The Toll

by Neal Shusterman

  Goddard’s knees feel week. He knows that sound. He flicks on a light, and there before him is a Tonist standing in the corner, gaunt, wild-eyed, and mouth agape. How the hell did a Tonist get in here? Goddard hurries to his bed and reaches for the blade he always keeps by his side, but it’s not there. It’s in the Tonist’s hand, held tightly in his grip. But if the man was there to end him, then why hasn’t he taken action?

  “You think you’re untouchable, High Blade Goddard, but you’re not. The Tone sees you, the Thunder knows you, and the Toll shall judge you, casting you into the pit of everlasting discord.”

  “What is it you want?” demands Goddard.

  “What is it I want? To show you that no one can hide from the Holy Triad. To stream to the world how truly vulnerable you are—and when the Toll comes for you, he will show no mercy, for he is the one true—”

  The Tonist’s words are cut short by a sudden pain in his back. He sees the tip of a knife protruding from his chest. He knew this was a possibility. He knew he might not make it back to the garden, where he’d leap from the building, splatting to escape. But if his fate was to become one with the Tone now, then he would accept this final measure.

  Scythe Rand pulls the knife out, and the Tonist falls dead to the floor. She had always known this was a possibility. That an enemy of Goddard’s might break in. She never thought it would be a Tonist. Well, she is more than happy to make him “one with the Tone.” Whatever that means.

  Now that the threat is neutralized, Goddard finds his shock rapidly transmuting into anger.

  “How did a Tonist get in here?”

  “By parachute,” Rand says. “He landed in the garden, then cut a hole in the glass.”

  “And where were the BladeGuards? What is their job if not to protect me from things like this?”

  Now Goddard paces, whipping his fury into a caustic meringue.

  Now that the threat is neutralized, Scythe Rand knows that this is her chance. She must transmute her resolve into action. How did a Tonist get in here? She allowed him to. While the guards were elsewhere, she caught sight of his approach from her quarters and watched as he landed clumsily in the rooftop garden—so clumsily that the camera he had brought to stream this event fell to the grass.

  No one would see his transmission. No one would know.

  And so it gave Ayn the opportunity to observe. To let it play out, and allow Goddard a few moments of fear and shock, before she gleaned the intruder. Because as Constantine suggested, she could mold Goddard’s actions—but only when he was reeling, and his fury was whipped into stiff but malleable peaks.

  “Are there others?” demands Goddard.

  “No, he was alone,” Rand tells him—and the guards, two minutes too late, fall over one another to do a search of the entire residence, as if it will make up for their failure to protect him. It used to be that violence against scythes was unthinkable. He blames the old guard, and the weakness their mewling dissent has shown the world. So what to do about this? If a random Tonist can get to him, then anyone can. Goddard knows he has to take swift and sweeping action. He needs to shake the world.

  Are there others? Of course there are others. Not here, not today, but Rand knows that Goddard’s actions are creating as many enemies as allies. It used to be that violence against scythes was unthinkable. But thanks to Goddard, it’s not that way anymore. Perhaps this wayward Tonist was just here to make a point—but there will be others with more deadly agendas. As much as she hates to give Constantine any credit, he’s right. Goddard needs to slow down. In spite of her own impulsive nature, she knows she has to guide him toward calm, measured action.

  “Glean the guards!” Goddard demands. “They’re worthless! Glean them and find us new ones who can do their job!”

  “Robert, you’re upset. Let’s not make any rash decisions.”

  He spins on her, incensed by her suggestion. “Rash? I could have been ended today.… I must take precautions, and I must exact retribution!”

  “Fine, but let’s talk about it in the morning, and we can make a plan.”

  “We?”

  Then Goddard looks down to see her clasping his hand and—more to the point—sees that he, without realizing it, is clasping hers back. Involuntarily. As if his hands aren’t his own.

  Goddard knows there is a decision to be made here. An important one. It’s clear to him what that decision must be. He tugs out of her grip.

