Scythe Rand grinned. Scythe Chomsky checked the settings on his weapon. Only Scythe Volta seemed to have reservations. “All of them?”
Goddard shrugged as if it were nothing. As if all those lives meant nothing. “Obliteration is our hallmark,” he said. “We don’t always succeed, but we try.”
“But this . . . this breaks the second commandment. It clearly shows bias.”
“Come now, Alessandro,” Goddard said in his most patronizing tone. “Bias against whom? Tonists are not a registered cultural group.”
“Couldn’t they be considered a religion?” Rowan offered.
“You gotta be kidding,” laughed Scythe Rand. “They’re a joke!”
“Precisely,” agreed Goddard. “They’ve made a mockery of mortal age faith. Religion is a cherished part of history, and they’ve turned it into a travesty.”
“Glean them all!” said Chomsky, powering up his weapon.
Goddard and Rand drew their swords. Volta glanced at Rowan and said quietly, “The best thing about these gleanings is that it’s over quick.” Then he drew his sword as well, and followed the others through a gated archway that the Tonists always left open for lost souls seeking tonal solace. They had no idea what was coming.
? ? ?
Word spread quickly on the street that a small elegy of scythes had entered the Tonist cloister. As human nature would have it, rumor quickly raised the number to a dozen scythes or more, and as human nature would also have it, crowds that were slightly more excited than frightened gathered across the street wondering if they would get a glimpse of the scythes, and perhaps even the carnage they left behind. But all they saw for now was a single young man, an apprentice standing at the open gate, his back to the crowd.
Rowan was ordered to remain at the gate, sword drawn, to prevent anyone from trying to escape. His plan, of course, was to allow anyone to escape. But when the panicked Tonists saw him, his sword, and his apprentice armband, they ran back into the compound, where they became prey for the scythes. He stood there for five minutes, then finally he left his spot at the gate, losing himself in the maze-like compound. Only then did people begin to slip out to safety.
The sounds of anguish were almost impossible to endure. Knowing he’d be expected to glean someone before this was through made it impossible for him to disappear into himself this time. The place was a labyrinth of courtyards and walkways and illogical structures. He had no idea where he was. A building was burning to his left, and one walkway was littered with the dead, marking the passage of one of the scythes. A woman huddled, partially hidden by a winter-bare shrub, cradling a baby, trying desperately to keep it quiet. She panicked when she saw Rowan and screamed, holding her baby closer.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” he told her. “No one’s guarding the main gate. If you hurry, you’ll make it out. Go now!”
She didn’t waste any time. She took off. Rowan could only hope she didn’t run into a scythe on the way.
Then he came around a corner and saw another figure huddled against a column, chest heaving in sobs. But it wasn’t one of the Tonists. It was Scythe Volta. His sword lay on the ground. His yellow robe was splattered with blood, and blood covered his hands, shiny and slick. When he saw Rowan he turned away, his sobs growing heavier. Rowan knelt down to him. He clutched something in his hand. Not a weapon, but something else.
“It’s over,” Volta said, his voice barely a whisper. “It’s over now.” Clearly, however, from the sounds coming from elsewhere in the compound, it was not over at all.
“What happened, Alessandro?” Rowan asked.
Volta looked at him then, the anguish in his eyes like that of a man already damned. “I thought it was . . . I thought it was an office. Or maybe a storeroom. I’d go in, there’d be a couple of people there. I’d glean them as painlessly as I could, and move on. That’s what I thought. But it wasn’t an office. Or a storeroom. It was a classroom.”
He broke down in sobs again as he spoke. “There had to be at least a dozen little kids in there. Cowering. They were cowering from me, Rowan. But there was this one boy. He stepped forward. His teacher tried to stop him, but he stepped forward. He wasn’t afraid. And he held up one of their stupid tuning forks. He held it up like it would ward me off. ‘You won’t hurt us,’ he said. Then he struck it against a desk to make it ring, and held it up to me. ‘By the power of the tone, you won’t hurt us,’ he said. And he believed it, Rowan. He believed in its power. He believed it would protect him.”
“What did you do?”
Volta closed his eyes, and his words came out in a horrible squeal.
“I gleaned him . . . I gleaned them all. . . .”
Then he opened his bloody hand, revealing that he held the boy’s little tuning fork. It tumbled to the ground with a tiny atonal clank.
“What are we, Rowan? What the hell are we? It can’t be what we’re supposed to be.”
“It’s not. It never was. Goddard isn’t a scythe. He may have the ring, he may have license to glean, but he’s not a scythe. He’s a killer, and he has to be stopped. We can find a way to stop him, both of us!”
Volta shook his head and looked at the blood pooling in his palms. “It’s over,” he said again. And then took a deep, shuddering breath and became very, very calm. “It’s over, and I’m glad.”
That’s when Rowan realized that the blood on Volta’s hands was not from his victims. It was from Volta’s own wrists. The gashes were jagged and long. They were made with very clear intent.
“Alessandro, no! You don’t have to do this! We have to call an ambudrone. It’s not too late.”
But they both knew that it was.
“Self-gleaning is every scythe’s last prerogative. You can’t rob that from me, Rowan. Don’t even try.”
His blood was everywhere now, staining the snow of the courtyard. Rowan wailed—never had he felt so helpless. “I’m sorry, Alessandro. I’m so sorry. . . .”
“My real name is Shawn Dobson. Will you call me that, Rowan? Will you call me by my real name?”
Rowan could barely speak through his own tears. “It’s . . . it’s been an honor to know you, Shawn Dobson.”
He leaned on Rowan, barely able to hold up his head, his voice getting weaker. “Promise me you’ll be a better scythe than I was.”
“I promise, Shawn.”
“And then maybe . . . maybe . . .”
But whatever he was going to say, it leaked away with the last of his life. His head came to rest on Rowan’s shoulder, while all around them distant cries of agony filled the icy air.
* * *
Each day I pray as my ancestors did. They once prayed to gods that were fallible and fickle. Then to one God who stood in harsh and terrifying judgment. Then to a loving, forgiving God. ?And then finally to a power with no name.
But to whom can the immortal pray? I have no answer to that, but still I cast my voice out into the void, hoping to reach something beyond distance and deeper than the depths of my own soul. I ask for guidance. And for courage. And I beg—oh, how I beg—that I never become so desensitized to the death I must deliver that it feels normal. Commonplace.
My greatest wish for humanity is not for peace or comfort or joy. It is that we all still die a little inside every time we witness the death of another. For only the pain of empathy will keep us human. There’s no version of God that can help us if we ever lose that.
—From the gleaning journal of H.S. Faraday
* * *
36
The Thirteenth Kill