“Please, Rowan, sit down,” said Scythe Coleman. “We have business to discuss.”
And when he sat, she gave Rowan a single page. On it were a list of names. All scythes. There were about fifty of them.
“Those are the scythes we have decided that you should end,” Coleman said.
Rowan looked up at Coleman, then down at the page, then up at Coleman again. Could they actually be asking him to kill fifty scythes?
Travis, who was leaning against a wall with his arms crossed, gave a mournful oh boy sort of whistle. “The look on his face says it all, don’t it? This won’t be easy.”
Rowan held the sheet out to Coleman. “No,” Rowan said. “Out of the question.”
But Scythe Coleman didn’t take back the sheet and was not about to take no for an answer. “Don’t forget that we rescued you from the prospect of a painful death, Rowan,” she said. “And because we rescued you, thirty thousand innocent people were gleaned. You owe it to us as your rescuers, and you owe it to those poor people.”
“All we’re asking,” added Travis, “is that you rid the world of problematic scythes. Didn’t you already have your heart set on doing that? Now you won’t be working alone. You’ll have the LoneStar scythedom’s backing.”
“Unofficial backing,” added Coleman.
“Right,” agreed Travis. “No one can know. That’s the deal.”
“And exactly what makes a scythe problematic to you?” Rowan asked.
Coleman snapped the page away from him and pulled a name from the list. “Scythe Kurosawa. He has spoken out against our region for years and has insulted our High Blade time and time again.”
Rowan was incredulous. “So that’s it? You want me to end a scythe for having a big mouth?”
“You’re missing the point,” said Travis. “Why is this so hard for you, son?”
Through all of this Constantine said nothing. He just stood back, with a funereal expression. The fact was, as Scythe Lucifer, Rowan vetted his choices thoroughly. If he could find a single redeeming quality to the scythe in question, he left that scythe alone. He personally knew at least three of the scythes on that list. They might not have been the most upstanding of scythes, but they didn’t deserve to be ended.
“Sorry,” said Rowan. “If you rescued me so you can use me to settle your grudges, then put me back on the pyre.” Then he turned to Constantine. “And you! You’re a hypocrite! You hunted me for gleaning bad scythes, and now you’re fine with me going out there to do it again?”
Constantine took a deep breath before he spoke. “You forget that I was an underscythe to Goddard. After what I’ve seen, I’ve come to feel his hold on the world must be weakened by any means necessary. All the scythes on that list are of the new order and fully embrace Goddard and his philosophies. You began your rampage because you believed the scythedom needed a dramatic overhaul. A culling, if you will. Although I am loath to admit it, I believe you are right.”
Did Constantine actually just say that? Hell would be freezing over if the Thunderhead weren’t controlling its weather.
“Thank you for saving my life,” Rowan told Coleman and Travis. “But like I said, I don’t take requests.”
“Told you so,” Travis said to Coleman. “Plan B?”
Coleman nodded. Rowan shuddered to think what plan B was, but no one was pulling out their knives to glean him.
“In all the time since you were revived, did you ever once ask about what happened to your family?” Scythe Coleman said.
Rowan looked away. He had been afraid to ask – not just out of the fear of knowing, but also because he didn’t want to bring his family into this, to be used on anyone’s chessboard.
“If they’re still alive, I’m sure they’ve disowned me,” Rowan said. “Maybe changed their names, or even had themselves supplanted. If I were related to me, that’s what I would do.”
“Very insightful,” said Scythe Coleman. “Actually, two of your sisters did change their names, and one of your brothers did get supplanted – but the rest of the Damisch family remained. Your mother, grandparents, and four other siblings.”
“Are you … threatening to hurt them?”
Travis guffawed at that. “What do you think? We’re like Goddard? We’d never hurt innocent people. ’Cept of course for the ones we glean.”
“I’ll tell you what we did do,” Scythe Coleman said. “After you sank Endura, your family came to our region out of fear that they would be gleaned by MidMerica’s new High Blade – with whom they knew you had bad blood. We took them in, and since then they have been quietly under our protection, where they will remain, regardless of what you choose to do.” Then she turned to Travis. “Bring them in.”
Travis left the room.
And Rowan began to panic.
Was his family here? Is that what was happening? Were they going to force him to face them? No! How could he, after all that he had done – after all they believed he had done. As much as he wanted to see them – to see for himself that they were all right – he couldn’t bear the thought of standing before his family.
“No! No, don’t!” Rowan insisted.
“If we can’t convince you, maybe they can,” said Constantine.
But the horror of making his family a part of this? Of hearing his own mother tell him to go out there and kill scythes? That was worse than being gleaned! It was worse than being burned alive!
“I’ll do it!” Rowan blurted. “I’ll do whatever you want, just … just please, please leave my family out of this…”
Coleman closed the door before Travis could return.
“I knew you’d see reason,” she said with a warm smile. “Now let’s make this world a better place.”
“Have you done the research? Have you dug into the backbrain? I know it’s frustrating without the Thunderhead’s help – but after three years, I’m sure a lot of you have figured out how to do it. There’s a benefit to being unsavory, isn’t there? It forces you to struggle through the frustration and do things the hard way. So much more satisfying.
“What did you find when you looked at the lunar disaster? Anything that didn’t look quite right to you? Did you find that the environmental system had triple redundancy? Not only a backup system but two backups to the backup. Did you learn that prior to that day, the Thunderhead had calculated the chances of an atmospheric catastrophe at .000093%? That’s less than one chance in a million. Was the Thunderhead wrong?
“After the disaster, the Grandslayers of that time enacted a week of mourning. No one would be gleaned for a week, since so many had died on the moon. I’m sure most of the Grandslayers believed it was a tragic accident and were genuine in their remorse.
“But maybe, just maybe, one was not.
“If you’re looking for evidence that would tie any specific scythe to that disaster, you won’t find it. But did you look into what happened in the days and weeks after the tragedy? Did it trouble you that there was no cleanup of the site by the Thunderhead? No recovery of the dead?
“Nameless sources suggested it was simply too much effort for the Thunderhead to recover bodies that were too damaged by the vacuum of space and solar radiation to ever be revived.