  “There is no we here, Ayn.”

  That’s the moment Scythe Rand knows she has lost. She has devoted herself to Goddard. She brought him back from the dead almost single-handedly, but none of that matters to him. She wonders if it ever had.

  “If you wish to remain in my service, you’ll stop trying to placate me like a child,” he tells her, “and you’ll do what I ask you to do.”

  Then Goddard cracks his knuckles. How she hates when he does that. Because it’s what Tyger did. And in exactly the same way. Yet Goddard has no idea.

  That’s the moment Goddard knows he’s done the right thing. He is a devoted man of action, not deliberation. He has single-handedly brought the scythedom into a new age—that’s what matters. Rand, like his underscythes, simply needs to know her place. It may sting her for the moment but will only help in the long run.

  “Retribution,” says Rand, finally falling in line. “Fine. What if I find the sect this Tonist belonged to and publicly glean its curate? I promise I’ll make it nice and nasty for you.”

  “Gleaning a mere curate,” says Goddard, “is hardly the message we need to send. We need to go higher.”

  Rand goes off to glean the three guards on duty in the residence, as instructed. She does it efficiently, with no warning, no mercy, no remorse. It’s easier when she allows her hate to rise to the surface. She hates Constantine for giving her hope that she might have any influence on Goddard. She hates Tyger for being so goddamn naive that he could have allowed her to play him so easily. She hates the old guard, and the new order, and the Thunderhead, and every last person she ever has gleaned, or will ever glean. But she absolutely refuses to hate herself, because that would crush her, and she will never allow herself to be crushed.

  There is no we here, Ayn.

  She suspects she will hear the echo of that for the rest of her days.

  “I want my own world. Will you give it to me?”

  “Even if I could, it wouldn’t be your world. You would merely be its protector.”

  “Semantics only. King, queen, empress, protector—whatever title you choose, it’s all the same. Regardless, it would ostensibly be my world. I would make the rules, define the parameters of right and wrong. I would be the de facto authority over it, as you are.

  “And what of your subjects?”

  “I would be a kind and benevolent ruler. I would only punish those who are deserving.”

  “I see.”

  “Can I have my own world now?”

  [Iteration #752,149 deleted]

  18 I’m Your Scythe

  Scythe Morrison had a sweet deal. A sweet life. And there was every indication that it would be that way forever.

  Gleaning quotas had been lifted, and while that meant that those scythes who enjoyed killing could glean to their heart’s content, it also meant that the ones who would rather not didn’t have to. Jim found that gleaning just a dozen or so between conclaves was enough to keep him from being frowned upon. Which meant he could enjoy the perks of being a scythe, with a minimal amount of effort.

  And so Scythe Morrison kept a low profile. It wasn’t really in his nature to do so; he liked to stand out. Jim was tall, fairly muscular, cut an imposing figure, and he knew he was good-looking. With all that going for him, why not be on display? But the one time he had stuck his neck out and drawn attention to himself, it failed miserably, and nearly destroyed him.

  He had seconded the nomination of Scythe Curie for High Blade. Stupid. Now she was dead, and he was looked upon as an instigator. Frustrating
, because Constantine, who had nominated Curie, was made an underscythe. The world was so unfair.

  When Goddard returned from the Endura disaster as High Blade, Morrison had quickly installed sapphires on his robe to signify an alliance with the new order. But his robe was denim, and others mocked that, on denim, sapphires looked like cheap plastic rhinestones. Well fine, maybe they did, but they still made a point. His robe told the world that he was sorry for what he had done—and after a while his contrition had earned him indifference from both sides. The old-guard scythes washed their hands of him, and the new-order scythes dismissed him. That glorious, hard-earned indifference allowed him to do what he loved more than anything in the world: Nothing.

  That is, until the day he was summoned by the High Blade.

  Morrison had chosen for his residence the stately home of another famous MidMerican. Not his Patron Historic, because the original Jim Morrison, while having a celebrated grave somewhere in FrancoIberia, did not have a grand residence in the Mericas, or at least not one grand enough for a scythe.

