The Toll

by Neal Shusterman

  “Well, laying eyes on me doesn’t necessarily mean popping them out of their sockets first.”

  “I’m sorry, Your Honor, it won’t happen again.”

  “It’s still happening.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  Now Peixoto cast his eyes down as if looking at her was like gazing at the sun. It was almost as bad as the staring. Was this the kind of ridiculous treatment she’d have to deal with? It was bad enough when she was just a scythe. Now she was also a living legend, which apparently came with a brand-new bag of nauseating veneration.

  “If you don’t mind me asking…,” Peixoto said as they spiraled up a narrow stairwell that led, like so many others, nowhere, “what was it like?”

  “You’ll have to be more specific.”

  “To be there for the sinking of Endura,” he said. “To watch it go down.”

  “Sorry, but I was too busy trying to survive to take pictures,” she said, more than a little annoyed by the question.

  “Forgive me,” he said. “I was only an apprentice when it happened. Since then Endura has fascinated me. I have spoken with several survivors—ones who made it out by boat or plane in those last minutes. They say it was spectacular.”

  “Endura was a very impressive place,” Anastasia had to admit.

  “No—I meant the sinking. I hear the sinking was spectacular.”

  Anastasia didn’t even know what to say to that, so she answered with silence. And when she next saw Possuelo, she asked if Peixoto could be assigned elsewhere.

  * * *

  After a week at the old fortress, things took a sudden and unexpected turn. In the middle of the night, Possuelo came into Anastasia’s chambers with several BladeGuards to wake her out of yet another dreamless sleep.

  “Dress quickly—we must leave in extreme haste,” he said.

  “I’ll be hasty in the morning,” she told him, annoyed at having been woken, and too bleary to grasp the seriousness of the situation.

  “We’ve been compromised!” Possuelo told her. “A delegation of scythes has arrived from North Merica, and I assure you, they are not here to welcome you back to the world.”

  It was more than enough to get her out of bed. “Who would have told—” But even before she formed the question, she knew the answer. “Scythe Peixoto!”

  “You were far more intuitive than I when it came to that desgraçado. I should have seen his intentions.”

  “You’re a trusting man.”

  “I am a fool.”

  After she slipped on her robe, she noticed someone in the room she hadn’t seen upon waking. At first she thought the individual was a man, but as the figure stepped into the light, Anastasia realized that the visitor was a woman. Or not. Each moment, each shift of the light, changed the impression.

  “Anastasia, this is Jerico Soberanis—the captain of the salvage ship that found you. Jerico will get you to safety.”

  “What about Rowan?” Citra asked.

  “I’ll do what I can for him, but now you must go!”

  * * *

  Rowan was awakened by the sound of his lock turning. It was still dark outside. This was not part of his routine. The moon shone through the slit in the stone, casting a strip of light low against a far wall. When he had gone to sleep, the moon had not yet risen, and by the angle of the light it cast, he suspected it must be just before dawn. He feigned sleep as figures quietly filed into the room. The hallway they had entered from was dark, and they had only narrow beams of flashlights to guide them. Rowan had the advantage of eyes that were already adjusted to the dark. They, however, had the advantage of numbers. He remained still, keeping his eyes open to the narrowest slit—just enough to see the figures through his eyelashes.

  It was a cast of unknown characters—but not entirely unknown. The first indication that they were interlopers was the darkness, and the fact that one seemed to be searching for a light switch. Whoever they were, they clearly didn’t know that the light in his room, and probably the hallway as well, was controlled remotely from some other location in the fortress. Then he caught the glint of the ceremonial dagger that members of the BladeGuard wore on their belts. But most telling were two robed figures, and the fact that their robes were speckled with gems that glittered in the moonlight like stars.

  “Wake him,” said one of the scythes. Her voice was unfamiliar, but that didn’t matter. The jewels on her robe meant that she was a new-order scythe. A follower of Goddard. And that made her, and everyone in her company, the enemy.

