35
Obliteration Is Our Hallmark
On the last day of the year, just three days before Winter Conclave, Scythe Goddard led one more gleaning expedition.
“But we’ve already reached our quota for the year,” Scythe Volta was quick to remind him.
“I will NOT be constrained by a technicality!” Goddard shouted. Rowan thought Goddard might actually hit Volta, but then he took a moment to calm himself, and said, “By the time we begin our gleaning run, it will already be the Year of the Capybara in PanAsia. As far as I’m concerned, that gives us permission to count our kills as part of the new year. Then we shall return in time for our New Year’s Eve gala!”
Scythe Goddard decided it was a day for samurai swords, although Chomsky refused to part with his flamethrower. “It’s what I’m known for. Why mess with my image?”
Rowan had been on four gleaning expeditions with Goddard so far. He found he could escape to a place within himself where he was less of an accomplice—even less than an observer. He became the lettuce again. Nonsentient and secondary. Easily ignored and forgotten. It was the only way to keep his sanity in the midst of Goddard’s blood sport. Sometimes he was so forgotten in the midst of the melee that he could help people escape. Other times, he had to be at Goddard’s side, loading or switching out his weapons. He didn’t know what his role would be this time. If Goddard was just using his samurai blade, he didn’t need Rowan to be his weapons caddy. Still, he told Rowan to bring a spare sword.
Preparations for the party were already in full swing as they got ready to leave for the gleaning run that morning. The catering truck had arrived, and tables were being set up all over the grounds. The New Year’s Eve gala was one of Goddard’s few preplanned parties, and the guest list was stellar.
The helicopter landed on the front lawn, blowing away a tent that was being erected for the party as if it were nothing more than a napkin tumbled by the wind.
“Today we shall provided a much-needed public service,” Goddard told them, with far too much glee. “Today we dispense with some rabble.” But he didn’t explain what he meant. Even so, as the helicopter took off, Rowan had a sinking feeling deep in the pit of his stomach that had nothing to do with their ascent.
• • •
They landed in a public park, in the center of a vacant soccer field lightly dusted with snow. There was a playground at the edge of the park where some toddlers, unfazed by the weather, climbed and swung and dug in the sand, bundled up against the cold. The instant their parents saw scythes stepping out of the helicopter, they gathered their children and hurried away, ignoring their children’s wails of protest.
“Our destination is several blocks away,” Scythe Goddard told them. “I didn’t want to set down too close and ruin the element of surprise.” Then he put a paternal arm around Rowan’s shoulder. “Today is Rowan’s inauguration,” he said. “You will perform your first gleaning today!”
Rowan recoiled. “What? Me? I can’t! I’m just an apprentice!”
“Proxy, my boy! Just as I allowed you to grant immunity with my ring, so will you glean someone today, and it will be tallied as mine. Consider it a gift. You don’t have to thank me.”
“But . . . but that’s not allowed!”
Goddard was unperturbed. “Then let someone complain. Oh, what’s that I hear? Silence!”
“Don’t worry,” Volta told Rowan. “It’s what you’ve trained for. You’ll do fine.”
Which is what Rowan was worried about. He didn’t want to do “fine.” He wanted to be miserable at it. He wanted to be a failure, because only by failing would he know that he held on to a shred of his humanity. His brain felt about ready to burst out through his nose and ears. He hoped it would, because then he’d glean nobody today. If I must do this, I will be merciful like Scythe Faraday, he told himself. I will not enjoy it. I will NOT enjoy it!
They came around a corner and Rowan saw their destination: some sort of compound made to look like an old adobe mission, completely out of place in the cold of MidMerica. The iron symbol atop the tallest steeple was a two-pronged fork. This was a tone cult cloister.
“Nearly a hundred Tonists reside behind those walls,” Goddard announced. “Our goal is to glean them all.”
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.