Thunderhead (Arc of a Scythe #2)(107)
“Whose heart is it?” Anastasia asked.
The guide was stumped, as if she had never been asked the question before. “I don’t know,” she said. “Probably some random test subject, I suppose. The mortal age was a barbaric time. One could barely cross the street in the early twenty-first century without being kidnapped for experimentation.”
But to Anastasia, the highlight of the tour was the Vault of Relics and Futures. It wasn’t a place open to the public—and even scythes had to get special permission from a High Blade or Grandslayer to see it—which they had.
It was a solid steel cubic chamber, magnetically suspended within a larger cube like a puzzle box, and was accessible by a narrow, retractable bridge.
“The central chamber was designed after a mortal-age bank vault,” their guide told them. “A foot of solid steel on all sides. The door alone weighs almost two tons.” As they crossed the bridge to the inner vault, the guide reminded them that there were no pictures allowed. “The scythedom is strict about that. Outside of these walls, this place must exist only in memory.”
The inner chamber was twenty feet across, and on one side were mounted a series of golden mannequins, all dressed in aging scythe robes. One of embroidered multicolored silk, another of cobalt blue satin, another of gossamer silver lace—thirteen in total. Anastasia gasped. She couldn’t help herself, because she recognized them from her history lessons. “Are these the robes of the founding scythes?”
The guide smiled, and strode past them, pointing to each as she passed. “Da Vinci, Gandhi, Sappho, King, Laozi, Lennon, Cleopatra, Powhatan, Jefferson, Gershwin, Elizabeth, Confucius, and, of course, Supreme Blade Prometheus! All the founders’ robes are preserved here!” Anastasia noted with some satisfaction that all of the female founders went by a single name, as she did.
Even Scythe Curie was impressed by the display of founders’ robes. “To be in the presence of such greatness does take one’s breath away!”
So enamored was Anastasia of the robes of the founders that it took her a few moments to notice what lined the other three walls of the vault.
Diamonds! Row after row of them. The room glistened with every color of the spectrum refracting through the gems. These were the gems that had been on every scythe’s ring. They were all of identical size and shape, and all had the same dark center.
“The gems were forged by the founding scythes, and are here for safekeeping,” the guide told her. “No one knows how they were made—it is a technology lost to scythedom. But there’s no need to worry—there are enough gems here to bejewel nearly 400,000 scythes.”
Why, wondered Citra, would there ever be a need for 400,000 scythes?
“Does anyone know why they look the way they do?” she asked.
“I’m sure the founders did,” their guide said, cheerily evading the question. Then she tried to dazzle them with facts about the vault’s locking mechanism.
To complete the day, they went to the Endura Opera House that evening for a performance of Verdi’s Aida. There was no threat of annihilation, and no obsequious neighbors beside them. In fact, many of those present were visiting scythes, which made getting in and out of their row a major endeavor, considering the bulkiness of all those scythe robes.
The music was lush and melodramatic. It instantly brought Anastasia back to the only other opera she had seen—also by Verdi. She had first met Rowan that night. They had been brought together by Scythe Faraday. She had not the slightest inkling that he would ask her to be an apprentice, but Rowan had known—or at least suspected it.
The opera was easy to follow: a forbidden love between an Egyptian military commander and a rival queen, which ended with eternal entombment for the two of them. So many mortal-age narratives concluded with the finality of death. It was as if they were endlessly obsessed with the limited nature of their lives. ?Well, at least the music was pretty.
“Are you ready for tomorrow?” Marie asked, as they descended the grand opera house stairs when the performance was over.
“I am ready to state our case,” Anastasia said, deferring to the fact that it was not just hers, but theirs. “Not sure I’m ready to face the possible outcome, though.”
“If we lose the inquest, I still might have the votes to be High Blade.”
“I guess we’ll know soon enough.”
“Either way,” said Marie, “it will be an overwhelming prospect. To be High Blade of MidMerica is not something I ever desired. Well, maybe in my youth—those days when I swung my blade to bring down the bloated egos of the high and mighty. But not anymore.”
“When Scythe Faraday took Rowan and me on as apprentices, he told us that not wanting the job is the first step toward deserving it.”
Marie smiled at her ruefully. “We are forever impaled upon our own wisdom.” Then her smile faded. “If I do become High Blade, you realize I will, for the sake of the scythedom, have to hunt Rowan down and bring him to justice.”
And although it pained Anastasia more than she could say, she nodded in stoic resignation. “If it is your justice, then I will accept it.”
“Our choices are not easy—nor should they be.”
Anastasia looked out at the ocean, how it played on the water all the way to the horizon. She had never felt so far away from herself as she did here. She had never felt so far from Rowan. So far that she couldn’t even count the miles between them.