Scythe (Arc of a Scythe #1)(23)

She pulled a scimitar from the wall. A heavy beast that could decapitate you with a single swing. Had Scythe Faraday used it for a beheading? It was, in a way, his style: swift, painless, efficient. As she moved it clumsily through the air, she wondered if she had the strength to behead someone.

My god, what am I becoming?

She put the weapon on the table, grabbed the rag, and rubbed polish on it, and when she finished she went to the next, and the next, trying not to see her reflection in each of the gleaming blades.

? ? ?

Rowan’s task was not as visceral, but was even more troubling.

“Today, you shall lay the groundwork for my next gleaning,” Scythe Faraday told him, then gave him a list of parameters that tomorrow’s subject should have. “All the information you need is in the Thunderhead, if you’re clever enough to find it.” Then he left for the day’s gleaning.

Rowan almost made the mistake of giving the list of parameters to the Thunderhead and asking it for a subject—until he remembered that asking the Thunderhead for assistance was strictly forbidden for scythes. They had full access to the great cloud’s wealth of information, but could not access its algorithmic “conscious” mind. Scythe Faraday had told them of a scythe who tried to do so. The Thunderhead itself reported him to the High Blade, and he was “severely disciplined.”

“How is a scythe disciplined?” Rowan had asked.

“He was put to death twelvefold by a jury of scythes, then revived each time. After the twelfth revival, he was on probation for a year.”

Rowan imagined a jury of scythes would be very creative in their methods of punishment. He suspected that dying twelve times at the hands of scythes would be a lot worse than splatting.

He began to enter search parameters. He was instructed to have his search include not just their city, but all of MidMerica—which stretched nearly a thousand miles across the middle of the continent. Then he narrowed the search to towns with populations under ten thousand that were also on the banks of rivers. Then to homes or apartments that were within one hundred feet of the river bank. Then he searched for people twenty and older who lived in those residences.

That gave him more than forty thousand people.

He had done that in five minutes. The next few requirements were not going to be as easy to nail down.

The subject must be a strong swimmer.

He got a list of every high school and university in each river town, and cross-referenced everyone who had been on a swim team for the past twenty years or had registered for a triathlon. About eight hundred people.

The subject must be a dog lover.

Using Scythe Faraday’s access code, he found the subscription lists of every publication and blog dealing with dogs. He accessed pet store databases to get a list of anyone who made regular purchases of dog food over the past few years. That brought the number down to one hundred twelve names.

The subject must have a history of heroism in a nonprofessional capacity.

He painstakingly searched for words like “hero,” “bravery,” and “rescue,” for all one hundred twelve names. He thought he’d be lucky if a single one came up—but to his surprise, four of them were noted as having done something heroic at some point in their lives.

He clicked on each name and brought up four pictures. He immediately regretted it, because the moment those names had faces, they became people instead of parameters.

A man with a round face and a winning smile.

A woman who could have been anyone’s mother.

A guy with a bad case of bed-hair.

A man who looked like he hadn’t shaved in three days.

Four people. And Rowan was about to decide which one would die tomorrow.

He immediately found himself leaning toward the unshaven man, but realized he was showing a bias. A person shouldn’t be discriminated against because he hadn’t shaved for a picture. And was he ruling out the woman just because she was a woman?

Okay then, the guy with the smile. But was Rowan overcompensating now by choosing the most pleasant-looking of them?

He decided to learn more about each of them, using Faraday’s access code to dig up more personal information than he really should have been allowed to; but this was a person’s life he was dealing with—shouldn’t he use any means necessary to make his decision fair?

This one had run into a burning building in his youth to save a family member. But this one has three young kids. But this one volunteers at an animal shelter. But this one’s brother was gleaned just two years ago. . . .

He thought each fact would help him, but the more he came to know about each of them, the harder the decision became. He kept digging into their lives, getting more and more desperate, until the front door opened and Scythe Faraday returned. It was dark out. When had night fallen?

The scythe looked weary, and his robes were splattered with blood.

“Today’s gleaning was . . . more troublesome than expected,” he said. Citra came out of the weapons den. “All blades are now polished to a perfect shine!” she announced.

Faraday gave her his nod of approval. Then he turned to Rowan, who still sat at the computer. “And who do we glean next?”

“I . . . uh . . . narrowed it down to four.”

“And?” said the scythe.

“All four fit the profile.”

“And?” said the scythe again.