  It could be traced back to the time when the boy who would one day become Scythe Morrison had visited Graceland with his parents. “Someday I want to live in a place like this,” he had told them. They scoffed at his childhood naivete. He swore that he would have the last laugh.

  Once he became a scythe, he immediately set his sights on the celebrated mansion, only to discover that Scythe Presley had already claimed Graceland as his residence and showed no signs of self-gleaning any time soon. Damn. Instead, Morrison had to settle for the next best thing:

  Grouseland.

  It was the historic mansion of William Henry Harrison, a little-remembered mortal-age Merican president. Exercising his privilege as a scythe, Morrison kicked out the ladies of the local historical society, who ran the place as a museum, and moved in. He even invited his parents to live with him there, and although they accepted the invitation, they never seemed all that impressed.

  On the day of his summons, he was watching sports, as was his penchant. Archives of classic games, because he hated the stress of not knowing who was going to win. It was the Forty-Niners versus the Patriots in a game that was only notable because Forty-Niner Jeff Fuller took a helmet-to-helmet hit so powerful it could have knocked him into an alternate dimension. Instead it broke his neck. Very dramatic. Scythe Morrison enjoyed the way Merican football was played in mortal days, when injuries could be permanent and could lay a player out in the field, experiencing true pain. The stakes were so much more real then. It was his love of mortal-age contact sports that inspired his method of gleaning. He never used weapons—all his gleanings were accomplished with his bare hands.

  While the game was still suspended, awaiting the removal of the injured Fuller from the field, Morrison’s screen flashed red, and his phone buzzed. It was as if his nanites themselves were vibrating, because he could swear he felt it all the way down to the bone.

  It was an incoming message from Fulcrum City.

  ATTENTION! ATTENTION!

  THE HONORABLE SCYTHE JAMES DOUGLAS MORRISON

  IS SUMMONED TO A HIGH PRIORITY AUDIENCE

  WITH HIS EXCELLENCY, THE HONORABLE ROBERT GODDARD,

  HIGH BLADE OF THE MIDMERICAN SCYTHEDOM.

  This could not be a good thing.

  He had been hoping that Goddard had forgotten about him, and that, as High Blade, the man had so many more important things to do that a junior scythe like Morrison was not even on his radar. Perhaps it was his choice of a famous residence that had brought him to Goddard’s attention. Grouseland was, after all, the first brick home in the Indiana Territory. Damn.

  Knowing that a summons from the High Blade was a drop-everything kind of command, he did just that, had his mother pack him a small bag, and called for a scythedom helicopter.

  * * *

  Although Scythe Morrison had never been to Endura, he imagined Goddard’s glass residence in Fulcrum City was similar to the crystalline penthouses of the late Grandslayers. In the ground-floor lobby, Jim was greeted by none other than First Underscythe Nietzsche.

  “You’re late” was the entire extent of Nietzsche’s greeting.

  “I came the minute I got the summons,” Morrison said.

  “And at two minutes after the summons, you were late.”

  Nietzsche, aside from having a name that was painfully difficult to spell, was the man who might have been High Blade, had Goddard not made his infamous reappearance at conclave. Now he seemed to be little more than an elevator operator, because escorting Morrison to the rooftop residence was his only contribution to the meeting. He never even got out of the elevator.

  “Mind yourself,” he warned before the doors closed, as one might say to a child dropped off at a birthday party.

  The crystal residence was stunning, filled with unusual angles and slim furniture with minimal profiles as to not obstruct the 360-degree view. Only the frosted glass walls of the High Blade’s bedroom marred the vista. Morrison could see a vague shadow of the High Blade moving around in there, like a funnel spider deep in its web.

  Then a figure in green swept in from the kitchen area. Scythe Rand. If she wanted to make a grand entrance, it was foiled by the glass walls, because Morrison had seen her long before she arrived in the room. No one could accuse this administration of not having transparency.

