated all of it. The Thunderhead, the revival center, the car ride in the snow. For that moment she thought she was still in the rooftop residence of High Blade Xenocrates, waiting for the tor-turé to begin. But no—the light here was different, and the wood in the cabin around her was a lighter shade. Outside the window, she could see snowy mountains closer than they were before, although the flurries had stopped.

  Scythe Curie came in a few minutes later with a tray and a bowl of soup. “Good, you’re awake. I trust you’ve healed enough over the past few hours to be a little more coherent, and a little less miserable.”

  “Coherent, yes,” said Citra. “Less miserable, no. Just a different kind of misery.”

  Citra sat up, feeling only a little bit loopy now, and Scythe Curie put the tray with the large bowl of soup in her lap. “It’s a chicken soup recipe passed down for more generations than anyone remembers,” she told Citra.

  The soup looked fairly standard, but there was a round moon-like mass in the middle. “What’s that?”

  “The best part,” said Scythe Curie. “A sort of a dumpling made from the ground crumbs of unleavened bread.”

  Citra tried the soup. It was flavorful and the moon-ball unique and memorable. Comfort food, thought Citra, because somehow it made her feel safe from the inside out. “My grandmother said it could actually heal a cold.”

  “What’s a cold?” asked Citra.

  “A deadly illness from the mortal age, I suppose.”

  It was amazing to think that someone only two generations older than Scythe Curie could have known what it was like to be mortal—fearing for her life on a daily basis, knowing that death was a certainty rather than an exception. Citra wondered what Scythe Curie’s grandmother would think of the world now, where there was nothing left for her soup to cure.

  When the soup was done, Citra steeled herself for what she knew she must tell the scythe.

  “There’s something you need to know,” Citra said. “Xenocrates showed me something he said Scythe Faraday wrote. It was his handwriting, but I don’t know how he could have written it.”

  Scythe Curie sighed. “I’m afraid he did.”

  Citra was not expecting that. “So you’ve seen it then?

  Scythe Curie nodded. “Yes, I have.”

  “But why would he write that? He said I wanted to kill him. That I was plotting horrible things. None of that was true!”

  Scythe Curie offered Citra the slimmest of grins. “He wasn’t talking about you, Citra,” she explained. “He wrote that about me.”

  • • •

  “When Faraday was still a junior scythe—all of twenty-two years old—he took me on as an apprentice,” said Scythe Curie. “I was seventeen and full of righteous indignation at a world that was still heaving in the throes of transformation. Immortality had been a reality for barely fifty years. There was still discord, and political posturing, even fear of the Thunderhead, if you could imagine that.”

  “Fear of it? Who could possibly be afraid of the Thunderhead?”

  “People who had the most to lose: Criminals. Politicians. Organizations that thrived on the oppression of others. The point was, the world was still changing, and I wanted to help it change faster. Both Scythe Faraday and I were of similar minds about that, which, I suppose, is why he took me on. We were both driven by a desire to use gleaning as a way of hacking through the thicket to open a better path for humanity.

  “Oh, you should have seen him in those days, Citra. You’ve only seen him old. He likes to remain that way to keep himself from being too tempted by a younger man’s passions.” Scythe Curie smiled as she spoke about her former mentor. “I remember I would wait outside his door at night, listening to him as he slept. I was seventeen, remember. Childish in so many ways. I thought myself in love.”

  “Wait—you were in love with him?”

  “Infatuated. He was a rising star who took a wide-eyed girl under his wing. Even though in those days he only gleaned the wicked, he did it with such compassion, he melted my heart each time.” Then she sobered a bit, looking a bit sheepish, which was a strange expression for steely Scythe Curie. “I actually worked up the nerve to go into his room one night, determined to climb into his bed and be with him. But he caught me halfway across his bedroom floor. Oh, I made up some silly excuse as to why I was there. I was coming in to retrieve his empty glass, or something like that. He didn’t believe me for an instant. He knew I was up to something, and I couldn’t look him in the eye. I thought he knew. I thought he was wise and could see into my soul. But at twenty-two, he was just as inexperienced in such matters as I was. He had no clue what was really going on.”

  Then Citra understood. “He thought you wanted to hurt him!”

  “I think all young women are cursed with a streak of unrelenting foolishness, and all young men are cursed with a streak of absolute stupidity. He didn’t see my obsession with him as love, but thought I meant him bodily harm. It was, to say the least, a very painful comedy of errors. I suppose I can understand how my advances could be misunderstood in that way. I do admit that I was an odd girl. Intense to the point of being off-putting.”

  “I think you’ve grown into your intensity,” Citra said.

  “That I have. In any case, he wrote of his paranoid concerns about me in his scythe’s journal, then tore it out the next day, when I broke down and confessed my love with eyeball-rolling melodrama.” She sighed and shook her head. “I was hopeless. He, on the other hand, was a gentleman, told me that he was flattered—which is the last thing any teenage girl wants to hear—and let me down as easily as he could.