  As a guard leaned over him, preparing to slap him awake, Rowan reached out and grabbed the ceremonial dagger from the guard’s waist. He didn’t use it against the guard, because no one would care much if a guard was rendered deadish. Instead, Rowan turned the blade on the nearest jewel-laden scythe. Not the woman who had spoken, but the one foolish enough to leave himself in striking distance. Rowan severed his jugular in a single swing of the blade, then bolted for the door.

  It worked. The scythe wailed and flailed and gushed, creating an impressive distraction. All those present were instantly flustered and unsure whether to go after Rowan or to assist the dying scythe.

  This, Rowan knew, was a fight for his life. The world saw him as the beast who sank Endura. He had been told very little about how things had changed while he and Citra were at the bottom of the sea, but he knew that much. His alleged villainy had been drilled into humanity’s collective consciousness, and there was no hope of changing that. For all he knew, even the Thunderhead believed it. His only option was to escape.

  As he raced down the hallway, the lights came on, which would assist his pursuers as much as it would him. He had never been out of his cell, so he had no way of knowing the layout of the ancient fortress, which was not designed for escape. If anything, it was a maze designed to confound anyone trapped within it.

  The effort to capture him was disorganized and haphazard. But if they had managed to turn on the lights, that probably meant they had access to the security cameras and at least a rudimentary knowledge of the fortress’s layout.

  The first few guards and scythes he encountered were easily dispatched. Scythes, while well trained for combat, rarely had to face aggressors as skilled in killcraft as Rowan. As for BladeGuards, they were, much like their daggers, decorative. These ancient stone walls that had not seen blood for countless centuries were well fed today.

  Had this been an ordinary structure, escape would have been much easier for Rowan, but Rowan was constantly finding himself at dead-end hallways.

  And what of Citra?

  Was she already in their grip? Would these scythes treat her any better than they treated him? Maybe she was running through these passages, too. Maybe he would find her, and they could escape together. It was that thought that propelled him and fueled him, driving him faster through the stone labyrinth.

  After the fourth winding dead end, he doubled back to find his path blocked by more than a dozen guards and scythes. He tried to fight his way through them, but as much as he would have liked to believe that Scythe Lucifer was invincible, Rowan Damisch was not. The dagger was pulled from his hand, and he was apprehended, forced to the floor, and his hands were shackled by a metallic restraining device too absurdly offensive to be anything but a relic of the mortal age.

  Once he was in hand, a scythe approached.

  “Turn him to face me,” she ordered. She was the one who had first spoken in his cell. The one in charge of this operation. He only faintly recognized her. She wasn’t one of the MidMerican scythes, but Rowan knew he had seen her face before.

  “All those who you so viciously rendered deadish here shall be revived.” She was so full of fury and rancor, spittle flew from her mouth as she spoke. “They shall be revived and stand witness against you.”

  “If I had meant to end them permanently,” Rowan said, “I would have.”

  “Nevertheless, your crimes today have earned you death many times over.”

  “You
mean in addition to the deaths I’ve already earned? Sorry, but they all begin to blur together.”

  It only served to infuriate her more, as was his intention. “Not just death,” she told him, “but pain. Extreme pain—which has been approved by the North Merican Overblade under certain circumstances—and your circumstances warrant a great deal of punitive suffering.”

  It wasn’t the mention of pain that troubled him, but the idea of a “North Merican Overblade.”

  “Render him deadish so that he gives us no more trouble,” she ordered one of the guards. “We’ll revive him later.”

  “Yes, Your Excellency.”

  “Excellency?” Rowan said. Only High Blades were referred to that way. Then it finally occurred to him who she was. “High Blade Pickford of WestMerica?” he said, incredulous. “Does Goddard control your region, too?”

  The redness of her furious face gave him his answer.

  “I wish I didn’t have to revive you at all,” Pickford spat, “but that’s not my decision to make.” Then she turned to the guards holding him. “Make it bloodless—there’s more than enough mess today.”

