Scythe (Arc of a Scythe #1)(47)

She couldn’t finish the thought—wouldn’t allow herself to. The territory where that thought led was still too terrible to consider.

? ? ?

In the morning, Scythe Curie made blueberry pancakes, and then they went out gleaning.

While Scythe Faraday always reviewed his notes on his chosen subject and used public transportation, Scythe Curie had an old-school sports car that required substantial skill to drive—especially on a winding mountain road.

“This Porsche was a gift from an antique car dealer,” Scythe Curie explained to her.

“He wanted immunity?” Citra asked, assuming the man’s motive.

“On the contrary. I had just gleaned his father, so he already had immunity.”

“Wait,” said Citra. “You gleaned his father, and he gave you a car?”

“Yes.”

“So he hated his father?”

“No, he loved his father very much.”

“Am I missing something?”

The road ahead of them straightened out, Scythe Curie shifted gears, and they accelerated. “He appreciated the solace I afforded him in the aftermath of the gleaning,” she told Citra. “True solace can be worth its weight in gold.”

Still, Citra didn’t quite understand—and wouldn’t until much later that evening.

They went to a town that was hundreds of miles away, arriving around lunchtime. “Some scythes prefer big cities; I prefer smaller towns,” Scythe Curie said. “Towns that perhaps haven’t seen a gleaning in over a year.”

“Who are we gleaning?” Citra asked as they looked for a parking place—one of the liabilities of taking a car that was off-grid.

“You’ll find out when it’s time to know.”

They parked on a main street, then walked—no, strolled—down the street, which was busy but not bustling. Scythe Curie’s leisurely pace made Citra uncomfortable, and she wasn’t sure why. ?Then it occurred to her that when she went gleaning with Scythe Faraday, his focus was always on the destination, and that destination wasn’t a place, but a person. The subject. The soul to be gleaned. As awful as that was, it had somehow made Citra feel more secure. With Scythe Faraday, there was always a tangible end to their endeavor. But nothing about Scythe Curie’s manner suggested premeditation at all. And there was a reason for that.

“Be a student of observation,” Curie told Citra.

“If you want a student of observation, you should have chosen Rowan.”

Scythe Curie ignored that. “Look at people’s faces, their eyes, the way they move.”

“What am I looking for?”

“A sense that they’ve been here too long. A sense that they’re ready to . . . conclude, whether they know it or not.”

“I thought we weren’t allowed to discriminate by age.”

“It’s not about age, it’s about stagnation. Some people grow stagnant before they turn their first corner. For others it could take hundreds of years.”

Citra looked at the people moving around them—all trying to avoid eye contact and get away from the scythe and her apprentice as quickly as possible, all the while trying not to be obvious about it. A couple stepping out of a café; a businessman on his phone; a woman beginning to cross the street against the light, then coming back, perhaps fearing that jaywalking would get her gleaned.

“I don’t see anything in anyone,” Citra said, irritated at both the task and her inability to rise to it.

A group of people came out of an office building—perhaps the tallest one in town at about ten stories. Scythe Curie zeroed in on one man. Her eyes looked almost predatory as she and Citra began to follow him at a distance.

“Do you see how he holds his shoulders, as if there is an invisible weight upon them?”

“No.”

“Can you see how he walks—a little less intently than those around him?”

“No.”

“Do you notice how scuffed his shoes are, as if he doesn’t care anymore?”

“Maybe he’s just having a bad day,” suggested Citra.

“Yes, maybe,” admitted Scythe Curie, “but I choose to believe otherwise.”

They closed in on the man, who never seemed to be aware that he was being stalked.

“All that remains is to see his eyes,” the scythe said. “To be sure.”

Scythe Curie touched him on the shoulder, he turned, and their eyes met, but only for the slightest moment. Then he suddenly gasped—

—because Scythe Curie’s blade had already been thrust up beneath his rib cage and into his heart. So quick was Scythe Curie that Citra never saw her do it. She never even saw the scythe pull out her blade.

The scythe offered no response to the man’s awful surprise; she said nothing to him at all. She just withdrew the blade, and the man fell. He was dead before he hit the pavement. Around them people gasped and hurried away, but not so far away that they couldn’t watch the aftermath. Death was unfamiliar to most of them. It needed to exist in its own bubble, as long as they could stay just beyond its outer edge, peering in.

The scythe wiped her blade on a chamois cloth the same pale lavender as her robe, and that’s when Citra lost control.

“You gave him no warning!” she blurted. “How could you do that? You don’t even know him! You didn’t even let him prepare!”