He had his answer when he saw the first images of the burned ruins of the SubSaharan palace.
“Violence begets violence,” Curate Mendoza commented. “This clearly calls for a change in our approach, don’t you agree?”
Greyson couldn’t help but feel that he had failed. For over two years, he had been wrestling Sibilants into line, getting them to shed their extreme ways, but he had never made it to SubSahara. This might not have happened if he had done a better job.
“Well,” said Mendoza, “if we had our own personal mode of transportation, we could have moved more quickly – tackled more problems in more regions.”
“Fine,” Greyson said. “You win. Get us a jet and fly us to SubSahara. I want to find these Tonists before they make things even worse.”
As it turned out, that was the only way for them to get into the region. After the attack, the SubSaharan scythedom clamped down, extending way beyond its authority, and turned the region into something of a mortal-age police state.
“If the Thunderhead will not do its job and apprehend these criminals, then it falls upon the scythes of SubSahara to take control,” they proclaimed, and since scythes, by law, could do anything they wanted, they couldn’t be stopped from taking control, enforcing curfews, and gleaning anyone who resisted.
Tonists were officially forbidden from traveling to SubSahara, and all commercial flights were monitored by the scythedom in a way they hadn’t been monitored since mortal days. The tragedy of all this was that the SubSaharan scythedom had been a gentle and tolerant region – but now, thanks to the Sibilants, it was aligning with Goddard, who promised worldwide retribution against Tonists. There was no question the new SubSaharan High Blade, whoever it might be, would have a robe that sparkled with jewels.
The SubSaharan scythedom had dispatched dozens of regiments of the BladeGuard to patrol the streets of Port Remembrance, and every other city in the region, as well as beating paths through the wilderness in search of the Tonists who had murdered their High Blade, but they had no luck. No one knew where the Sibilants were hiding.
But the Thunderhead did.
And contrary to popular opinion, the Thunderhead was not shirking its responsibility to bring justice. It was merely going about it a different way. By means of a luxury jet with vertical landing capability.
“I could get used to this,” Morrison commented as he luxuriated in a plush seat.
“Don’t,” said Greyson. Although he suspected that once you began traveling in such a craft, you wouldn’t easily part with it. There were four passengers, and not a pilot among them. That was fine. The Thunderhead knew exactly where to take them.
“You could say we’re being moved by the Holy Triad,” Sister Astrid said.
“Actually no,” said Morrison, “because I only count two of the three: The Toll” – he gestured to Greyson – “and the Thunder” – he indicated the automated cockpit – “but there’s no Tone.”
“Ha! You’re wrong,” said Astrid, with a grin. “Don’t you hear it singing in the hum of the engines?”
There was, at the very least, a sense that they were soaring toward not just a destination, but a destiny.
“I am Curate Mendoza, humble servant to His Sonority, the Toll, who you now see before you, the Tone made flesh. All rejoice!”
“All rejoice!” echoed Astrid and Morrison. Greyson knew it would have been a more impressive chorus if the Toll’s entourage had been larger.
Their jet had dropped down from the sky and landed with impressive gravity in front of the Ogbunike Caves, in what was once eastern Nigeria but was now just a part of the SubSaharan region. The caves and the surrounding forest were maintained by the Thunderhead as a curated wilderness, everything within it protected. Everything, that is, except for the Sibilants hiding in the twisting passageways of the mysterious caves. It was once said that the stones in the Ogbunike Caves talked. An odd choice for a sect of Tonists who were mute.
When Greyson and his team arrived, the Sibilants were nowhere to be seen; they were hiding deep in the caves – and probably went deeper the moment they heard the roar of the aircraft. But the Thunderhead smoked them out, so to speak, by emitting a sonar tone that disoriented the many thousands of bats also living in the cave, making them go … well … batshit. Attacked by the peeved bats, the Tonists were chased out, where they were faced, not by a phalanx of BladeGuards, as they had expected, but by four figures, one of whom was dressed in rich violet under a flowing scapular down which sound waves spilled like a waterfall. Between the jet on their doorstep and the somber figure in holy attire, it was hard not to pay attention.
“Where is your curate?” Mendoza asked.
The Tonists stood there in defiance. The Toll was dead. The Toll was a martyr. How dare this imposter taint the Toll’s memory. It was always this way with Sibilants.
“It will be better for you if you honor the Toll, and bring your leader forth,” Mendoza said.
Still nothing. So Greyson quietly asked the Thunderhead for just a little more assistance, and the Thunderhead was happy to oblige, speaking gently in Greyson’s ear.
Greyson moved toward one of the Tonists. She was a small woman who seemed half-starved, and he wondered if starvation was part of this sibilant sect’s behavior. Her defiance wavered as he approached. She was afraid of him. Good, he thought. After what these people had done, she should be.
He leaned close to her, and she stiffened. Then he whispered into her ear, “Your brother did it. Everyone thinks it was you, but it was your brother.”
Greyson had no idea what it was that her brother had done. But the Thunderhead did and told Greyson just enough to bring about the desired reaction. The woman’s eyes widened. Her lips began to quiver. She let off the slightest squeak of surprise. She was now speechless in more ways than one.
“Now go bring me your curate.”
She did not resist in the slightest now. She turned and pointed to one of the others in the crowd. Greyson already knew, of course. The Thunderhead had identified him the moment they all came out of the cave – but it was important that the man be betrayed by one of his own.
Exposed, the man stepped forward. He was the epitome of a sibilant curate. Scraggly gray beard, wild eyes, scars on his arms from some sort of self-inflicted misery. Greyson would have been able to pick him out even if he hadn’t been told.
“Are you the Tonists who burned High Blade Tenkamenin, and Scythes Makeda and Baba?”
There were silent sects that used sign language to communicate, but this group had nothing but the simplest of gestures. As if communication itself was their enemy.
A single nod from the curate.
“Do you believe that I am the Toll?”
Nothing from their curate. Greyson tried again, a bit louder, speaking from deep in his diaphragm.
“I asked you a question. Do you believe I am the Toll?”
The Sibilants all turned to their curate to see what he would do.
The curate narrowed his eyes and shook his head slowly. And so Greyson got to work. He turned his eyes to various members of the curate’s flock, singling them out.
“Barton Hunt,” he said. “Your mother has been sending you letters for six years, three months, and five days, but you return each one unopened.”