  Then one of the guards crushed his windpipe, delivering Rowan one more in a long line of unpleasant deaths.

  * * *

  Scythe Possuelo unsheathed his blade the moment he saw scythes who were not wearing the traditional green of the Amazonian scythedom. Never mind that scythe-on-scythe violence was forbidden. It would be worth whatever punishment he might receive. But when the High Blade of WestMerica appeared behind the other scythes, he thought better of it. He quickly sheathed his blade, but kept his tongue sharp.

  “By whose authority do you violate the jurisdiction of the Amazonian scythedom?” he demanded.

  “We need no permission to apprehend a global criminal,” said High Blade Pickford, wielding her voice just as powerfully as any blade. “On whose authority were you protecting him?”

  “We were detaining him, not protecting him.”

  “So you say. Well, he’s not your concern anymore,” she told him. “An ambudrone under our control has already carried him to our plane.”

  “There will be consequences if you proceed with this action!” Possuelo threatened. “I assure you.”

  “I couldn’t care less,” Pickford said. “Where is Scythe Anastasia?”

  “She’s no criminal.”

  “Where is she?”

  “Not here,” Possuelo finally told her.

  And then from the shadows came that weasel Peixoto—who had clearly sold them out to gain Goddard’s favor.

  “He’s lying,” said Peixoto. “They’re keeping her in a room at the end of this corridor.”

  “Search all you want,” said Possuelo, “but you won’t find her. She’s long gone.”

  Pickford motioned to the other scythes and BladeGuards in her company to search. They flooded past Possuelo, peering into every room and niche they passed. He allowed it, because he knew they’d find nothing.

  “I’ve already notified my High Blade of this intrusion,” Possuelo said, “and a new edict has just been given. Any North Merican scythe caught on Amazonian territory shall be captured and forced to self-glean.”

  “You wouldn’t dare!”

  “I suggest you leave before reinforcements arrive to carry out the edict. And be so kind as to let your so-called Overblade know that neither he, nor any puppet-scythe working on his behalf, is welcome in Amazonia.”

  Pickford indignantly stared him down, but he did not yield. Finally, her cold facade seemed to give way. Now Possuelo had a glimpse of what was truly beneath it. She was tired. Defeated.

  “Very well,” she said. “But believe me, if Goddard is determined to find her, he will.”

  Her entourage returned, unsuccessful in their search, and she ordered them to leave, but Possuelo was not ready to let her go yet.

  “What happened to you, Mary?” he asked, and the honest disappointment in his voice was hard for her to ignore. “Just last year, didn’t you say that you would never surrender your sovereignty to Goddard? And now look at you, a hemisphere from home doing his bidding. You used to be an honorable woman, Mary. A good scythe…”

  “I still am a good scythe,” she said. “But times have changed, and if we don’t change with them, we’ll be trampled by what’s coming. You can take that to your High Blade.” Then she cast her eyes down, withdrawing into herself for a moment. “Too many friends in the WestMerican scythedom chose to glean themselves rather than submit to Goddard’s new order. They saw it as courageous defiance. I see it as weakness. I vowed never to be so weak.”

  Then she turned and strode out, the long train of her sheer silk robe too weighed down with opals to flow gracefully behind her, as it once did. Now it just dragged on the ground.

  Only after Pickford was gone did Possuelo dare relax. Word had come that Anastasia and Captain Soberanis had made it to the port, and the Spence was running dark into the Atlantic, just as it had the night it brought the vault up from the depths. The good captain was resourceful and trustworthy. Possuelo had faith that Jerico would successfully spirit Anastasia across the sea to friends who might keep her safer than he’d been able to.

  As for the boy, no doubt Pickford would bring him to Goddard. Possuelo’s feelings were mixed. He wasn’t sure if he believed Anastasia’s claims that Rowan was innocent. Even if he hadn’t sunk Endura, he’d ended more than a dozen scythes—and whether those scythes deserved to be ended was irrelevant. Mortal-age vigilantism had no place in the world. All scythes could agree on that—which meant that, regardless of philosophy, there wasn’t a High Blade in the world who would allow him to live.

