“Talk to me,” he said to the Thunderhead as he stretched out on the comfort of his bed – a massive thing constructed specially for him by a follower who made mattresses by hand. Why did people think that just because the Toll was now larger-than-life, everything within his life had to be? The bed was big enough for a small army. Honestly, what did they expect him to do in it? Even on the rare occasions that he had “the company of a guest,” as the curates so tactfully put it, it felt like they had to drop breadcrumbs to find each other.
Mostly he was alone when he lay upon it. That left him with two choices. He could either feel insignificant and solitary, swallowed by the billowing expanse of it – or he could try to remember what it was like to be a baby laid out in the middle of his parents’ bed, safe, comfortable, and loved. Certainly his parents had done that for him at least once before they tired of parenthood.
“I’d be happy to talk, Greyson,” the Thunderhead replied. “What shall we discuss?”
“Doesn’t matter,” Greyson said. “Small talk, big talk, in-between talk.”
“Shall we discuss your following, and how it’s growing?”
Greyson rolled over. “You really know how to kill a mood, you know that? No, I don’t want to talk about anything having to do with the Toll.” Greyson crawled to the edge of the bed and grabbed the plate of cheesecake he had brought with him from dinner. If the Thunderhead was going to talk about his life as the Toll, he definitely needed some comfort food to help it go down.
“The growth of the Tonist movement is a good thing,” the Thunderhead said. “It means that when we need to mobilize them, they will be a force to be reckoned with.”
“You sound like you’re going to war.”
“I’m hoping that won’t be necessary.”
And that’s all the Thunderhead had to say about it. From the beginning, it was cryptic about how it might use the Tonists. It made Greyson feel like a confidant who wasn’t being confided in.
“I don’t like being used without knowing your endgame,” he said, and to emphasize his disapproval, he moved to the one spot in the room he knew the Thunderhead’s cameras had trouble seeing.
“You’ve found a blind spot,” it said. “Perhaps you know more than you’re letting on.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
The air-conditioning blew stronger for a brief moment. The Thunderhead’s version of a sigh. “I will tell you once things congeal, but right now there are obstacles I must overcome before I can even calculate the odds that my plan for humanity will succeed.”
Greyson found it absurd that the Thunderhead could say something like “my plan for humanity” in the same unconcerned way a person might say “my recipe for cheesecake.”
Which, by the way, was terrible. Void of flavor, and gelatinous rather than creamy. Tonists believed that hearing was the only sense worth indulging. But someone apparently had read the look on Greyson’s face while he tried to eat a particularly miserable babka, and the staff was scrambling to find a new dessert chef. That was the thing about being the Toll. You raised an eyebrow, and mountains moved, whether you wanted them to or not.
“Are you displeased with me, Greyson?” the Thunderhead asked.
“You basically run the world – why should you care if I’m displeased?”
“Because I do,” the Thunderhead said. “I care very much.”
“You will treat the Toll with absolute reverence no matter what he tells you.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Step far out of his way if you see him approaching.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Always cast your eyes downward in his presence, and bow low.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Sister Astrid, who now served as the Cloisters’ chief of staff, looked the new pastry chef over carefully. She squinted as if it helped her see into his soul. “From where do you hail?”
“BrotherlyLove,” he told her.
“Well, I hope your head isn’t as cracked as the Liberty Bell. Clearly, you must have distinguished yourself to your curate to be recommended for service to the Toll.”
“I’m the best at what I do,” he told her. “Hands down, the best.”
“A Tonist without modesty,” she said with a wry grin. “Some of the sibilant sects would cut your tongue out for that.”
“The Toll is too wise for that, ma’am.”
“That he is,” she agreed. “That he is.” Then she reached out her hand unexpectedly and squeezed his right bicep. The new arrival tensed it reflexively.
“Strong. By the looks of you, I’m surprised they didn’t assign you to security detail.”
“I’m a pastry chef,” he told her. “The only weapon I wield is an eggbeater.”
“But you would fight for him if you were asked?”
“Whatever the Toll needs, I’m there.”
“Good,” she said, satisfied. “Well, what he needs from you now is tonight’s dessert.” Then she had someone from the culinary staff show him to the kitchen.
He grinned as he was led out. He had made it through the chief of staff’s inspection. Sister Astrid was known to throw out new arrivals she didn’t care for, no matter how highly recommended they came. But he’d measured up to her high standards. Scythe Morrison couldn’t be happier.
“I am thinking that traveling might be a good course of action at this juncture,” the Thunderhead told Greyson that evening, before he removed his vestments and could relax. “I am thinking this in the strongest of ways.”
“I already told you I’m not doing a world tour,” Greyson told it. “The world comes to me one person at a time. I’m fine with it that way, and until now it’s what you’ve wanted, too.”
“I’m not suggesting a world tour, but perhaps an unannounced pilgrimage to places you have not been. Shouldn’t it be known that the Toll traveled the world, as prophets have historically done?”
Greyson Tolliver, however, had never suffered from wanderlust. Until his life had been derailed, his hope was to serve the Thunderhead as a Nimbus agent close to home – and if not, then in a single place that would become his home. As far as he was concerned, Lenape City was as much of the world as he needed to see.
“It was merely a suggestion. But I believe it to be an important one,” the Thunderhead told him. It was not like the Thunderhead to be insistent when Greyson had made his feelings clear on a matter. Perhaps there would come a time when he would have to uproot himself to help bring the sibilant factions in line, but why now?
“I’ll consider it,” Greyson said, just to end the conversation. “But right now I need to take a bath and stop thinking about stressful things.”
“Of course,” said the Thunderhead. “I’ll draw it for you.”
But the bath the Thunderhead drew was much too hot. Greyson endured it without saying anything, but what was the Thunderhead thinking? Was it punishing him in some passive-aggressive way for not wanting to travel? The Thunderhead wasn’t like that. What possible reason could it have for putting him in hot water?