Thunderhead (Arc of a Scythe #2)(42)

Citra couldn’t tell whether he was being sincere or sarcastic. Oddly, the thought that he might actually be sincere bothered her more. Marie had told her that Scythe Constantine was not the enemy, but, oh, how Citra wanted him to be! She wanted to lash out against him and his smug control of the situation, but she knew it was futile. If she was going to retain any dignity, she would have to regain the cool reserve of ?“wise” Scythe Anastasia. It was by forcing her thoughts to settle that an idea came to her.

“So you’ve gleaned all of the people I chose over the past month?”

“Yes, I’ve already told you so,” Scythe Constantine said, a bit miffed to be questioned about it again.

“I know what you told me . . . but I find it hard to believe that you’ve been able to glean all of them. I’ll bet there are one or two you haven’t gotten to yet. Would you admit it if that were true?”

Constantine regarded her with a bit of suspicion. “What are you getting at?”

“An opportunity . . .”

He said nothing for a moment. Scythe Curie looked back and forth between the two of them. Finally, Constantine spoke. “There are three we have not yet located. Our plan is to glean them the moment we do.”

“But you won’t glean them,” said Citra. “You’ll let me do it, as planned . . . then you’ll lie in wait for anyone who tries to kill me.”

“It’s more likely that Marie is their target, not you.”

“So if no one attacks me, you’ll know that for sure.”

Still, he wasn’t convinced. “They’ll smell the trap from a mile away.”

Citra smiled. “Then you’ll have to be smarter than they are. Or is that too much to ask?”

Constantine frowned and that made Scythe Curie laugh. “The look on your face right now, Constantine, is worth any attempt on our lives!”

He didn’t respond to that. Instead, he kept his attention on Citra. “Even if we outsmart them—and we will—it will be risky.”

Citra smiled. “What’s the point of living forever if you can’t take a few risks?”

In the end, Constantine reluctantly agreed to allow Citra to be bait for a trap.

“I suppose Endura can wait,” said Scythe Curie. “And I was so looking forward to it.” Although Citra suspected she was more invigorated by their new plan than she let on.

Even though it would put her in danger, Citra found that having an amount of control of the situation gave her some much-needed relief.

In fact, even the Thunderhead registered her release of tension. It could not see into Citra’s mind, but it read body language and biological changes with precision. It detected falsehoods and truths, both spoken and unspoken. Which meant that it knew whether or not Scythe Constantine was sincere in wanting her to remain alive. But as always, when it came to the scythedom, it had to remain silent.





* * *




I must admit that I am not the only factor maintaining the sustainability of the world. The scythedom also contributes by its practice of gleaning.

Even so, scythes glean only a small percentage of the population. The work of scythes is not to completely curb population growth, but to smooth its edges. That is why, at current quotas, one’s chance of being gleaned is only 10 percent over the next thousand years. Low enough to make gleaning the furthest thing from most people’s minds.

I do foresee a time, however, when population growth will need to reach an equilibrium. Zero growth. One person dying for every person born.

The year this will occur is something I do not share with the general population, but it is just beyond the horizon. Even with an incremental increase in gleaning quotas, humanity will reach its maximum sustainable population in less than a century.

I see no need to trouble humanity with this fact, for what good would it do? I alone bear the weight of that inevitability. It is, very literally, the weight of the world. I can only hope that I have the virtual shoulders of Atlas to bear it.

—The Thunderhead



* * *





17


AWFul


While Citra often had trouble inhabiting the skin of Scythe Anastasia, Greyson Tolliver had absolutely no trouble becoming Slayd, which was the unsavory nickname he took. His parents once told him that the name Greyson had been given on a whim because he had been born on a gray day. It had no meaning beyond his parents’ flippant attitude toward everything in their long and feckless lives.

But Slayd was a person to be reckoned with.

The day after his meeting with Traxler, he had his hair dyed a color called “obsidian void.” It was an absolute black so dark, it didn’t exist anywhere in nature. It actually sucked in light around it like a black hole, making his eyes seem deep-set in inscrutable shadow.

“It’s very twenty-first century,” the stylist had said. “Whatever that means.”

Greyson also had metal inserts placed beneath the skin of both his left and right temples that made it look like he was growing fledgling horns. It was much subtler than the hair, but taken together, it all made him look otherworldly and vaguely diabolical.

He certainly looked the part of an unsavory, if he didn’t feel it.

His next step was to try out his new persona.

His heart was racing a little too fast as he approached Mault, a local club that catered to the unsavory crowd. Unsavories loitering outside eyed him as he approached, checking him out, sizing him up. These people were caricatures of themselves, he thought. They conformed so closely to their culture of nonconformity that there was a uniformity to them, defeating the whole purpose.