“You’re not kidding, are you?” said Tyger’s construct. “Well, you can’t let it happen! You have to stop it!”
“It’s out of my hands.”
“Then put it back in your hands! I know Rowan better than anyone – if he did what you say he did, then he had a good reason. You can’t just glean him!” Then the construct began looking around as if it was aware it was in a limited world. A virtual box that it wanted to get out of. “It’s wrong!” it said. “You can’t do this!”
“What do you know about right and wrong?” snapped Rand. “You’re nothing but a foolish dim-witted party boy!”
It glared at her in fury. The micro-pixels of its image increased the percentage of red in its face. “I hate you,” it said. “Whoever the hell you are, I hate you.”
Ayn quickly hit a button and ended the conversation. Tyger’s memory construct vanished. As always, it would not remember this conversation. As always, Ayn would.
“If you’re going to glean him, why not just glean him?” Scythe Rand asked Goddard, doing her best not to sound as frustrated as she was. There were many reasons for her frustration. First of all, a stadium was a difficult venue to secure from their enemies – and they did have enemies. Not just the old-guard scythes, but everyone from Tonists, to scythedoms who had shunned Goddard, to the disgruntled loved ones from mass gleanings.
It was just the two of them in Goddard’s private plane. Now that the motorcade was nearing its destination after nearly a week of winding through its prolonged victory lap, he and Rand were flying to meet it – a flight as short as Rowan Damisch’s journey was long. Like Goddard’s rooftop chalet, the plane was retrofitted with mortal-age weaponry. A series of missiles that hung from each wing. He would regularly fly low over communities that he deemed defiant. He never used the missiles to glean, but just like those rooftop cannons, they were a reminder that he could if he chose to.
“If you want a public display,” Ayn suggested, “make the gleaning more controlled. Maybe a broadcast from a small, undisclosed location. Why do you have to make a spectacle of everything?”
“Because I enjoy spectacles – and there’s no reason needed beyond that.”
But of course there was a bigger reason. Goddard wanted the world to know that he had personally apprehended and executed the greatest public enemy of the post-mortal age. Not only to raise Goddard’s image among common people, but to gain the admiration of scythes who might be on the fence about him. Everything with Goddard was either strategic or impulsive. This grand event was strategic. Turning the gleaning of Rowan Damisch into a show would make it impossible for anyone to ignore.
“There will be over a thousand scythes from around the world in that audience,” Goddard reminded her. “They wish to see it, and I wish to provide it. Who are we to deny them their catharsis?”
Rand had no idea what that meant and didn’t really care. Goddard spouted erudite gibberish with such regularity, Rand had learned to turn her ears off to it.
“There are better ways to handle this,” Rand said.
Now Goddard’s expression began to sour. They hit a small pocket of turbulence, which Goddard probably believed was brought on by his mood. “Are you trying to tell me how to be a scythe – or worse – how to be an Overblade?”
“How could I tell you how to be something that didn’t exist until you made it up?”
“Careful, Ayn,” he warned. “Don’t anger me at a time I should be feeling nothing but joy.” He let his warning sink in, then leaned back in his chair. “I would think you, of all people, would love to see Rowan suffer after what he did to you. He broke your back and left you for dead, and you want his gleaning to be a small, quiet thing?”
“I want him gleaned just as much as you do. But gleaning should not be entertainment.”
To which Goddard said with an infuriating grin, “It’s entertaining to me.”
As Scythe Lucifer, Rowan had been very careful to make sure the scythes he ended never suffered. They were gleaned quickly. It was only after they were dead that he burned the bodies to render them unrevivable. It didn’t surprise him that Goddard was lacking in such mercy. Rowan’s agony would be prolonged for maximum effect.
There was only so much bravado that Rowan could muster. As the execution motorcade wove its way to his doom, he finally had to admit to himself that he truly did care about whether he lived or died. And while it didn’t bother him how history might remember him, he was troubled by how his family would. His mother, and his many brothers and sisters, must already know that he was Scythe Lucifer – because once blame for the sinking of Endura was foisted upon him, it made Rowan infamous. The crowds that turned out to get a glimpse of the motorcade was proof of that.
Would his family be there in the audience? If not, would they be watching from home? What happened to the families of notorious criminals back in mortal days, he wondered – for there was no equivalent to Scythe Lucifer in post-mortal times. Would they have been damned by association, and gleaned? Rowan’s father had been gleaned before Endura sank, so he never knew what his son had become, and how the world hated him. There was a mercy in that. But if his mother and siblings were still alive, they must have despised him, for how could they not? That realization was more demoralizing than anything else.
He had plenty of time to be alone with his own thoughts during the motorcade’s winding journey. His thoughts were not his friends – at least not anymore, because all they did was remind him of the choices he had made, and how they had led him here. What once felt justified, now felt foolhardy. What once seemed brave, now just seemed sad.
It could have been different. He could have just disappeared like Scythe Faraday when he had the chance. Where was Faraday now, he wondered. Would he be streaming the event and weeping for him? It would be nice to know that someone wept for him. Citra would, wherever she was. That would have to be enough.
The gleaning was scheduled for seven in the evening, but people had arrived early. There were scythes and ordinary citizens in the crowd – and although the scythes did have a special entrance, they had been encouraged by Goddard to sit in among the rabble.
“This is a golden public relations opportunity,” Goddard had told them. “Smile and say kind things. Listen attentively to their twaddle and pretend to care – maybe even grant some immunity.” Many followed the directive; some could not bring themselves to and sat only with other scythes.
Rowan, under heavy guard, was taken directly to a large staging area with access directly onto the field. The woodpile they had prepared for him was a three-story pyramid that appeared to be made of gathered branches, like a random collection of stacked driftwood – but closer inspection proved everything to be part of an intricately engineered design. The branches weren’t just stacked, but nailed in place, and the whole thing was on a huge rolling platform, like a parade float. The very center was hollowed out, and in the hollow was a stone pillar to which Rowan was tightly secured by fire-resistant bindings. The pillar was on a lift that would raise Rowan to the top of the pyramid, revealing him to the crowd at the right moment. Then Goddard himself would light it.