Thunderhead (Arc of a Scythe #2)(38)
“I know who the first scythes are,” she said, irritated by his condescension. Munira wasn’t usually so disagreeable, but she had been interrupted in a particularly interesting reading. Besides, her daytime classes left her little time to sleep, so she was tired. She forced a smile, and resolved to make an effort to be more agreeable for this mystery man—because, after all, if he was a scythe, he could choose to glean her if he found her too annoying.
“All the early journals are in the Hall of the Founders,” she told him. “I’ll have to unlock it for you. Please follow me.” She put up the “Back in five minutes” sign at her station, and led the man into the deep recesses of the library.
Her footfalls echoed in the granite hall. Everything sounded louder in the silence of the night. A fluttering bat in the eaves above could sound like a dragon taking wing . . . yet the man’s feet made no sound as they walked. His stealth was unnerving. So were the lights of the library, which came on ahead of them and extinguished behind them as they moved down the hall, flickering all the while, mimicking torchlight. It was a clever effect but tended to make shadows reach and retreat with unsettling intent.
“You do know that the popular writings of the founders are all available on the scythedom’s public server, don’t you?” Munira asked the man. “There are hundreds of selected readings.”
“It’s not the selected readings I wish to see,” he told her. “I’m interested in ones that have not been ‘selected.’?”
She looked over to him one more time, and finally it struck her who he was—and it struck her with such force that she stumbled with the shock of it. It was only a small stumble, and she recovered quickly—but he saw it. He was, after all, a scythe, and scythes notice everything.
“Is something wrong?” he asked.
“Not at all. It’s the flickering of the lights,” she told him. “It makes it hard to see the uneven seams in the floor stones.” Which was true, even though it was not the reason for her misstep. But if there was truth in what she said, perhaps he would not read her lie.
Munira had acquired a nickname during her tenure here at the library. The other clerks called her “the mortician” behind her back. Partly because of her funereal personality, but also because one of her jobs was to close out the collections of scythes who had self-gleaned, or had been permanently ended by sinister means—as was happening more and more in the Merican regions.
A year ago she had catalogued the complete collection of this scythe, from the day he was ordained until the day he died. His journals were no longer housed in the collections of living scythes. They were now in the north wing, among the journals of all the other MidMerican scythes who no longer walked the Earth. Yet here he was, Scythe Michael Faraday, walking right beside her.
She had read quite a few of Scythe Faraday’s journals. His thoughts and musings always affected her more than most. He was a man who felt things deeply. ?The news of his self-gleaning last year had saddened Munira—but had not surprised her. A conscience as weighty as his was a difficult burden to bear.
Although Munira had been in the presence of many scythes before, she had never felt as starstruck as she did now. ?Yet she couldn’t let it show. She couldn’t let on that she knew who he really was. Not until she had time to process it and figure out how on earth he could be here, and why.
“Your name is Munira,” he said, more a statement than a question. At first she thought he must have read her nameplate at the information desk, but something told her that he knew her name long before he approached her tonight. “Your name means ‘luminous.’?”
“I know what my name means,” said Munira.
“So are you?” he asked. “Are you a luminary among dimmer stars?”
“I’m just a humble servant of the library,” she told him.
They stepped from the long central hallway out into a courtyard garden. On the far side were the wrought-iron gates of the Hall of the Founders. Up above, the moon cast the topiaries and sculptures around them in deep shades of mauve, their shadows like dark pits that Munira was loathe to tread on.
“Tell me about yourself, Munira,” he said in that quiet way scythes have of turning polite requests into orders one couldn’t refuse.
At that moment she realized that not only had she recognized him, but that he knew it. Did that put her in danger of being gleaned? Would he end her life to protect his own identity? From his readings, he did not seem to be the type of scythe who would do such a thing, but scythes were inscrutable. She felt cold now, even though the Israebian night was sultry and warm.
“I’m sure you already know anything I might tell you, Scythe Faraday.”
There. She had said it. Now all pretenses were gone.
He smiled. “I’m sorry not to have introduced myself earlier,” he said, “but my presence here is . . . shall we say . . . unorthodox.”
“So then am I in the presence of a ghost?” she asked. “Are you going to disappear into a wall, only to return night after night to haunt me with the same request?”
“Perhaps,” he said. “We shall see.”
They arrived at the Hall of the Founders, she unlocked the gates, and they stepped into a large room that, to Munira, had always resembled a crypt—so much so that tourists often asked if the first scythes were buried here. They were not, but Munira often felt their presence in the room nonetheless.