“Just up and leave?”
“Yes.”
“Why would that calm my nerves?”
“It would be … a wise course of action at this juncture.”
Greyson sighed and moved toward the door.
“Where are you going?” the Thunderhead asked.
“Where do you think? To get something to eat.”
“Do not forget to take your earpiece.”
“Why? So I can listen to you nagging at me?”
The Thunderhead hesitated for a moment, then said, “I promise I will not. But you need to wear it. I cannot emphasize this strongly enough.”
“Fine.”
Greyson grabbed the earpiece from his nightstand and slipped it into his ear, if only to shut the Thunderhead up.
The Toll was always kept at a distance from most of the staff. Morrison suspected he had no idea how many people worked behind the scenes of his “simple” life, because they always scurried like mice when they saw him coming. To the Toll, a fortress manned by dozens upon dozens of people appeared to be mostly deserted. It was as the curates wanted it. “The Toll needs his privacy. The Toll needs peace to be alone with his own great thoughts.”
Late each night, Morrison could be found in the kitchen, making sauces, preparing batters for the morning pastries, but the real reason was so that he’d be in the kitchen when the Toll came down for a midnight snack.
Finally, five days in, his opportunity came.
After finishing up the pancake batter for the next morning, he turned off the lights and waited in a corner, dozing in and out, when someone in satin pajamas came downstairs and opened the refrigerator. In the oblique light of the fridge, Morrison could see a young man who seemed no older than he, twenty-one or twenty-two at the most. He didn’t look like anything special. Certainly not the “holy man” that everyone whispered of, and was so intimidated by. Morrison expected the Toll to have a tangled beard, a wild mane, and crazy eyes. All this guy had was bed hair and eye crust. Morrison took a step out of the darkness.
“Your Sonority,” he said.
The Toll flinched, nearly dropping the plate of cheesecake in his hand. “Who’s there?”
Morrison came forward into the light of the open refrigerator. “Just the pastry chef, Your Sonority. I didn’t mean to frighten you.”
“It’s okay,” the Toll said. “You just caught me by surprise. I’m actually glad to meet you. I’ve been wanting to tell you what a great job you’re doing. You sure are better than the last one.”
“Well,” said Morrison, “I’ve been training for years.”
It was hard to believe that the Thunderhead would choose this unremarkable, unassuming guy to be its voice on Earth. Maybe the naysayers were right, and it was just a scam. All the more reason to put him out of his misery.
Morrison stepped closer, opened a drawer, and pulled out a fork. He held it out to the Toll. This, Morrison knew, would appear to be a sincere gesture. And it would put him close to the Toll. Close enough to grab him and break his neck.
“I’m glad that you like my baking,” Morrison said, handing the fork to him. “It means a lot to me.”
The Toll dipped the fork into the cheesecake, took a bite, and savored it.
“I’m glad that you’re glad,” he said.
Then the Toll raised the fork and jabbed it into Morrison’s eye.
Greyson knew.
He knew without question – and not from anything that the Thunderhead had said. He knew because of the Thunderhead’s silence.
It suddenly fell into place for Greyson. All this time the Thunderhead had been trying to warn him without actually warning him. The suggestions to leave … They were not about traveling – they were about escaping. And the bath! Being in “hot water.” Greyson cursed himself for being too literal a thinker to figure it out. The Thunderhead couldn’t directly warn him, because that would be blatant interference in scythe business, which was against the law. The Thunderhead could do countless things, but it was incapable of breaking the law. All it could do was helplessly watch as Greyson was gleaned.
But the silence in his earpiece. That spoke louder than any alarm.
When the chef had stepped out of the shadows and Greyson flinched, it was more than just a flinch. His heart leaped – his fight-or-flight response was nearly triggered. In the past, whenever that happened, the Thunderhead was always quick to soothe him. It’s only the pastry chef, the Thunderhead should have said in his ear. He was merely hoping to catch a glimpse of you; please treat him kindly.
But the Thunderhead didn’t say that. It said nothing at all. Which meant the man before him was a scythe, and he was about to be gleaned.
Greyson had never done anything as violent as what he had just done. Even during his days as Slayd Bridger he had never engaged in something so reprehensible as an attack with a sharp object. But he knew it was warranted. He knew the Thunderhead would understand.
And so, with the deed done, he ran for his life from the kitchen without looking back.
Scythe Morrison would have screamed with volume to match the Great Resonance if he’d let himself. But he bit it back into a single yelp and, fighting the pain, pulled the fork from his eye. Unlike many of the new-order scythes, he had not dialed down his pain nanites, so they were already dousing him with megadoses of painkillers, making him woozy and dizzy. He had to fight that as much as the pain, because he needed to stay sharp if he was going to fix this mess.
He had been so close! If only he had dispensed with the charade immediately and done what he’d come to do, the Toll would be dead now. How could Morrison have been so sloppy?
The holy man knew the scythe’s intentions – knew his purpose there. Either he was clairvoyant, or the Thunderhead had told him, or something Morrison did had given him away. He should have anticipated the possibility of being exposed.
With one hand on his damaged eye, he took off after the Toll, determined that there’d be no more mistakes. He would complete his mission. It wouldn’t be as clean as he wanted it to be – in fact, it would be messy. But it would get done.
“Scythe!” yelled Greyson as he ran from the kitchen. “Help! There’s a scythe!”
Someone must have heard him – the stone walls echoed every sound – but they also sent sound bouncing in unexpected directions. All the guards were positioned on the outside, and on the rooftops, not in the residence. By the time they heard him and took action, it might be too late.
“Scythe!”
His slippers were slowing him down, so he got rid of them. The only advantage that Greyson had was that he knew the Cloisters better than his attacker did – and Greyson also had the Thunderhead.
“I know you can’t help me,” he said to it. “I know it’s against the law, but there are things you can do.”
Still the Thunderhead didn’t respond.
Greyson heard a door open behind him. Someone screamed. He couldn’t turn around to see who it was or what had happened.
I have to think like the Thunderhead. It can’t interfere. It can’t do anything of its own will to help me. So what can it do?
The answer was simple when he thought of it that way. The Thunderhead was humanity’s servant. Which meant it could follow commands.