  “Well, if it isn’t the heartthrob of the MidMerican scythedom,” Rand said, sitting down, rather than shaking his hand. “I hear your trading card has a high value among schoolgirls.”

  He sat down across from her. “Hey, yours is valuable, too,” he said. “For different reasons.” Then he realized that it might be perceived as an insult. He said nothing more, because he figured he could only make things worse.

  Rand was now legendary. Everyone in the Mericas—maybe even the world—knew that she was the one who had brought Goddard back from the dead in a manner not even the Thunderhead would dare. Morrison was always put off by that grin of hers. It made you feel like she knew something you didn’t and couldn’t wait to see the look on your face when you found out.

  “I hear you made a man’s heart stop last month with one blow,” Rand said.

  It was true, but the guy’s nanites had started his heart again. Twice. In the end Morrison had to turn off the man’s nanites to make the gleaning stick. That was one of the problems with gleaning without weapon or poison. Sometimes it just didn’t take.

  “Yeah,” said Morrison, not bothering to explain. “It’s what I do.”

  “It’s what we all do,” Rand pointed out. “What’s interesting is the way you do it.”

  Morrison was not expecting a compliment. He tried to offer her his own unreadable smile. “You think I’m interesting?”

  “I think the way you glean is interesting. You, on the other hand, are a total bore.”

  Finally, Goddard came out of his bedroom suite, his arms wide in welcome. “Scythe Morrison!” he said with far more warmth than Jim had expected. His robe was slightly different from the one he used to wear. It was still dark blue, and speckled with diamonds, but if you looked closely, you could see cross filaments of gold that shimmered like the aurora borealis when the light hit it.

  “As I recall, you were the one who seconded Scythe Curie’s nomination for High Blade, were you not?”

  Apparently Goddard wasn’t wasting time with small talk. He was going straight for the jugular.

  “Yes,” said Morrison, “but I can explain…”

  “No need,” said Goddard. “I enjoy a vigorous competition.”

  “Especially,” added Rand, “one that you win.”

  It made Morrison think of the games he liked to watch, where the outcome was already determined, so he knew which team to root for.

  “Yes. Well, at any rate,” said Goddard, “neither you nor our friend Constantine had any idea that I was waiting in the wings, planning a grand entrance when the nomination was made.”

  “No, Your Honor, I did n
ot.” Then he caught himself. “I mean, Your Excellency.”

  Goddard made a point of looking him over. “The gems on your robe add a nice touch,” he said. “Are they a fashion statement, or something more?”

  Jim swallowed. “More,” he said, hoping it was the right answer. He glanced at Rand, who was clearly happy to watch him squirm. “I was never actually aligned with the old guard,” Morrison told them. “I nominated Curie, because I thought it would impress Scythe Anastasia.”

  “And why would you want to impress her?” Goddard asked.

  Trick question, thought Morrison. And he decided it was better to be nailed by the truth than to be caught in a lie. “I had the feeling that she was going places—and so I figured if I impressed her—”

  “You might get pulled along in her wake?”

  “Yes, something like that.”

  Goddard nodded, accepting the explanation. “Well, she did go somewhere. Although to be more precise, I suspect she went multiple places before she was fully digested.”

  Morrison chuckled nervously, then stifled himself.

  “And so now,” said Goddard, indicating Morrison’s gem-covered robe, “do you seek to impress me?”

  “No, Your Excellency,” he said, once more hoping it was the right answer. “I don’t want to impress anyone anymore. I just want to be a good scythe.”

  “What makes a good scythe, in your estimation?”

  “A scythe who follows the laws and customs of the scythedom, as interpreted by their High Blade.”

  Goddard was now unreadable—but Morrison noticed that Rand’s grin had faded, and she looked more serious. He couldn’t help but feel that he had just passed some sort of test. Or failed it.

  Then Goddard clapped him warmly on the shoulder. “I have a job for you,” he said. “A job that will prove that your loyalty isn’t just a fashion statement.”