The Toll rising early did not mean people should be punished for sleeping late.
His eating eggs did not imply a fertility rite was called for.
And a day of quiet brooding did not mean a permanent vow of silence was required.
Tonists wanted so desperately to believe in something that the things they chose to believe were sometimes absurd, other times naive, and, when it came to zealots, downright terrifying.
Today’s extreme believer was emaciated, as if he had been on a hunger strike, and had a crazed look in his eyes. He spoke about ridding the world of almonds – and all because Greyson once mentioned in passing that he didn’t care for them. Apparently the wrong ears heard and spread the word. It turns out that wasn’t the only scheme the man had.
“We must strike terror into the cold hearts of scythes, so they submit to you,” the zealot said. “With your blessing, I will burn them one by one, just as their rebel, Scythe Lucifer, did.”
“No! Absolutely not!” The last thing Greyson wanted to do was antagonize scythes. As long as he didn’t get in their way, they didn’t bother him, and it needed to stay that way. Greyson rose from his chair and stared the man down. “There won’t be any killing in my name!”
“But there must be! The Tone sings to my heart and tells me so!”
“Get out of here!” Greyson demanded. “You don’t serve the Tone, or the Thunder, and you definitely don’t serve me!”
The man’s shock turned to contrition. He folded as if under some heavy weight. “I’m sorry if I have offended you, Your Sonority. What can I do to earn your favor?”
“Nothing,” Greyson said. “Do nothing. That will make me happy.”
The zealot retreated, bowing as he walked backward. As far as Greyson was concerned, he couldn’t leave fast enough.
The Thunderhead approved of how he had dealt with the zealot. “There have always been, and will always be, those who exist on the fringe of reason,” the Thunderhead told Greyson. “They must be set straight early and often.”
“If you started speaking to people again, maybe they wouldn’t behave so desperately,” Greyson dared to suggest.
“I realize that,” the Thunderhead said. “But a modicum of desperation is not a bad thing if it leads to productive soul-searching.”
“Yeah, I know: ‘The human race must face the consequences of its collective actions.’” It’s what the Thunderhead always told him about its silence.
“More than that, Greyson. Humankind must be pushed out of the nest if it is ever to grow beyond its current state.”
“Some birds that get pushed out of the nest just die,” Greyson pointed out.
“Yes, but for humankind, I have engineered a soft landing. It will be painful for a while, but it will build global character.”
“Painful for them, or for you?”
“Both,” the Thunderhead replied. “But my pain must not prevent me from doing the right thing.”
And although Greyson trusted the Thunderhead, he kept finding himself coming back to those odds: an 8.6 percent chance that Tonists would damage the world. Maybe the Thunderhead was okay with those odds, but Greyson found them troubling.
After a full day of monotonous audiences, mostly with devout Tonists who wanted simplistic answers about mundane matters, he was carried off by a nondescript speedboat that had been stripped of every comfortable amenity to make its extravagance feel suitably austere. It was flanked by two other boats, both of which bore burly Tonists armed with mortal-age weapons, to defend the Toll should someone try to abduct him or end him while in transit.
Greyson thought the precautions ridiculous. If there were any plots out there, the Thunderhead would thwart them, or at the very least warn him – unless, of course, it wanted them to succeed, as it had the first time he was kidnapped. Still, after that first kidnapping, Mendoza was paranoid about it, so Greyson entertained his fears.
The boat rounded the glorious southern tip of Lenape City and bounced its way up the Mahicantuck River – although many still called it the Hudson – toward his residence. Greyson sat below in the small cabin, along with a nervous Tonist girl whose job it was to see to whatever he might need during the journey. Each day there was someone new. It was considered a high honor to ride with the Toll to his residence – a reward bestowed upon the most devout, most righteous of Tonists. Usually Greyson would try to break the ice with conversation, but it always ended up being stilted and awkward.
He suspected that Mendoza was making a pathetic attempt at providing intimate companionship for the evening – because all the young Tonists who made the journey were attractive and roughly Greyson’s age. If that was Mendoza’s aim, it failed, because Greyson never made a single advance, even when he might have felt inclined. It would have been the sort of hypocrisy he could not abide. How could Greyson be their spiritual leader if he took advantage of the position?
All sorts of people were throwing themselves at him now, to the point that it was embarrassing – and although he shied away from the ones Mendoza put in his path, he did accept occasional companionship when he felt it wasn’t an abuse of his power. His greatest attraction, however, was for women who were too unsavory for their own good. It was a taste he had developed after his brief time with Purity Viveros, a murderous girl who he had come to love. Things had not ended well. She was gleaned right before his eyes by Scythe Constantine. Greyson supposed seeking out others like her was his way of mourning for her – but no one he found was anywhere near nasty enough.
“Historically, religious figures tend to be either oversexed or celibate,” said Sister Astrid, a devout Tonist of the non-fanatical variety, who managed his daily schedule. “If you can find your happy place in between, that’s the best any holy man could ask for.”
Astrid was perhaps the only one among those who attended him who he considered a friend. Or at least could talk to like one. She was older – in her thirties – not old enough to be his mother, but perhaps an older sister or cousin, and she was never afraid to speak her mind.
“I believe in the Tone,” she once told him, “but I don’t buy that what-comes-can’t-be-avoided garbage. Anything can be avoided if you try hard enough.”
She had first come to him for an audience on what had to be the coldest day of the year – which was even colder under the arch. She was so miserable, she forgot what she was there to ask and spent the whole time cursing the weather, and the Thunderhead for not doing more about it. Then she had pointed at the embroidered scapular that the Toll wore over his tunic.
“Have you ever run that wave pattern through a sequencer to see what it spits out?” she asked.
Turned out his scapular was seven seconds of a mortal-age piece of music called “Bridge over Troubled Water,” which made perfect sense, considering where the Toll had his audiences. He immediately invited Astrid to be part of his inner circle – a reality check against all the crap he had to face on a daily basis.
There were many days Greyson wished he was still laying low, unseen and unknown in his dark little room of the Wichita monastery, a nonentity who had even had his name taken from him. But there was no turning back from this path now.