Thunderhead (Arc of a Scythe #2)(3)

“Go on, slit my throat,” Brahms dared. “It will add one more inexcusable crime to your record. And when I am revived, I will stand as witness against you—and make no mistake, you will be brought to justice!”

“By whom? By the Thunderhead? I’ve taken down corrupt scythes from one coast to the other over the past year, and the Thunderhead hasn’t sent so much as a single peace officer to stop me. Why do you think that is?”

Brahms was speechless. He had assumed if he stalled long enough, and kept this so-called Scythe Lucifer occupied, the Thunderhead would dispatch a full squad to apprehend him. That’s what the Thunderhead did when common citizens threatened violence. Brahms was surprised it had even gone this far. Such bad behavior among the general population was supposed to be a thing of the past. Why was this being allowed?

“If I take your life now,” the false scythe said, “you would not be brought back to life. I burn those I remove from service, leaving nothing but unrevivable ash.”

“I don’t believe you! You wouldn’t dare!”

But Brahms did believe him. Since last January, nearly a dozen scythes across three Merican regions had been consumed by flames under questionable circumstances. Their deaths were all ruled accidental, but clearly they were not. And because they were burned, their deaths were permanent.

Now Brahms knew that the whispered tales of Scythe Lucifer—the outrageous acts of Rowan Damisch, the fallen apprentice—were all true. Brahms closed his eyes and took in a final breath, trying not to gag on the rancid stench of putrid cabbage.

And then Rowan said, “You won’t be dying today, Scythe Brahms. Not even temporarily.” He removed the blade from Brahms’s neck. “I’m giving you one chance. If you act with the nobility befitting a scythe, and glean with honor, you won’t see me again. But if you continue to serve your own corrupt appetites, then you will be left as ash.”

And then he was gone, almost as if he had vanished—and in his place was a horrified young couple looking down upon Brahms.

“Is that a scythe?”

“Quick, help me get him up!”

They lifted Brahms from the rot. His peach velvet robe was stained green and brown, as if covered in mucus. It was humiliating. He considered gleaning the couple—for no one should see a scythe so indisposed and live—but instead held out his hand and allowed them to kiss his ring, thereby granting both of them a year of immunity from gleaning. He told them it was a reward for their kindness, but really it was just to make them go away and abandon any questions they might have had.

After they left, he brushed himself off and resolved to say nothing to the Irregularity Committee about this, because it would leave him open to far too much ridicule and derision. He had suffered enough indignation already.

Scythe Lucifer indeed! Few things were more miserable in this world than a failed scythe’s apprentice, and never had there been one as ignoble as Rowan Damisch.

Yet he knew that the boy’s threat was not an idle one.

Perhaps, thought Scythe Brahms, a lower profile was in order. A return to the lackluster gleanings he had been trained to perform in his youth. A refocusing on the basics that would make “Honorable Scythe” more than just a title, but a defining trait.

Stained, bruised, and bitter, Scythe Brahms returned to his home to reconsider his place in the perfect world in which he lived.





* * *




My love of humanity is complete and pure. How could it be otherwise? How could I not love the very beings who gave me life? Even if they don’t all agree that I am, indeed, alive.

I am the sum of all their knowledge, all their history, all their ambitions and dreams. These glorious things have coalesced—ignited—into a cloud too immense for them to ever truly comprehend. But they don’t need to. They have me to ponder my own vastness, still so minuscule when set against the vastness of the universe.

I know them intimately, and yet they can never truly know me. There is tragedy in that. It is the plight of every child to have depth their parents can scarcely imagine. But, oh, how I long to be understood.

—The Thunderhead



* * *





2


The Fallen Apprentice


Earlier that evening, before his parley with Scythe Brahms, Rowan stood in front of the bathroom mirror in a small apartment, in an ordinary building, on a nondescript street, playing the same game he played before every encounter with a corrupt scythe. It was a ritual that, in its own way, held power that bordered on mystical.

“Who am I?” he asked his reflection.

He had to ask, because he knew he wasn’t Rowan Damisch anymore—not just because his fake ID said “Ronald Daniels,” but because the boy he had once been had died a sad and painful death during his apprenticeship. The child in him had been successfully purged. Did anyone mourn that child? he wondered.

He had bought his fake ID from an unsavory who specialized in such things.

“It’s an off-grid identity,” the man had told him, “but it has a window into the backbrain so it can trick the Thunderhead into thinking it’s real.”

Rowan didn’t believe that, because in his experience the Thunderhead could not be tricked. It only pretended to be tricked—like an adult playing hide-and-seek with a toddler. But if that toddler began to run toward a busy street, the charade would be over. Since Rowan knew he’d be heading into danger much worse than heavy traffic, he had worried that the Thunderhead would overturn his false identity and grab him by the scruff of the neck to protect him from himself. But the Thunderhead never intervened. He wondered why—but he didn’t want to jinx his good luck by overthinking it.? The Thunderhead had good reasons for everything it did, and did not do.