“You aren’t worth the waste of words,” his captor responded. There was an accent to his voice, FrancoIberian maybe? Or Chilargentinian? He didn’t know what continent he was on, much less which region. Or perhaps he was misreading the situation. Perhaps this wasn’t life at all. Maybe he was dead for good, and, considering the sweltering nature of the cell, this was the mortal-age idea of hell. Fire and brimstone and the actual Lucifer, horns and all, ready to punish Rowan for stealing his name.
In his current light-headed state, it seemed possible. If so, he hoped Citra was in that other place with pearly gates and cottony clouds, where everyone had wings and a harp.
Ha! Citra playing a harp. How she would hate that!
Well, all musings aside, if this was indeed the living world, then Citra was here, too. Regardless of his current situation, it was a comfort to know that Scythe Curie’s ploy to save them had worked. Not that the Grand Dame of Death had any desire to save Rowan – his salvation was just a collateral consequence. But that was fine. He could live with that. As long as Citra lived as well.
The vault! How could Citra forget the vault? All it took was Scythe Possuelo’s mention of it to bring back the memory. Citra closed her eyes and kept them closed for a long time as her mind flooded just as inescapably as the streets of the doomed city had. And once the memories came, they didn’t stop coming. One revelation after another, each one worse than the last.
The bridge to the council chambers collapsing.
The frenzied mob at the marina as the city began to sink.
The mad scramble with Marie to higher ground.
And Rowan.
“Anastasia, are you all right?” Possuelo asked.
“Give me some time,” she told him.
She remembered Marie tricking her and Rowan into the vault and sealing it, and she remembered everything that came after, down to their last moments there in the dark.
After Endura fractured and hit bottom, Citra and Rowan had pulled all the founders’ robes over themselves as the vault grew colder and colder. It was Citra who suggested that they cast the robes off and allow their bodies to succumb to the cold, rather than wait until the chamber ran out of oxygen. As a scythe, she knew all about the many ways to die. Hypothermia was much easier than oxygen deprivation. Encroaching numbness, rather than desperately gasping for air. She and Rowan held each other, relying on nothing but body heat, until that began to fade. Then they shivered in each other’s arms until they were too cold to shiver anymore, and they slipped away.
Anastasia finally opened her eyes and looked at Possuelo. “Please tell me that Scythe Curie made it to safety.”
He took a long slow breath, and she knew even before he spoke.
“She did not,” Possuelo told her. “I’m sorry. She perished with all the others.”
This might have been common knowledge to the world by now, but it was fresh and painful to Anastasia. She resolved not to give way to tears. At least not now.
“You still haven’t answered my question,” Possuelo said. “Why were you with the man who killed the Grandslayers?”
“Rowan wasn’t the one who killed them. And he did not sink Endura.”
“There were witnesses among the survivors.”
“And what did they witness? The only thing they can say is that he was there – and he wasn’t there by choice!”
Possuelo shook his head. “I’m sorry, Anastasia, but you’re not seeing this clearly. You have been duped by a very charismatic and self-serving monster. The North Merican scythedom has further evidence to prove what he did.”
“Which North Merican scythedom?”
Possuelo hesitated, then chose his words carefully. “A lot has changed while you were at the bottom of the sea.”
“Which North Merican scythedom?” Anastasia demanded again.
Possuelo sighed. “There is only one now. With the exception of the Thunderhead’s Charter Region, all of North Merica is under Goddard’s leadership.”
She didn’t even know how to begin processing that, so she decided not to. She’d save it for when she was stronger. More centered in the here and now, whatever and whenever the here and now turned out to be.
“Well,” she said with as much nonchalance as she could muster. “With all due respect, it sounds like the world has been duped by a very charismatic and self-serving monster.”
Possuelo sighed again. “This sadly is true. I can tell you that neither I, nor anyone in the Amazonian scythedom, have much love for Overblade Goddard.”
“Overblade?”
“Overblade of North Merica. He claimed the position at the beginning of this year.” Possuelo scowled at the thought. “As if the man wasn’t vainglorious enough, he had to invent an even more pompous title for himself.”
Anastasia closed her eyes. They burned. Her whole body did. The news made her flesh want to reject the life that had been returned to it and go back to being blissfully dead.
And finally she asked the question she’d been avoiding since the moment she awoke.
“How long?” she asked. “How long were we down there?”
Possuelo clearly did not want to answer … but it was not something he could keep from her. So he clasped her hand and said:
“You have been dead for more than three years.”
Where are you, my dear Marie? My existence has been all about silencing life, but until now I have not dared to entertain that wholly mortal-age question of what lies beyond the silence. Such elaborate ideas those mortals had! Heaven and hell – nirvana and Valhalla, reincarnations, hauntings, and so many underworlds, one would think the grave was a corridor with a million doors.
Mortals were the children of extremes. Either death was sublime, or it was unthinkable – such a mélange of hope and terror, no wonder so many mortals were driven mad.
We post-mortals lack such imagination. The living do not ponder death anymore. Or at least not until a scythe pays a visit. But once the scythe’s business is done, mourning is brief, and thoughts of what it means to “not be” disappear, vanquished by nanites that disrupt dark, unproductive thinking. As post-mortals of perpetually sound mind, we are not allowed to dwell on that which we cannot change.
But my nanites are dialed low, and therefore I do dwell. And I find myself asking again and again, where are you, my dear Marie?
—From the “postmortem” journal of
Scythe Michael Faraday,
May 18th, Year of the Raptor
10
In the Face of Light Extinguished
After the dead Nimbus agents had been placed on the pyre, Scythe Faraday lowered the torch to the kindling and set it ablaze. The fire took. Slowly at first, then with increasing speed. The smoke turned darker and darker as the dead began to burn.
Faraday turned to those assembled. Munira, Loriana, and all the former Nimbus agents. He was silent for a long moment, listening to the roar of the flames. Then he began his eulogy.
“Ages ago, birth came with a death sentence,” he began. “To be born meant that death would eventually follow. We have surpassed such primitive times, but here, in the unexamined wild, nature still retains its crushing foothold on life. It is with abiding sorrow that I declare the deadish here before us to now be dead.