Scythe (Arc of a Scythe #1)(71)

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Harvest Conclave took place on a clear but blustery September day. While a storm had kept many spectators away from the last conclave, they gathered in force today on the street before the Fulcrum City Capitol Building. Even more peace officers than before were posted to keep the gawking crowds back. Some scythes—mostly the old-guard ones—arrived on foot, choosing a humble walk from their hotels over a more flashy arrival. Others pulled up in high-end cars, choosing to make the most of their celebrity status. News crews aimed their cameras but mostly kept their distance. This was, after all, not a red carpet. No questions, no interviews—but there was certainly a lot of preening. Scythes waved to the cameras and squared their shoulders, standing tall so they’d look their best on screen.

Scythe Goddard and his crew showed up in a limousine—royal blue studded with mock diamonds, just in case there was any question as to who was inside. As Goddard and his entourage emerged, the crowd oohed and aahed, as if their dazzling appearance rivaled a display of fireworks.

“There he is!”

“It’s him!”

“He’s so handsome!”

“He’s so scary!”

“He’s so well-groomed!”

Goddard took a moment to turn to the crowd and sweep his hand in a royal wave. Then he focused on one girl from the audience, held her gaze, pointed at her, then continued on up the stairs, saying nothing.

“He’s so strange!”

“He’s so mysterious!”

“He’s so charming.”

As for the girl he singled out, she was left impressed and terrified and confused by his momentary attention—which was precisely the intent.

So focused was the crowd on Goddard and his colorful entourage, no one much noticed Rowan bringing up the rear as they climbed the steps to the entrance.

Goddard’s crew weren’t the only scythes up for the show. Scythe Kierkegaard had a crossbow slung over his shoulder. Not that he had any intention of using it today—it was merely a part of the spectacle. Still, he could have aimed at just about anyone in the audience and taken them out. The knowledge of that made the crowd all the more excited. No one had ever been gleaned on the Capitol steps before a conclave, but that didn’t mean that it couldn’t happen.

While most scythes approached down the main avenue, Scythe Curie and Citra made their entrance from a side street, to avoid being the focus of the crowd’s attention for as long as possible. As the stately scythe pushed through the crowd of onlookers, a rumble erupted from the people closest to her as they realized who it was moving among them. People reached out to touch her silky lavender robe. She endured this as a matter of course, but one man actually grabbed the fabric and she had to slap his hand away.

“Careful,” she said, meeting his eye. “I don’t take kindly to the violation of my person.”

“I apologize, Your Honor,” said the man. Then he reached for her hand, intent on touching her ring, but she pulled her hand away from him.

“Don’t even think about it.”

Citra pushed her way in front of Scythe Curie to help clear a path for her. “Maybe we should have taken a limo,” Citra said. “At least that way we wouldn’t have to fight our way through.”

“That’s always been a little too elitist for me,” Curie said.

As they cleared the crowd, a sudden gust came down the wide Capitol steps, catching Scythe Curie’s long silver hair and blowing it back like a bridal train, making her look almost mystical.

“I knew I should have braided it today,” she said.

As she and Citra climbed the white marble steps, someone to their left shouted, “We love you!”

Scythe Curie stopped and turned, unable to find the speaker, so she addressed them all.

“Why?” she demanded, but now, under her cool scrutiny, no one responded. “I could end your existence at any moment; why love me?”

Still no one answered—but the exchange attracted a cameraman who moved forward, getting a little too close. Scythe Curie smacked the camera so hard, it wrenched the man’s whole body around, and he nearly dropped it. “Mind your manners,” said the scythe.

“Yes, ?Your Honor. Sorry, ?Your Honor.”

She continued up the steps with Citra behind her. “Hard to imagine that I used to love this attention. Now I’d avoid it entirely if I could.”

“You didn’t seem this tense at the last conclave,” Citra noted.

“That’s because I didn’t have an apprentice being tested. Instead, I was the one testing other scythes’ apprentices.”

A test that Citra had failed spectacularly. But she didn’t feel like bringing that up.

“Do you know what today’s test will be?” Citra asked as they reached the top of the stairs and stepped into the entry vestibule.

“No—but I do know that it’s being administered by Scythe Cervantes, and he tends to be very physically minded. For all I know, he’ll have you tilting at windmills.”

As before, the scythes greeted one another in the grand rotunda, waiting for the assembly room doors to open. Breakfast was set out on tables in the center of the rotunda, featuring a pyramid of Danish that must have taken hours to assemble but seconds to fall as scythes carelessly took the lower Danish without regard to the ones above. The waitstaff scrambled to gather the fallen pastries before they could be ground underfoot. Scythe Curie found it all very amusing. “It was foolhardy of the caterer to think that scythes would leave anything in a state of order.”