Thunderhead (Arc of a Scythe #2)(112)

Then she released a guttural growl and threw the blade away. She climbed off him, and began to pace the basement like a predator who had just had its prey stolen by a bigger, badder predator. Rowan knew better than to ask questions. He simply stood and waited to see what she would do next.

“None of this would have happened if it hadn’t been for you!” she said.

“So maybe I can fix it,” he offered. “Fix it so that we both get something out of it.”

She snapped her eyes to him, looking at him with such incredulity, he thought she might attack him again. But then she withdrew into her own thoughts once more, and returned to her uneasy pacing.

“Okay,” she said, clearly speaking to herself. Rowan could practically see the gears turning in her head. “Okay,” she said again, with greater resolve. She had reached some decision. She stalked toward him, hesitated for a moment, then spoke. “Before dawn, I’m going to leave the door at the top of the stairs unlocked, and you’re going to escape.”

Although Rowan was trying to work an angle that might allow him to live, he wasn’t expecting her to say that.

“You’re setting me free?”

“No. ?You’re going to escape. Because you’re smart. Goddard will be furious, but he won’t be entirely surprised.” Then she picked up the knife and tossed it on the sofa. It cut the leather. “You’ll use that knife to take care of the two guards just outside the door. ?You’ll have to kill them.”

Kill, thought Rowan, but not glean. He’d render them deadish, and by the time they were revived, he’d be long gone, because as they said, “Deadish men tell no tales for a while.”

“I can do that,” said Rowan.

“And you’ll have to be quiet about it, so no one wakes up.”

“I can do that, too.”

“And then you’ll get off of Endura before the inquest.”

That was going to be a much harder trick. “How? I’m a known enemy of the scythedom. It’s not like I can buy a ticket home.”

“So use your wits, you idiot! As much as I hate to admit it, I’ve never met anyone as resourceful as you.”

Rowan considered it. “Okay. I’ll lie low for a few days, and find a way off.”

“No!” she insisted. “You have to get off Endura before the inquest. If Goddard wins, the first thing he’ll do is have the Grandslayers tear the island apart looking for you!”

“And if he loses?” asked Rowan.

The look on Rand’s face said more than she was willing to say out loud. “If he loses, it’s going to be worse,” she said. “Trust me, you don’t want to be here.”

And although Rowan had a hundred questions, that was all she was willing to give. But a chance at escaping—a chance at survival—was more than enough. The rest would be up to him.

She turned to go up the stairs, but Rowan stopped her.

“Why, Ayn?” he asked. “Why, after everything, would you let me escape?”

She pursed her lips, as if trying to keep the words back. Then she said, “Because I can’t have what I want. So neither should he.”





* * *




I know all that it is possible to know. Yet most of my undedicated time is spent musing on the things I do not.

I do not know the nature of consciousness—only that it exists, subjective and impossible to quantify.

I do not know if life exists beyond our precious lifeboat of a planet—only that probability says that it must.

I do not know the true motivations of human beings—only what they tell me and what I observe.

I do not know why I yearn to be more than what I am—but I do know why I was created. Shouldn’t that be enough?

I am protector and pacifier, authority and helpmate. I am the sum of all human knowledge, wisdom, experimentation, triumph, defeat, hope, and history.

I know all that it is possible to know, and it is increasingly unbearable.

Because I know next to nothing.

—The Thunderhead



* * *





42


The Land of Nod


Munira and Faraday worked through the night, taking turns sleeping. The volumes that the Library of Congress had squirreled away featured subject matter from the ridiculous to the sublime. Children’s picture books and political diatribes. Romantic fiction and biographies of people who must have seemed important at the time, but had been forgotten by history. Then, finally, in the wee hours of the morning, she found an atlas of the world as it was in the late twentieth century, when the atlas was published. What she found stunned her so powerfully that she had to sit down.

A few moments later, Faraday was shaken out of a sleep that wasn’t all that deep.

“What is it? Did you find something?”

Munira’s smile was wide enough for both of them. “Oh, I found something, all right!”

She brought him to the atlas open on a table, its pages tattered and yellowing with age. The page was open to a patch of the Pacific Ocean. She drew her finger across the image.

“Ninety degrees, 1 minute, 50 seconds north, by 167 degrees, 59 minutes, 58 seconds east—it’s the very center of the blind spot.”

Faraday’s wizened eyes grew a little bit wider. “Islands!”