Thunderhead (Arc of a Scythe #2)(82)
Citra lowered her ring and held the leader’s gaze for a moment more. Yes, he had triumphed over her temptation, but only barely, and he knew it. She turned her back on them and left with Scythe Curie. Even though the scythes were gone, they continued to drone, and probably wouldn’t stop until their leader told them to.
“What was the use of that?” Marie chided. “Haven’t you ever heard the expression, ‘Leave a cult to its cacophony?’?”
Marie seemed unsettled as they left the park, probably because of the memory of her brother.
“I’m sorry,” Citra said. “I shouldn’t have kicked a hornet’s nest.”
“No, you shouldn’t have.” Then after a moment, she said, “As infuriating as Tonists are, he was right about one thing. ?Your deeds will always come back to haunt you. It’s been almost a hundred and fifty years since I routed the rotting vestiges of government to clear the path for a better world. I never paid a price for those crimes. But someday, the echo will return.”
Scythe Curie spoke no more of it, but her words lingered just as powerfully as the Tonists’ droning, which Citra could swear she still heard in her head for the rest of the day.
* * *
There are many moments in my existence where I have been confounded by “circumstances beyond my control.”
What most come to mind are the disasters in space.
On the moon, there was a catastrophic leak that exposed the entire supply of liquid oxygen to the vacuum of space, leaving nearly a thousand people to suffocate—and all attempts to retrieve their bodies for revival met with failure.
On Mars, a fledgling colony lasted for almost a year before a fire consumed the entire complex and everyone within it.
And the NewHope orbital station—a prototype that I had hoped would eventually form a habitable ring around the Earth, was destroyed when the engines of an approaching shuttle misfired, and pierced the station like an arrow through its heart.
After the NewHope disaster, I terminated the colonization program—and although I still employ millions in research and development of technologies that could potentially be used in the future, those employees and those facilities often succumb to bad luck.
However, I do not believe in bad luck. Nor, in this circumstance, do I believe in accidents or coincidence.
Trust me when I say that I have a keen understanding of what things—and people—are “beyond my control.”
—The Thunderhead
* * *
32
Humble in Our Arrogance
The morning was icy but windless on the day of? Winter Conclave, January 7th, Year of the Raptor. It was a natural chill—the Thunderhead did not finesse weather systems for scythes. There were times that scythes would complain about inconvenient weather and insist it was the Thunderhead’s spite, which was ridiculous—but some people could not help but ascribe human failings to it.
The BladeGuard had a much larger presence than usual at Winter Conclave. Its primary purpose had always been to police the crowds and make sure the scythes had a clear path up the stone steps to the statehouse. This time, however, the stairs were flanked by a full gauntlet of guards, shoulder to shoulder, behind which the disappointed crowd could barely glimpse the scythes as they passed.
Some people forced their way through to take a picture or dare to touch a scythe’s robe. In the past, these overenthusiastic citizens were pulled back and returned to the crowd with a glare or a reprimand. Today, the guards were instructed to dispatch them by bullet. It took only a few deadish people being rushed to revival centers for the rest to get the message. Thus, order was maintained.
As with everything else, the scythes had polarized feelings about the added security measures. “I don’t like it,” grumbled Scythe Salk. “Shouldn’t these good people have, at the very least, the opportunity to see us in our glory and not just holding the blade that gleans them?”
Scythe Brahms offered a counterpoint to the sentiment. “I applaud our High Blade’s wisdom in providing better security,” he proclaimed. “Our safety is paramount.”
Scythe O’Keefe commented that they should just build a tunnel and bring the scythes in underground—and although she meant it to be bitterly facetious, Scythe Carnegie noted it was the first good idea O’Keefe had had in years.
Dissent fomented and hackles were raised even before the scythes entered the building.
“Once Scythe Lucifer is taken down, all this will settle and things will return to the way they’ve always been,” more than one of the scythes said—as if taking down the black-robed vigilante was a cure-all.
The scythe in turquoise tried to stand as proud as Scythe Curie as she climbed the steps, doing her best to dismiss Citra Terranova from the day, allowing herself to be Scythe Anastasia both inside and out. She heard the grumbles about Scythe Lucifer as they climbed the stairs, but was heartened rather than troubled by them. Not only was Rowan still out there, but they were actually calling him Scythe Lucifer—accepting him as one of their own, even if it was unintentional.
“Do they actually believe that stopping Rowan will solve everything that’s wrong with the scythedom?” she asked Scythe Curie.
“Some choose not to see anything wrong,” Marie responded.