Thunderhead (Arc of a Scythe #2)(7)

The woman’s eyes filled with tears, and Citra could see the anger coming on. It wasn’t unexpected.

“How old are you?” the woman demanded, her tone accusatory, and a little bit insolent. “How could you be a scythe? You can’t be any older than eighteen!”

“I just celebrated my eighteenth birthday,” Citra told her. “But I’ve been a scythe for nearly a year. You don’t have to like being gleaned by a junior scythe, but you’re still obliged to comply.”

And then came the bargaining. “Please,” she begged, “couldn’t you give me six months more? My daughter is getting married in May. . . .”

“I’m sure she can reschedule the wedding for an earlier date.” Citra didn’t mean to sound heartless—she truly did feel for the woman, but Citra had an ethical obligation to stand firm. In the mortal age, death could not be bargained with. It had to be the same for scythes.

“Do you understand all I’ve told you?” Citra asked. The woman, who was already wiping away her tears, nodded.

“I hope,” said the woman, “in the very long life I’m sure you have ahead of you, that someone causes you the suffering you cause others.”

Citra straightened up, and held herself with a bearing that befit Scythe Anastasia. “You don’t have to worry about that,” she said, then turned her back on the woman, leaving her on the corner to navigate this crossroad of her life.

? ? ?

In Vernal Conclave last spring—her first reckoning as a fully ordained scythe—Citra was reprimanded when her quota came up substantially short. Then, when the other MidMerican scythes found out she was giving her subjects a month’s warning, they were livid.

Scythe Curie, who was still her mentor, had warned her of this. “They see anything but decisive action as weakness. They’ll bluster about how it’s a failing in your character, and suggest it was a mistake to ordain you. Not that they can do anything about that. You cannot be unringed; you can only be henpecked.”

Citra was surprised to find the indignation came not just from the so-called new-order scythes, but from the old guard as well. No one liked the idea of giving the general public the slightest level of control when it came to their own gleaning.

“It’s immoral!” the scythes complained. “It’s inhumane.”

Even Scythe Mandela, who chaired the bejeweling committee and had been such an advocate for Citra, chastised her. “To know that your days are numbered is a cruelty,” he said. “How miserable to live one’s final days thus!”

But Scythe Anastasia was not fazed—or at least she didn’t let them see her sweat. She made her argument, and stood by it. “In my studies of the mortal age,” she had told them, “I learned that for many people, death was not instantaneous. There were, in fact, diseases that gave people warning. It gave them time to prepare themselves, and their loved ones, for the inevitable.”

That had brought forth a whole chorus of grumbles from the hundreds of scythes gathered. Most were scoffs and disgruntled dismissals—but she had heard a few voices saying that she had a point.

“But allowing the . . . the condemned . . . to choose their own method? It’s positively barbaric!” Scythe Truman shouted.

“More barbaric than electrocution? Or beheading? Or a knife through the heart? If a subject is allowed to choose, don’t you think that subject is going to choose the method that is the least offensive to them? Who are we to call their choice barbaric?”

Fewer grumbles this time. Not because they were in agreement, but because the scythes were already losing interest in the discussion. An upstart junior scythe—even one who had arrived at her position under so much controversy—wasn’t worth more than a few volleys of their attention.

“It violates no law, and it is the way I choose to glean,” Citra maintained. High Blade Xenocrates, who didn’t seem to care either way, deferred to the Parliamentarian, who couldn’t find grounds for legal objection. In her first challenge in conclave, Scythe Anastasia had gotten her way.

Scythe Curie was duly impressed.

“I thought for sure they would put you on some sort of probation, choosing your gleanings for you and compelling you to accomplish them on a strict schedule. They could have—but they didn’t. That says a lot more about you than you realize.”

“What—that I’m a pain in the scythedom’s collective ass? They already knew that.”

“No,” said Scythe Curie with a smirk. “It shows that they’re taking you seriously.”

Which was more than Citra could say for herself. She felt like she was playacting half the time. A turquoise costume for a plum role.

She’d found a great deal of success gleaning in the way that she did. There were only a handful of subjects who didn’t return at the end of their grace period. Two had died trying to cross the border into Texas, another on the WestMerican border, where no one would touch the body until Scythe Anastasia personally showed up to pronounce him gleaned.

Three others were found in their beds when the time on the tracking grain ran out. They chose the silence of the poison rather than having to face Scythe Anastasia again. In all instances, though, their method of death had been their own choice. For Citra that was crucial, for the thing she despised most about the scythedom’s policies was the indignity of having your death chosen for you.