  It was, Possuelo decided, a mistake to have revived him at all. He should have put the boy back in that vault and returned it to the deep. Because now Rowan Damisch would be toyed with by the Overblade without the slightest bit of mercy.

  A Testament of the Toll

  In an ancient abbey on the northern edge of the city, the Toll did take sanctuary and sustenance. He shared bread and fellowship with the believer, the magician, and the mauler, for all were of equal timbre to the Toll. Thus, all souls, high and low, came to revere him as he sat in the cradle of the Great Fork in the springtime of his life, imparting wisdom and prophecy. He would never know winter, for the sun cast its countenance more brightly upon him than on anyone. All rejoice!

  Commentary of Curate Symphonius

  Here is the initial reference to what we call the first chord. Believer, Magician, and Mauler are the three archetypes that constitute humankind. Only the Toll could have united such disparate voices into a coherent sound pleasing to the Tone. This is also the first mention of the Great Fork, which has been determined to be a symbolic reference to the two paths one may choose in life: the path of harmony or the path of discord. And to this day, the Toll still stands where the paths diverge, beckoning us toward everlasting harmony.

  Coda’s Analysis of Symphonius

  Once again, Symphonius has made broad assumptions that stretch the facts. While it is possible that the notes of the first chord represent archetypes, it is equally possible that they represent three actual individuals. Perhaps the Magician was a court entertainer. Perhaps the Mauler was a knight who took on the fire-breathing beasts that are rumored to have existed at the time. But most egregious, in my opinion, is that Symphonius missed that the Toll sitting “in the cradle of the Great Fork in the springtime of his life” is an obvious fertility reference.

  22 Just Desserts

  As with most things in Greyson’s life as the Toll, Curate Mendoza had chosen his official residence—or, more accurately, given him a list of preapproved residences for him to choose from at a grand meeting of high-level curates.

  “As your reputation and notoriety grow, we need a fortified and defendable location.” Then he presented what appeared to be a multiple choice test. “With our numbers of devotees ever expanding, we have received enough funds to procure any of these four sites fo
r you to choose from,” Mendoza told him. The choices were:

  A) a massive stone cathedral,

  B) a massive stone railroad station,

  C) a massive stone concert hall, or

  D) a secluded stone abbey that might have appeared massive under other circumstances, but seemed miniscule compared to the others.

  Mendoza had thrown in the last choice to satisfy the curates for whom less was more. And the Toll, with a stagey, beatific gesture meant to mildly mock the entire process, raised his hand and pointed to the only wrong answer on the test: the abbey. Partially because he knew it was the one Mendoza least wanted, and partially because he kind of liked it.

  The abbey, set in a park at the city’s narrow northern tip, began life as a museum designed to look like an ancient monastery. Little did the architects know that they’d be so successful, it would actually become one. The Cloisters, it was called. Greyson had no idea why it was plural; there was only one.

  The ancient tapestries that once hung on the walls had been sent to some other museum of mortal-age art and replaced by new tapestries made to look old, which depicted scenes of Tonist religious significance. To look on them, one would think that Tonism had been around for thousands of years.

  Greyson had been living here for more than a year now, yet coming home never felt like coming home. Perhaps because he was still the Toll, clothed in those itchy, embroidered vestments. Only when he was alone, in his private suite, could he remove them and be Greyson Tolliver once more. At least to himself. To everyone else he was always the Toll, no matter what he wore.

  The staff was told repeatedly not to treat him with reverence, only common respect, but that wasn’t happening. They were all loyal Tonists handpicked for the job, and once in the Toll’s service, they treated him like a god. They would bow low when he passed, and when he told them to stop, they would revel in being chastised. It was a no-win situation. But at least they were better than the zealots—who were becoming so extreme, there was a new name for them: Sibilants. A torturous, distorted sound, unpleasant to all.