  “I lived in his house, and remained his apprentice, for two more awkward months. Then, when I was ordained and became Honorable Scythe Marie Curie, we parted ways. We would nod and say hello to each other at conclave. Then, nearly fifty years later, when we both had turned our first corner and were seeing the world through youthful eyes once more—but this time with the wisdom of age on our side—we became lovers.”

  Citra grinned. “You broke the ninth commandment.”

  “We told ourselves we didn’t. We told ourselves we were never partners, just companions of convenience. Two like-minded people who shared a lifestyle that others simply couldn’t understand—the lifestyle of a scythe. Still, we knew enough to keep it secret. That was when he first showed me the page he had written and torn out in his youth. He had held on to that ridiculous journal entry like a poorly penned love letter never sent. We kept our relationship secret for seven years. Then Prometheus found out about it.”

  “The first World Supreme Blade?”

  “Oh, it wasn’t just a regional scandal—it had worldwide implications. We were brought before the Global Conclave. We thought we might be the first scythes to actually be stripped of our rings and hurled o
ut of the Scythedom—perhaps even gleaned—but we had such stellar reputations, Supreme Blade Prometheus saw fit to give us a less severe punishment. We were sentenced to seven deaths—one for each year of our relationship. Then he forbade us to have contact with each other for the next seventy years.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Citra.

  “Don’t be. We deserved it—and we understood. We needed to be made an example for other scythes who now might think twice before allowing love to interfere with their duty. Seven deaths, and seventy years later, many things had changed. We remained old friends after that, but nothing more.”

  Scythe Curie seemed a mix of many emotions, but she folded them all away, like clothes that no longer fit, and closed the drawer. Citra suspected she never spoke of this to anyone else, and would probably never speak of it again.

  “I should have known he’d never throw that page away,” Scythe Curie said. “They must have found it when they cleaned out his things.”

  “And Xenocrates thought he was writing about me!”

  Scythe Curie considered that. “Perhaps, but probably not. Xenocrates is not a stupid man. He may have suspected the true nature of that page, but truth didn’t matter. He saw it as a means to an end. A way to discredit you in front of respected scythes like Scythe Mandela—who heads the bejeweling committee—and thereby ensure that Scythe Goddard’s apprentice would get the ring instead of you.”

  Citra wanted to be angry at Rowan for this, but she knew, whatever else was going on in that head of his, this was not his doing.

  “Why would Xenocrates even care? He’s not one of Goddard’s miserable crew of scythes. He doesn’t even seem to like Goddard—and clearly couldn’t care less about me and Rowan.”

  “There are more cards in play than can be read at the moment,” Scythe Curie said. “All we know for sure is that you must stay out of sight until we can clear you of even the suggestion of wrongdoing.”

  Just then, someone came to the door, startling Citra. She hadn’t known anyone else was in the cabin. It was another scythe, by the look of her—probably the one who owned the cabin. She was shorter than Scythe Curie. Her robe had an intricate pattern in many colors: red, black, and turquoise. It seemed less of a fabric and more of a tapestry, intricately woven. Citra wondered if all Chilargentine scythes wore robes that seemed not just handmade, but lovingly made.

  The woman spoke in Spanic and Scythe Curie responded in kind.

  “I didn’t know you spoke Spanic,” said Citra after the Chilargentine scythe had left.

  “I speak twelve languages fluently,” said Scythe Curie, a bit of pride in her voice.

  “Twelve?”

  Scythe Curie offered up a mischievous grin. “See if you don’t know as many languages when you’re two hundred nineteen.” She took the tray from Citra’s lap and set it on a nightstand. “I thought we’d have more time, but the local scythe authority is on their way. I doubt they know you’re here, but they’re sending scouts to every scythe’s home with DNA sweepers, figuring we must have some local help.”

  “So we’re on the move again?” Citra swung her feet off the bed and planted them on the ground. Her ankles ached, but only slightly. It was a good kind of ache. “I can walk myself this time.”

  “Good, because you’ll be doing a lot of that.” Scythe Curie glanced out of the window. No one was coming yet, but there was a tension in her voice that wasn’t there before. “I’m afraid I won’t be coming with you, Citra. If I am to clear your name, I need to go back home and rally as many scythes as I can.”

  “But the local Chilargentine Scythedom . . .”

  “What can they do to me? I’m breaking no commandment. All they can do is wag the ‘naughty’ finger at me, and refuse to wave good-bye as I drive to the airport.”

  “So . . . when you get home, you’ll have to tell everyone the truth about that journal entry?”

  “I don’t see what other choice I have. Of course Xenocrates will claim that I’m lying to protect you, but most will take my word over his. Hopefully, that will embarrass him enough to withdraw the claim.”

  “So where can I go?” asked Citra.

  “I have an idea about that.” Then Scythe Curie reached into a drawer and pulled out the rough-woven burlap frock of a Tonist.

  “You want me to pretend to be part of a tone cult?”

  “A lone pilgrim. They’re very common in this part of the world. You’ll be a nameless, faceless wanderer.”

