Scythe (Arc of a Scythe #1)(21)

To be a scythe, he explained, meant that one had to be well-versed in all methods. Citra realized that being “well-versed” meant she would have to participate in various types of gleaning. Would he have her pull the trigger? Thrust the knife? Swing the club? She wanted to believe she wasn’t capable of it. She desperately wanted to believe she wasn’t scythe material. It was the first time in her life that she aspired to fail.

? ? ?

Rowan’s feelings on the matter were mixed. He found that Scythe Faraday’s moral imperative and ethical high ground infused Rowan with purpose—but only in the scythe’s presence. When left to his own thoughts, Rowan doubted everything. Burned into his mind was the look on that woman’s face as she fearfully yet obediently opened her mouth to be poisoned. The look on her face the moment before she bit down. I am an accomplice to the world’s oldest crime, he told himself in his loneliest moments. And it will only get worse.

While the journals of scythes were public record, an apprentice still had the luxury of privacy. Scythe Faraday gave Rowan and Citra pale leather-bound volumes of rough-edged parchment. To Rowan it looked like a relic from the dark ages. He wouldn’t have been surprised if Faraday gave them a feather quill to go with it. Mercifully, however, they were allowed to use normal writing utensils.

“A scythe’s journal is traditionally made of lambskin parchment and kid leather.”

“I assume you mean ‘kid’ as in ‘goat,’” Rowan said, “and not ‘kid’ as in ‘kid.’”

That finally made the scythe laugh. Citra seemed to be annoyed that he had made Faraday laugh—as if it put him a point ahead of her. Rowan knew that as much as she hated the idea of being a scythe, she would jockey for position over him because that’s how she was hardwired. Competition was in her very nature; she couldn’t help herself.

Rowan was much better at picking his battles. He could compete when necessary, but rarely got caught up in petty one-upsmanship. He wondered if that would give him an advantage over Citra. He wondered if he wanted one.

Being a scythe would not have been his life choice. He had not made any life choices yet, so he had no real clue what he would do with his eternal future. But now that he was being mentored by a scythe, he began to feel he might have the mettle to be one. If Scythe Faraday had selected him as morally capable of the job, perhaps he was.

As for the journal, Rowan hated it. In a large family where no one particularly cared to hear his thoughts on anything, he had become accustomed to keeping his thoughts to himself.

“I don’t see what the big deal is,” Citra said as they worked in their journals after dinner one evening. “No one will ever read it but you.”

“So why write it?” Rowan snapped back.

Citra sighed as if talking to a child. “It’s to prepare you for writing an official scythe’s journal. Whichever one of us gets the ring will be legally obligated by commandment six to keep a journal every day of our lives.”

“Which I’m sure no one will read,” added Rowan.

“But people could read it. The Scythe Archive is open to everyone.”

“Yeah,” said Rowan, “like the Thunderhead. People can read anything, but no one does. All they do is play games and watch cat holograms.”

Citra shrugged. “All the more reason not to worry about writing one. If it’s lost among a gazillion pages, you can write your grocery list and what you ate for breakfast. No one will care.”

But Rowan cared. If he was going to put pen to paper—if he was going to do what a scythe does—he would do it right or not at all. And so far, as he looked at his painfully blank page, he was leaning toward “not at all.”

He watched Citra as she wrote, completely absorbed in her journal. From where he sat, he couldn’t read what she had written, but he could tell it was in fine penmanship. It figures she would take penmanship in school. It was one of those classes people took just to be superior. Like Latin. He supposed he’d have to learn to write in cursive if he became a scythe, but right now he’d be stuck with inelegant, sloppy printing.

He wondered, had Citra and he been in the same school, would they have gotten along? They probably wouldn’t have even known each other. She was the type of girl who participates, and Rowan was the kind of kid who avoids. Their circles were about as far from intersecting as Jupiter and Mars in the night sky. Now, however, they had been pulled into convergence. They were not exactly friends—they were never given the opportunity to develop a friendship before being thrust into apprenticeship together. They were partners; they were adversaries—and Rowan found it increasingly hard to parse his feelings about her. All he knew was that he liked watching her write.

? ? ?

Scythe Faraday was strict on his no-family policy. “It is ill-advised for yo,u to have contact with your family during your apprenticeship.” It was difficult for Citra. She missed her parents, but more than that, she missed her brother, Ben—which surprised her, because at home, she never had much patience for him.

Rowan seemed to have no problem with being separated from his family.

“They’d much rather have their immunity than have me around, anyway,” he told Citra.

“Boo hoo,” Citra said. “Am I supposed to feel sorry for you?”

“Not at all. Envious maybe. It makes it easier for me to leave it all behind.”