  It wasn’t the most glamorous of disguises, but Citra knew it was practical. No one would look her in the eye for fear of getting an earful of Tonist twaddle. She would hide in plain sight and come home just before Winter Conclave. If Scythe Curie hadn’t cleared her name by then, it wouldn’t matter anyway. She wasn’t about to spend her whole life in hiding.

  Then the Chilargentine scythe burst in again, this time much more agitated than before.

  “They’re here,” Scythe Curie said. She reached into her robe and pulled out a small, folded piece of paper, pressing it into Citra’s palm. “There’s somewhere I want you to go. Someone you need to see—the address is on that paper. Consider it the final part of your training.” Citra grabbed the frock, and while Scythe Curie hurried Citra out of the room and to the back door, the Chilargentinian scythe went to a weapons wardrobe and quickly filled a sack with concealable blades and firearms for Citra, the way a worried mother might fill her child’s bag with snacks.

  “There’s a publicar in a shed at the bottom of the hill. Take it, and head north,” Scythe Curie said.

  Citra opened the back door and stepped out. It was cold, but bearable.

  “Listen to me carefully,” said Scythe Curie. “It’s a long trip, and you’re going to need your wits about you to get where you’re going.”

  Then Scythe Curie went on to give Citra the instructions she’d need to make a journey of many thousands of miles—but she was cut short by the sound of a car pulling up in front of the house.

  “Go! As long as you keep moving, you’ll be safe.”

  “And what do I do when I get there?”

  Scythe Curie met her eye with a hard gaze that revealed nothing but added importance to her words. A Tonist might call it “resonance.”

  “When you get there, you’ll know what to do.”

  Then there came that all too familiar pounding on the front door.

  Citra bounded down the snowy hillside, careening off of pines in her way. The aches in her joints reminding her that she was still a few hours shy of a complete healing. She found the shed, and the publicar was there just as Scythe Curie had promised. It powered up for her as she got in, and it asked for a destination. She wasn’t foolish enough to give it one. “North,” she told it. “Just north.”

  As she sped off, she heard an explosion, and then another. She looked back but all she could see was black smoke just beginning to rise above the treetops. Dread began to fill her. A man wearing a robe similar to the one Scythe Curie’s friend wore burst from the trees and into the road behind her. She saw him only for an instant, then the road took a sharp turn and he was gone from sight.

  Only after the publicar had wound its way down the mountain pass and was on a main road did she look at the paper that Scythe Curie had given her. For a moment it felt as if her bones had spontaneously reshattered, but the feeling passed and settled into jaded resolve. She understood now.

  When you get there, you’ll know what to do.

  Yes, she most certainly would. She stared at the piece of paper for a moment more. She needed only to memorize the address, because she already knew the name.

  Gerald Van Der Gans.

  The Thunderhead had spoken to her, and now, so had Scythe Curie. There was a long journey ahead of Citra, and at the end of it, much work to be done. Citra couldn’t glean, but she could exact vengeance. She would find a way to deliver justice to this scythe-killer one way or another. Never was she so thankful to have a sack full of weapons.

  • �
� •

  This was a matter too delicate to be left to the BladeGuard—and although Scythe San Martín detested being used as a mere enforcement agent, he also knew that catching this MidMerican girl would be a feather in his cap. He knew the girl was there even before he knocked on the door. His associate, an over-enthusiastic junior scythe named Bello, had already turned on the DNA detector and picked up traces the moment they stepped out of the car.

  San Martín drew his weapon as he approached the cabin—a pistol he’d had since the day he was ordained, given to him by his mentor. It was his weapon of choice for all gleanings—an extension of who he was—and although he didn’t expect there’d be anyone to glean today, it made him feel whole to have it drawn. Besides, gleaning aside, it might be necessary to incapacitate someone; although he had been warned not to render anyone—especially the girl—deadish, because that had created the very fiasco he was now attempting to resolve.

  He pounded on the door and pounded again. He was ready to kick it in, when none other than Scythe Marie Curie herself came to the door. San Martín tried not to be starstruck. The Marquesa de la Muerte was well known throughout the world for her early achievements. A living legend everywhere, not just in the north.

  “There is a doorbell, or didn’t you notice?” she said in Spanic so perfect it threw Scythe San Martín off his game. “Are you here for lunch?”

  He stammered for a moment, deepening his disadvantage, then recovered as best he could. “We’re here for the girl,” he said. “No sense denying she’s here; we already know.” And he gestured toward Bello, whose DNA detector was pinging in the red.

  She glanced at San Martín’s raised pistol and “hmmphed” with such authority, he found himself lowering it almost involuntarily.

  “She was here,” Curie said, “but not anymore. She’s on her way to an Antarctic resort for some skiing. You might catch her flight if you hurry, though.”

  The Chilargentine Scythedom was not known for its sense of humor, and Scythe San Martín was no exception. He would not be made a fool of, even by one of the greats. He pushed his way past her into the cabin, where a Chilargentine scythe whose name he couldn’t remember stood as defiantly as Scythe Curie.